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Old
Photos - 4
Cruising
Boats (and other roving cabins) I've Owned
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My
first love was "Thumper," a 1943 steel lifeboat
conversion salvaged from an old Liberty Ship being
decommissioned in the Chesapeake Bay. I bought
'Thump' in Coconut Grove, Florida in 1973 and lived aboard
her for a year. I sailed her down the Florida Keys as
far as the Dry Tortugas, teaching myself coastal
piloting and celestial navigation along the way. It seemed like an epic
voyage to me at the time, my first cruising
adventure as captain of my own boat. |
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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!''
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I
sold 'Autant' in 1978, when I got my 100-ton
Ocean Master's license, and commenced working as a
full-time yacht delivery and charter captain based in the
Virgin Islands. |
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In
1980 I bought "Buccaneer," a steel,
Sparkman & Stevens designed Finisterre yawl.
Sailed her from Miami up to the Chesapeake, where I
half rebuilt the old witch in Randy Houghton's boat
yard. Then a girl friend and I sailed 'Buc' 15 days offshore to the British Virgin
Islands and on to St. Maarten and St. Barths. That
boat and that girl were two of the most cantankerous
affairs of my life and I can't say I was sorry to see
either of them go. |
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I
sold "Buccaneer" in Fort Lauderdale when I commissioned my
first brand new boat, ''Kerry,'' a 1983 Pacific Seacraft Crealock 37
yawl.
That marked the beginning of my time as Pacific Seacraft
Corporation's dealer for the
Southeast US. I mostly used Kerry as my
demo boat, although I lived aboard her the whole time. Never got to cruise
her during those 5 years other
than sailing to various boat shows around Florida, plus a
half-dozen vacation 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." |
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''Sparrow''
was this sailor's dream come true; salty, seaworthy and thoroughly
equipped for world cruising. We spent our first year
getting acquainted on a
promotional tour for Pacific Seacraft, a succession of East Coast boat shows
that took us as far north as Maine. Then we headed
down through
the West Indies to Venezuela, west to the Bay Islands of Honduras, and up Guatemala's
Rio Dulce.
After
re-provisioning in Florida
and hopping offshore to Beaufort, North Carolina, we 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. We then backtracked through the Mediterranean
stopping in Tunisia along the way. From Gibraltar we sailed to the Canary Islands, re-crossed the Atlantic
Ocean (see ''Homeward
Bound'') to Grenada, cruised the Lesser
Antilles to Puerto
Rico, through the Turks & Caicos to the Bahamas, and
back to Florida. Altogether "Sparrow" and I shared a 30,000-mile, 6-year
adventure, about 1/3 of that single-handed. |
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I
decided to try my hand at operating a tourist boat in Key West,
Florida. I bought the ferry boat ''Tecumseh'' in Ontario,
Canada, drove her 2,000 nautical miles down to Florida, hauled her
out in a ship yard, made her into...well, something else, and took her
to ''Key Weird.'' That entrepreneurial misadventure lasted a few
years. A lot of people had a lot of fun partying on
that boat, but I was mighty glad when the party was over. |
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My
next ''cruisers'' didn't sail worth a damn, but they all went to windward like a witch!
These were my land cruisers, two small RV's and a
campervan.
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I
took a long break from blue water sailing between the
mid-90's and 2006, spending time in New York City,
southern New England, the American Northwest
mountains, Alaska and a dozen foreign countries. Some
of my more recent land excursions, on wheels and on
foot, are documented in the travelogues
on this web site. |
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Click
on the photo to the right to hear a song I wrote about
Montana -------->
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I toured New
Zealand for 3 months in this campervan.
Click here for
a closer look.
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This
little gem, a 23-foot 1973 O'Day Tempest designed by the
venerable Phillip Rhodes, was my salvation during the 5
years I lived in Rhode Island, whisking me around
Narragansett Bay on much needed summertime breaks from
work.
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I finally came to my senses at the end of 2006, when I
bought the good ketch, "Silverheels." I spent three
gratifying years refurbishing this old Pearson 424 in
a magical boat yard on the St. John's River in NE
Florida. Then we went cruising for 10 years. More
Photos |
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