I HATE SHOES

St. Maarten was exactly what I had expected in an eastern Caribbean island; high-brow resorts sharing beachfront property with relative shacks the true locals live in. The scenery also as I had imagined, a tropical place where mountains meet the sea with the gentle trade winds rustling the palms. We departed on Wednesday morning after Lisa, the owner, and Bill, the father of a friend of Grants, came aboard Tuesday afternoon. Funny aside about Bill's son, he worked on the boat owned by Rupert Murdoch, and apparently he's on it a lot. I won't editorialize on that fact. Anyway, we left with 10-12 knots of breeze out of the northeast and with this Swan 56 pointing 30 degrees off of the apparent wind, 20 degrees in the gusts. The picture below is a stitch of a bunch I took to capture that first day sailing. That's Lisa reading in the cockpit and Bill at the helm (click on it for a bigger image). After a day of this blissful sailing the wind fell a...

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you can track our progress on Amerigo on this link:  http://share.findmespot.com/ sh ared/faces/viewspots.jsp? glId= 0nXrkg9adnhrc92feTQqcyXTmJGSNo qc0 Things are great so far, the captain is a whole 9 days my senior and from Scotland, an interesting fellow. The boat, and St. Maarten, are gorgeous. We depart tomorrow morning and from the looks of it the breezes will be light and variable. That's all for now, back to work!

I would apologize for the lack of blog posts but, to be frank, there hasn't been much going on to post about. After I returned from the final voyage of Terrapin Flyer , I got an apartment in Sarasota and also got engaged. I've been doing some casual sailing on a ComPac 16 and some racing on a friend's Bristol 40 but that's about it. It has been a nice change of pace actually, compared to the thousands of miles I logged in 2010 and 2011. I've been looking for jobs where the pay is a little steadier and more substantial than the occasional delivery, but that is not to say I won't take the occasional delivery! The job market is weak in Florida right now, and to supplement my income as well as my sanity I've been looking for a delivery gig. It's high season for them as the winter gales ease and before hurricane season starts in the north Atlantic. A friend gave me a contact down in St. Maarten for the captain of a 90' Pendennis sloop. Unfortunately, by...

I got a phone call from Alex about six weeks ago. His boat, the Terrapin Flyer,  which I had sailed with him from Hawaii to Alaska and down to Seattle, was in southern Washington and he needed to get it down to San Francisco by the end of the month. Unfortunately, he wouldn't be able to join me on the trip and responsibility would be all on me this time. I told him I would be more than happy to do the delivery for him. Looking at the pilot charts though, and reading about the typical conditions off of the Oregon coast at this time of year, it would be no walk in the park. Gales are frequent as are seas over 12 feet. No, this wouldn't be easy, but it would be an awesome challenge. Fate was not with me to do this delivery though; I got a call from a guy I've been trying to start a charter business with here in southwest Florida and he had already made the print material for a grand opening on October 22nd. John K, the southern chef from the Hawaii - Alaska trip was going ...

The concept of trying to control the waters off of certain areas of desirable coastline is nothing new. Sarasota is no exception. Before 2009, the local municipalities could make ordinances to limit the amount of time a boat could spend anchored in the limits of their fine city. That all changed when the Florida legislature deemed those ordinances unconstitutional. They also changed the definition of a liveaboard to one who uses a vessel strictly for a home, and a cruiser as someone who may reside on their boat, but also navigates. The difference being that a cruisers boat can move under its own power where a liveaboard can't. Under the current laws, it is legal to cruise and illegal to liveaboard. This is fine by me, it keeps boats that shouldn't be inhabited out of the water. There is also a law on the books that allows cities to create and maintain mooring fields. Again, no problems there. What I do have an issue with, and what there was a meeting about ton...

A year to the day after declaring Winchelsea dead (to me and my situation), I am living aboard again. She is Alaina's father's Gulf Star 41; a heavy, solid cruising boat with a well appointed, yet simple, interior. He has kept her in Ft. Myers for the past few years while restoring and improving some of the more aged parts of the vessel. Allowing me to live aboard in Sarasota is mutually beneficial; he has wanted to keep her in Sarasota for a season ever since he got the yacht and it is pretty pricey to keep a boat at Marina Jacks. This way, he'll have someone with experience to watch over her and complete a few projects and I'll have a place to live in Sarasota, and thank God, on a boat again. We dropped the hook here yesterday after coming up outside of Sanibel and Captiva islands and into Venice inlet. It was a two day trip with a stop near Cabbage Key; a picturesque island in Pine Island Sound just north of Ft. Myers. This is exactly what I came back east for: gu...

Recently, I've been spending a lot of time down in Ft. Myers with Alaina and her family. Her dad is really into sailing and has a handful of boats ranging from a small Sunfish to Gulfstar 41. I actually had no idea they had a Sunfish until I found it behind a tree, overturned, where it had apparently sat for over a decade. Luckily it was in the shade and the fiberglass was still decent and the sail was kept indoors. However, there were roots growing in and around the hull (some had even found their way through  the hull/deck joint), all the lines had to be replaced, the hardware was a complete mess and the rudder, daggerboard and tiller were all faded and cracked. Here is what she looked like after I turned her over and dragged it up to the house: So, first things first. Alaina started with a pressure washer: Next, she tackled the sailing hardware: In the meantime I tried to get the hand trailer out of a tree that had actually grown around it. A few strokes o...