A New Adventure Begins
11 July 2017 | Cape Town South Africa
Linda
What is happening with Dave and Linda Witham? Why haven't any new posts been written to their sailing blog?
Well, so much has happened since our last post to the Purrrfect blog that we are overwhelmed as to where to start!
To summarinze and give you some context: we bought a new catamaran, named her Frisky, and are currently in Cape Town South Africa, where Frisky was built. We are preparing for our 3rd Atlantic crossing. This crossing will be from the Southern Hemisphere for a change.
So our new blog is http://www.sailblogs.com/member/sailingfrisky. This is posting #1 for that blog.
It all started last year in Panama when Dave spoke on the morning radio net with a friendly guy named Richard on the vessel "Our Rose" We hadn't met but Richard was helpful regarding a shared solenoid issue. About a week later, we were anchored in a small quiet cover in the Las Perlas Islands and anchored next to us was "Our Rose". Dave went off in the dinghy to say "Hi" in person while Linda prepared some dinner. About 1 ½ hours later (!) Dave returned with a smaile and stated "I think I just found our new boat." The catamaran "Our Rose" is a Maverick Catmaran built in Cape Town and it had 90% of the features that we had been listing as "essential" and "nice to have" on any new boat. Of course, "Our Rose" itself wasn't for sale but we started watching the internet for any Maverick cats for sale. That was in March last year.
We left Purrrfect in a boatyard storage in Chiapas Mexico for the hot humid rainy summer and went home to California, and proceeded to list Purrrfect for sale. No offers came, but we decided to "splurge" and attend the Annapolis Boat Show in early October because we had learned that a Maverick Catamaran would be on display
Seeing the Maverick again and speaking to Rudi, the builder, really convinced us that this semi-custom vessel could indeed be our dream boat. So we too "the leap" and signed a contract for boat #018 which was to be delivered in July 2017 in Cape Town.
But no offers yet to buy Purrrfect, so we returned in October to sail Purrrfect up the coast off Mexico, arriving in Puerto Vallarta before Christmas 2016. During the holidays, we received an offer to purchase Purrrfect and in late January 2017, we returned to Puerto Vallarta to conclude the sale and say "farewell" to a great boat that carried us safely for over 30,000 nautical miles.
So here we are in Cape Town, sitting on our beautiful new Maverick catamaran. The builder, Rudi, has been SO responsive and creative in working with us to include many clever and useful ideas. More about that in later blogs.
Here is a photo of Frisky being launched for the first time on a crane at the Royal Cape Yacht Club.