Saturday, April 20, 2013

This is the boat in April 2013. Still have a huge mess of tools wood fiberglass supplies etc to clear out organize and dispose of. The refrigeration unit needs maintenance, The windlass ( anchor winch) needs to have the electrical  connections finished. OK to be honest it may take a few weeks????

The Start

I have done some crewing on boats of similar size to mine . A fishing sailing excursion with two friends from Comox B.C. north through the inside passage to Bella Bella  and back. The sloop Jirah , a 42 ft Cooper built in l981 served us well but we failed in our effort to cross over to the Queen Charlottes. This is Jim Johnson's boat (he shares it with 2 others who live in Comox B.C.) Mik Chidlaw was the other old guy on the trip, a retired elementary school administrator . We did get some fish and we also lost some fish, some very big fish that towed us around in our rented runabout then threw the hook and left us exhausted from the effort. Probably old and nasty fish (Halibut) and tough to eat ?? I love halibut. Best eating fish you can get.
   I did another crewing out of Goteborg Sweden summer of 2011. Originally intended to sail with this Swede from Goteborg to Gibraltar but had to get off in Northern Germany at the east end of the Kiel canal. He turned to be  a bad attitude dude and I could not see tolerating his abusiveness for two months. I then bought a sturdy bicycle in Brunsbuttle and pedaled due south to Holland, then trained it to Marseilles. more biking on the Riviera then train and ferry to Greece. Found another boat to crew on in Turkey, an elderly English lady with a 41 foot sloop and spent a month sailing around the southwest coast of turkey.
     I have done innumerable upgrades and cosmetic improvements to the boat in the Florida marina so the boat is now tantalizingly close to ready to take on the world starting in the Bahamas and gradually working down the chain of Caribbean islands to Venezuela, then west to Panama, the Galapagos, Marquesas, and on and on where the wind and currents will take me