01/21/2008, The boat is still on the hard...
Melinda and I are both from Northern Indiana. I'm from Michigan City / South Bend and Mel is from Elkhart.
I first caught the sailing bug by going out on a day sail in Key West, FL around 1989. Later, I learned to sail by racing with my good friend George Bock on Lake Michigan on his San Juan 30. Mel did her first sailing on dinghies, before joining the crew on George's boat.
We got our first boat together, a Catalina 22 that we named Gertrude, and sailed her on Lake Michigan for a couple of seasons before relocating to sunny Southern California, home of year-round sailing.
Our next boat was a John Alden designed Fuji 35, that we named Maloos (a very loose translation of the Farsi word being Sea Kindly) She was a great sailing boat and would have been great for cruising had we been able to leave right away. Alas, having to continue working and living on the boat while we built up our cruising kitty, she was just too small. I know this is a violation of Lin & Larry's first rule of boat size - don't buy for living aboard at the dock while working a day job - but it was either that or get an apartment. The apartment, we both agreed, was out of the question. So just when the re-fit was complete on Maloos, we decided we needed something a little roomier...
Needless to say, that's how we came to find our current and last boat, Ibiza. We purchased her in 2002 and we have spent the last 5 years rehabilitating her in preparation for the grand voyage.
We can never get another boat because we are both totally burned out on the re-fit thing. It was exciting to take little neglected Gertrude and fix her up and so too Maloos as she was a real full-keel cruiser with real systems and provided lots of learning opportunities. By the time we got to Ibiza, all of that stuff had lost much of its charm. So, when we are done with Ibiza we are done... no more new (to us) boats. And yes, I know that one is never done with boat projects. We are just done with starting on new boats. We will keep this one and treat here with TLC until we can't any more. Hopefully that will be a long time.
| Preparation for Departure |
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01/21/2008, Us - San Pedro, CA Boat - Wilmington, CA
chron·i·cle (krn-kl)
n.
1. An extended account in prose or verse of historical events, sometimes including legendary material, presented in chronological order and without authorial interpretation or comment.
Greetings and welcome to our blog! We hope that you will find the entries to come both informative and entertaining.
The first thing you must know is that this blog has no spell check function so I'm sure that a typo or even a gross spelling error is going to sneak through every now and then.
So let's get to it! Mel and I are at long last in the final stages of our preparation to cast off the dock lines and live while we still can. The start up of our blog is another step toward that end as we establish a means for our friends and family to keep up with our travels and adventures.
We hope to fill these pages with an extended account in prose or verse of historical events, sometimes including legendary material, presented in chronological order. We cannot, however, promise that it will be without authorial interpretation or comment.
The boat is currently on the hard, getting a fresh coat of bottom paint and some other below-the-water-line maintenance and we are roughing it at the Double Tree Hotel in San Pedro, CA.
You might think that we would be loving the leisurely life of maid service and a king size bed but we are both very anxious to get back on the boat. We even drove by the yard today to have a look at her through the fence because we miss her. I think that's a sign that we have made the correct life choice...
So here we go, have fun browsing the photos and let us know if you have questions, comments, complaints or threats.
| Preparation for Departure |
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