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Capt'n
Tor's Photos
page 4
Cruising
Boats I've Owned:
First
came ''Thumper''... 
a 1943 steel lifeboat conversion,
salvaged from an old Liberty Ship being decommissioned in the Chesapeake
Bay. I bought her in Coconut Grove, Florida in 1973, and lived aboard
her for a year. Cruised her down the Florida Keys as far as the Dry
Tortugas, which at the time seemed like an epic voyage. It was my
first single-handed trip.
Next,
I bought the Ketch ''Autant''...
a 1927,
William Hand designed gaff rigged ketch, double-diagonal-strip-planked and
engineless! I learned to spile and plank fixing up that old boat, and had
many a salty sea adventure aboard her. I wrote about one of them in my
article, ''Knockdown!''
I sold
Autant in 1978, when I got my captain's license, and went off to work at
yacht deliveries and charter skippering in the Virgin Islands. It wasn't
until 1980 that I bought...
''Buccaneer''...
 a
steel, Sparkman & Stevens Finesterre (sp?) Yawl. Sailed her from Miami
up to the Chesapeake (where I half rebuilt the old witch in Randy
Houghton's boat yard), then 15 days offshore to the British Virgin Islands
and on to the French West Indies. I eventually sold her in Fort
Lauderdale, when I commissioned my first NEW boat, ''Kerry
Dancer''...
a 1983
Pacific Seacraft Crealock 37 yawl.
I
was the Pacific Seacraft dealer then and used Kerry Dancer as my demo
boat (while living aboard). Never got to cruise her, other than sailing
to various boat shows around Florida, and a half-dozen trips to the
Bahamas.
At
the end of 1987, I commissioned a brand new Crealock 37, a special
edition I created for the builder called the ''Circumnavigator Series''.
''Sparrow''
was this
sailor's dream come true, loaded with every imaginable device and
convenience. After spending a year taking her on a promotional tour
through a succession of East Coast boat shows, which carried me as far
north as Maine, I then headed down through the West Indies to Venezuela,
the Bay Islands of Honduras and up Guatemala's
Rio Dulce.
After reprovisioning in Florida and skipping up to Beaufort, North
Carolina, I crossed the Atlantic by way of Bermuda and the Azores. The
cruise then went something like this: Lisbon and the Portuguese Algarve,
Spain, Gibraltar, the Balearic Islands, Sardinia,
Sicily, the Greek Islands and Turkey. Backtracked through the
Mediterranean by way of Tunisia, then from Gibraltar to the Canary
Islands, across the pond (see ''Homeward
Bound'') to
Grenada, the West Indies and Puerto Rico, up through the Turks &
Caicos to the Bahamas and back to Florida. A 30,000 mile, 6-year cruise.
About 1/3 of that I sailed single-handed.
I
decided to try my hand at operating a tourist boat in Key West, Florida.
So, I bought the ferry boat ''Tecumseh'' in Ontario, Canada, drove her
2,000 nautical miles down to Florida, hauled her out in a yard, made her
into...well, something else, and took her to ''Key Weird''.
It
was the best of times, it was the worst of times, and I was mightily glad
when it was over!
My
next (and most recent) ''cruiser'' didn't sail worth a damn, but she
went to windward like a witch!
If
you haven't guessed by now, I just got this new scanner and I'm having
way too much fun with it!
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