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There is this guy who is traveling from San Diego to the Caribbean. He is a certified ASA instructor and willing to take on crew for 1 and 2 week legs. I had looked at it earlier in the year but he filled up before I could seriously consider it. But now it looks like he has a spot from Puerto Vallarta to Zihuatenejo on Jan 1. Hmmmmmm…

His original ask:

Hi all, I’m an ASA sailing instructor, been a working captain for 15 years teaching and running charter boats. I’m moving my own boat for a change so I’m offering offshore sailing classes along the passage from San Diego to Panama, through the Canal, then up the Caribbean to New England. We leave early November 2014, the whole trip will be about 6 months. We have a few surfboards, fishing gear, a stand-up paddleboard, snorkle gear, etc, come along if you’re looking to have a great time and learn a lot, and are willing to help out with expenses (fuel/food/immigration). The trip is broken down into 1-2 week legs, and there will be a captain, one experienced crew, and room for 2 students on each leg. Couples welcome, all levels of experience. Several of my former students will be along at various times. I run a laid-back boat, no yelling, lots of learning and take time for fun whenever we can. Fair winds,

-Jesse

More here. It’s a Westsail 42

 

Speaking of sailing lessons and Zihuatenejo (that’s where Tim Melville’s condo is), Tim and Natural Pace Sailing are offering their Round Vancouver Island trip again this spring. We missed it last year as we decided to go to the Broughtons instead. This year he is doing it in conjunction with Nanaimo Yacht Charters Yachtsman course. I want to get some open water experience and do some work on my Coastal Skipper so it looks like a good idea. Tim’s boat is a Baltic 42.

Things to think about…

I think I am gearing up to another year of trying to post everyday. At the very least cross posting my other social media, using the blog as some sort of content aggregator. Otherwise it will likely all be about sailing.

I’ve been looking at canal boats again. For 50,000€ I could pick up a shallow draft motor cruiser and spend a season in the European canals. Apparently some of them are even sturdy enough for coastal cruising in the Med, so Spain, Italy and even Greece are not out of reach. The issue is, as it seems to be everywhere, what to do in the off season.

Another thread I have been following on Cruiserforums.com was about travelling from the Baltic to the Med entirely along canals and rivers. Also possible… who knew? Apparently you can enter in Poland, cruise past Berlin and enter the system along the Mosel where we were a few years back. Then it’s easy-peasy all across France.

A suggested route from http://www.jsea.ca/adventures-2012.html

Baltic Sea to Marseille France in the Mediterranean.

Depart  – Stattin ( Szczecin ), Poland  – April 29 th     –  90 miles
Arrive   – Oranienburg  Germany    – May 01st

Three days in Berlin

Depart – Oranienburg  Germany   – May 06 th            –   50 miles
Arrive  –  Brandenburg Germany   – May 10 th

Depart – Brandenburg Germany   – May  12th            –  40  miles
Arrive   – Wolmirstedt Germany    – may   14th

Depart – Wolmirstedt  Germany     – May   17 th          – 55  miles
Arrive  –  Braunschweig Germany   -May 21 St

Depart – Braunschweig Germany  – May 26th –          – 90 miles
Arrive  – Osnabruck  Germany       –  June 01st

Depart – Osnabruck  Germany      –  June  02             –  110 miles
Arrive   – Munster Germany            –  June 04

Depart – Munster Germany            – June 09th           –  55 miles
Arrive   – Duisburg  Germany         – June  11 th

Depart – Duisburg  Germany         – June 13 th           – 45 miles
Arrive   – Koln          Germany         – June 15 th

Depart – Koln          Germany         – June 17th            – 55 miles
Arrive   – Koblenz   Germany         –  June 19th

Depart  – Koblenz  Germany          – June  22nd          – 65 miles
Arrive    – Trier        Germany          – June  24th

Depart  – Trier         Germany          – June  25th         –  55 miles
Arrive    – Metz        FRANCE         –  June  28th

Depart – Metz        France              –  June 30 th         –  40 miles
Arrive   – Nancy     France              – July  02 ND

Depart – Nancy    France               –  July 03rd             –  50 miles
Arrive   – Epinal   France                – July 05th

Depart – Epinal   France                 – July 05 th            –  50 miles
Arrive  – Dampierre  France           – July  07th

Depart – Dampierre  France           – July 07th            – 75 miles
Arrive  – Chalon       France             – July 10th

