| Profile for CETUS TALES | |||
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| Captain: | Terry & Heidi Kotas | ||
| Hailing Port: | Gig Harbor, WA | ||
| The Crew: | TERRY & HEIDI have been married 36 years and got into sailing together about 30 years ago when they purchased their very first sailboat, a 7 foot long "Sunflower" that they played with and learned enough about sailing to get them hooked. It was time to move on to something bigger (that they could both sail at the same time!) so they bought a Windrose 24' trailerable sailboat and continued playing and learning. The first wonderful trip to the San Juans in that small boat combined with a copy of "Cruising World" made them realize that they could actually sail to far off countries where the water was warm enough to swim! So a few years later, they purchased a Golden Gate 30' that they built from a bare hull in their backyard (a story unto itself!). They finally realized their dream of cruising to far off ports in 1992 with their young daughter Carly on board. Upon completing that cruise, toward the end of 1994, they returned to Gig Harbor (having sold Cassiopeia to a nice American couple in American Samoa) and purchased Cetus. They set out cruising aboard Cetus in 1998, now with a teenaged Carly as crew, returning to Gig Harbor in 2003. Now, with Carly grown and on her own, they are once again happily living aboard Cetus and out cruising. Terry's first book -- a humorous adventure novel, Adventures Aboard Rick's Place, is based on their experiences getting into sailing, building that first boat and sailing to the South Pacific. | ||
| Something Extra: |
CETUS is the constellation of the whale. When we were purchasing this boat, we knew we wanted to change the name because the owners had had some trouble with customs in Fiji due to another boat by the same name (then Illusion) having done something illigal and the boat name was "flagged" in the data base. We also wanted to have a name of a constellation, as our first cruising boat had been "Cassiopeia". We'd considered Andromeda (Cassiopeia's daughter), but we had seen it many times and we'd hoped to find a name not so common. While hauling the boat out for it's final inspection before purchase (survey) on Vashon Island, we went into a diner for lunch. There, in the gift shop, were cards and TShirts emblazened with "Cetus" and the Orca logo! We'd never heard of "Cetus" before, so thought it just perfect and "Illusion" became "Cetus" -- and we bought up all the cards and TShirts they had. After the fact, we discovered that Cetus plays a role in the story of Cassiopeia and Andromeda -- so it all tied in together very nicely. The only problem we've found with the name is that often people can't read it and interpet it as "Get Us"! |
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| Vessel Make/Model: | Fantasia 35 | ||
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