Cruising the Med
| Vessel Name: | Cap des Isles |
| Vessel Make/Model: | Amel Sharki #133 |
| Crew: | Jane and Greg Shea |
18 December 2013 | Gruissan, Languedoc Roussillon
Shaking Down May-June 2013
Now that we owned Cap des Isles, we had to get to know her. I scheduled a five week trip from mid May to mid June, with the expectation that the worst of the winter would be over and spring would be well on the way. The plan was for me to go for two weeks, Jane to follow for two weeks and then a week [...]
06 November 2013
Buying Cap des Isles
Having made the offer in January, once again I made some naive assumptions about Med weather, and scheduled the closing for mid-March. I planned to go for three weeks, one to do the survey and finalise the ownership transfer and two weeks staying on board to get to know the boat.
08 October 2013 | Gruissan Languedoc-Roussillon
Finding Cap des Isles
One year after selling the business, I set off to find an Amel Sharki. I had been watching the market on the Internet for quite some time so I knew what was for sale, where and at what prices. The criteria were fairly straightforward, the boat needed to be within a sailable distance from the Med, it [...]
07 October 2013 | Gruissan Languedoc-Roussillon
The Boat
The boat we've purchased for our Med adventures is a Sharki made by Chantiers Amel at La Rochelle, France. She is 12.5 m long by 3.5 m wide, draws 1.7 m and displaces around 10,00 kg. There were about 190 or so made between 1980 and 1989. Cap des Isles iwas built in 1986 and is hull number 133.
02 October 2013 | Gruissan, Languedoc Roussillon
In the beginning....
This really started forty years ago, in Hong Kong, shortly after we were married. A friend asked us to "baby sit" a Dragon class yacht for three months. Jane had never sailed before and I was totally burned out by too much racing as a youngster in Sydney. With the Dragon, I rediscovered sailing for its [...]
In the beginning....
Sailing went on hiatus when we moved to Galesburg but on our return to Hong Kong, without spousal consultation, I came home one Saturday afternoon the third owner of a Cheoy Lee 26. This was not a good move, on several fronts, not the least of which was that one third of the boat's ballast had never been installed. I corrected this oversight, a not insignificant undertaking, and we cruised her throughout Hong Kong waters for three years. The day after I sold her we took off from Hong Kong for a charter in the Whitsundays on the Great Barrier reef. Bareboating there was in its infancy and we were the first "international" charters that the fledgling Moorings group had booked.
After moving to Illinois, buying boats was not on the agenda, but we met Sheila and Dick Alcock, who owned a Tartan 34. The Alcock's generously allowed us the use of the boat and we ferried the boat through Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, some of the loveliest cruising grounds we have encountered. During those Ilinois years, we also chartered in the Bahamas and the BVI.
When it came time to bid mid-west winters adieu, in the late '90's, a house in warmer climes and a live-aboard sailboat were both on the table. I had decided on the make of boat, a French boat from Amel, in la Rochelle. We went to the factory to view the Amel philosophy in practice but a new one was way out of our price range. With a lowball offer I tried to steal a used 46 ft Amel at the '97 Annapolis Boat Show but (fortunately) I lost out.
No sailboat but a house in Florida led to the next boat, a 30 ft S2, that we have now had for fourteen years. We have cruised her extensively on the west coats of Florida and she has enabled us to refine our cruising skills.
Which brings us to early 2012 when I sold my shutter manufacturing business and the possibility of cruising in retirement became a possibility.