Depart – Chalon      France              – July 11th            – 75  miles
Arrive   – Lyon          France              -July 14th

Depart – Lyon          France              – July 14th             –  75 miles
Arrive   – Valence    France              – July 16th

Depart – Valence    France               – July 17th             –  45 miles
Arrive   – Pierrelatte  France              – July 19th

Depart – Pierelatte   France              – July  20th            –  45 miles
Arrive   – Avignon     France                July   22nd

Depart – Avignon     France               – July  23rd            – 50 miles
Arrive  – Port St.Louis   France         – July  26th

Depart – Port St. Louis France         – July 30th               – 35 miles
Arrive   – Marseille      France           –  July 31st

Of course a shallow draft sailboat or one with a swing keel could do it as well and when you put the mast back up in Marseille you would have the whole of the Mediterranean at your doorstep. Here’s an excerpt from the Distant Shores web TV show where they did it in their Southerly 49.

I was cruising cruisersforum.com the other day and I came across a thread entitled Sailboat Partnership Opportunity – British Virgin Islands encouraging people to enquire about a half share in a sailboat currently stationed in the BVIs. While the BVIs are not on the top of my list of places I am hankering to go, they sure as hell aren’t on the bottom. And a half share was USD 42,000. Based on last year, that is only three seasons of sailing… And it was a center cockpit, which was on my somewhat nebulous checklist of possibilities.

S/V Joie De Vivre resides permanently on a private mooring in a well protected “hurricane hole” at Maya Cove on the Island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. She has been in private hands since new and spent her entire life in the warm, gin-clear waters and steady easterly trade winds of the Virgin Isles.
…
As to S/V Joie De Vivre herself, she’s a 1993 38.5 ft Morgan-Catalina Model 381 centre cockpit, shoal keel, monohull sloop. She’s a comfortable, solid, volumous, and easy handling vessel if not the fastest accelerating sailing vessel afloat (but gets to hull speed of 7.6 kts just fine).

There was even a video:

It was the snowblower that got me. So I said “What the hell” and wrote him a note. Turns out they are from Gimli and sail Joie de Vivre about 3-4 weeks every year in February/March. They had an existing partnership but bought them out when the other couple decided they were getting to old to handle the boat.

    

I suppose I have to take a step back and explain why I would be looking at boats at all (other than as an out-and-out dreamer). There is a tiny possibility that L might get a sabbatical in the coming couple of years, and there is an even tinier percentage of a possibility that I might be able to convince her to spend some or all of it sailing somewhere. Research shows that chartering anything over 5 weeks is a fool’s game; its just money down the drain. But owning for anything less than a couple of years looks to be a losing proposition as well. This half ownership thing seemed like it might have possibilities for both the short and long term. Maybe even enough to turn a daydream into a reality. As I wrote to the seller:

If she gets [the sabbatical] she will essentially be in research mode  and that is work she can do anywhere that an Internet connection can be found on a weekly basis. At that point I started to seriously consider buying a boat and moving aboard for most of that period (I am not sure she fully realizes that yet). The problem seems to be that spending October to April on a boat in BC, while possible, wasn’t going to be comfortable enough for me to convince Leslie that it had any real benefits. More research pretty much showed that the Mediterranean was difficult for similar issues—that and the whole Schengen thing seemed to make staying a whole year a bit complicated. I still haven’t given up on the Med but I recently started looking at the Caribbean.

My (limited) understanding is that there is a long sailing season in the northern parts and that for the hurricane months one can ‘easily’ head to Grenada or places like the San Blas Islands in Panama for the summer months and thus avoid the off season. At least ‘easily’ in comparison to sailing from Greece to Tunisia.

Right around this point I actually mentioned it to L and she didn’t immediately kick me out in the snow. So there was some hope. We exchanged a few more emails and delved into some details like annual costs and the nature of the partnership agreement. There wasn’t anything over the top pro or con to the deal; it just looked like a comfortable fit.

That’s when I got the email saying they had received and accepted an offer from one of the first people to contact them. We had been around number 3. And that was that. No boat for Bruce. I can’t say I am overly disappointed because I never really got my hopes up and it would likely have taken L and I a couple of weeks, if not months, to decided if we were in. The plan hinged on the sabbatical and we won’t know about that for a while.

So there you go: close but no cigar. It seems boat acquisition is just another one of the multitude of things dissimilar to hand-grenades and horseshoes. But I bought a book about the Virgin Islands anyway and I think maybe it’s now on my list of place to visit.