LOTS to catch up on!
LOTS to catch up on!
We are DONE with significant changes (and other famous last words)
I was raised as a Catholic and even attended parochial school right up to the point they kicked me out in the 5th grade. I feel like I should start this newsletter as if I was in a confessional - ‘Bless me readers for I have sinned’. ‘It’s been six months since my last newsletter’. In my defense, it has been a little hectic.
During the last six months we closed on the sale of our former home in Weesp, The Netherlands, sold our condo in Naples, FL, bought a home in Dallas, TX, and moved from Naples to Dallas. If that wasn’t enough we sold our Caliber 40 sailboat in the Bahamas and helped sail it back to the US with the new owners. In between house moves we flew back to the Bahamas to purchase our next (and hopefully last) sailboat, a 2019 Nautitech Open 40. After negotiating the deal we sailed it back to the US. To make things more interesting we had to ‘import’ the vessel as it is a French-built boat owned by a Danish couple registered (flagged) in Denmark. This gave me the opportunity to learn all about US regulations related to importing and registering a foreign-flagged vessel. I’m happy to share the details if you’re ever having trouble sleeping.
So we went from this…….
To this…..
Why? There were a number of reasons but two stood out for us.
Comfort. We wanted a full-time liveaboard platform and while we loved the Caliber 40 as a mono-hull it began to feel a bit cramped. It also afforded very little room for guests. We wanted to share this adventure with family and friends. And in order to get the same room as a 40’ catamaran, we would’ve needed to step up to at least a 50’ monohull. We now have 3 staterooms and 2 heads with showers (3 bedrooms, 2 baths) two of which have queen-sized beds with massive amounts of storage.
Endurance (we kept the name) is also an ‘off the grid’ boat. We bought it with 2100 watts of solar panels and 600 Ah (amp hours) of solar and lithium batteries. We have since added another 300 Ah of batteries with two 12v air conditioning systems. We now have an additional 110-volt shore power system plus a 230-volt European shore power system. What this means is that we can now tie into any electrical grid in the world AND go months without tying into shore power at all….we just need the sun. We have plenty of electricity to run the water maker and onboard washing machine. All we need from land now are fruit and veggies (hopefully we’ll be able to catch enough fish!).
Speed. We opted for the Nautitech 40 Open because of the ‘open’ and spacious cockpit and in particular its performance. Catamarans are often described as ‘floating condos’ because of the volume of living space. That can come at the cost of performance. Our boat does not have the spacious upper decks which are very popular on catamarans now. As a result, the boom is closer to the hull allowing us to carry a very large mainsail which is typically the main ‘engine’ on a sailboat. The Caliber could average 130 - 140 nm (nautical miles) per day on passage. The new Endurance can average 170 - 180 nm per day, sometimes more depending on conditions. Those additional miles can mean the difference between being caught in a bad storm at sea, or not. I have up close and personal experience with that situation and would prefer to avoid significant storms at sea if at all possible. And the new reality of distance sailing is that the weather has become less predictable with storms developing faster and often more severe than in the past. We wanted a boat capable of doing 10+ knots to help get us out of harm’s way but also one designed and manufactured for the worst conditions.
So what’s next?
We sailed to Jacksonville, FL from the Abacos, Bahamas in somewhat of a hurry to avoid Tropical Storm Alex. We went well up the St. Johns River to a marina that provides great hurricane protection. I’ll spend the next several months learning the boat in detail from bow to stern before heading back to sea once hurricane season is nearly over (Nov 1 or so depending on weather). I’ll also work on (finally) getting my Captain’s license which will allow us to run charters. Right now our plan is to head for the Keys in the Nov/Dec timeframe then back to the Bahamas Jan/Feb. From there we’ll head east working our way to Grenada. We’ll sit out the next hurricane season there. We will run a limited number of ‘crewed’ charters keeping things very casual. We want to be able to share this amazing lifestyle with friends at a reasonable cost. Let us know if you’re interested. You never know, you might be ‘bitten by the sailing bug’ and decide to sail off as well? We’ve met LOTS of people who’ve done just that! Plans for the coming season will be firmed up over the coming weeks. I’ll look forward to hearing from those who’d like to share in the adventure!
“Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We only have this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand - and melting like a snowflake.” Francis Bacon