This all started on Rebak Island, Malaysian June 2013 where we met a couple, Brian Taylor and Deborah Searle who looked healthy and happy, slim and a little weathered. They had sold up everything to the consternation of their respective families, taken early retirement from teaching in Canada, bought a 35’ double ender and headed off down inland waters of the East Coast of America.
After doing the Caribbean they headed across to the Mediterranean, then through the Suez Canal. Trucked their boat across the desert from Aqaba to Dubai to avoid the pirates of Somalia, down the gulf to India, the Maldives and in terrible conditions across to Malaysia where we met them. At that point it had taken them 12 years to do this and for them there was no real end in sight, they were having too good a time.
Having recently taken up big boat sailing with a quarter share in 40’ Jeanneau monohull I felt inspiration coming on like it hadn’t done in a long time. I knew at that moment that whilst our life was as good as we could possibly ask for, we were in a comfort zone and I have never really been comfortable with comfort zones…
At this point, I was sporting a copy of ‘Sailing for Dummies’, given to me by one of the co-owners of our Jeanneau and gratefully accepted. It is a great book and whilst not exactly ego enhancing among seasoned yachties, it was the start of my ‘formal’ sailing education.
The inspiration fermented for a while until I settled on a year in the Med in a catamaran. I shared these thoughts with Sally, my wife and mother of our two younger children, William (8) and Summer (7). Not exactly what she had in mind. I calculated that it would take a year or so to put together, aim to be in the Med for Spring 2015.
A little horrified, Sal thought I wanted to sell the house and go the full Monty as the Canadians had done, sell everything and abandon our perfect world, but after some discussion, a few days away for contemplation she was on board. In fact she was so on board that she didn’t want to wait until 2015, she wanted to be in the Med for spring 2014! Well, strike while the irons hot (whatever that means) I always say… well not always, in fact never but I will say it from now on….
And so the logistic mountain stood before us.
How do you buy a reliable second hand boat that is already in the Med without being ripped off? Who looks after the house when you’re gone for a year or two. What do you do with the cars, the dog, the mail, the older children, the job. How long will it take to get the relevant accreditations to sail in the Med and how much training is needed to do all this in adequate safety.
I told my Mom. If you come from Africa as I do, you say ‘Mom’, not Mum OK? She too is not the comfort zone kinda gal even at 83 years of age, but this one sat her down for a bit…. A couple of days later, she called to say, in her occasionally used old lady’s voice, that she had played Bridge with this woman who said that Catamarans were dangerous.. “Who is this woman Mum?” I asked disparagingly. “Um, Kay Kotie’s Mother” she replied.
For those of you who may not recall, Kay was the first woman to circumnavigate the globe single handed and unassisted…. “OK Mom, you have my attention!”
So the research into why catamarans are dangerous began and if you Google anything to do with multihulls you’ll find that all roads lead to Phil Berman, CEO, The Multihull Company. I read everything there is to be read on the subject and came to the conclusion that catamarans were indeed dangerous in early development, but now that they are in prolific production, they are only as dangerous as the skipper….. and that’ll be me!
Phil is everything multihull including being a broker. The deal with him is he will send you an extensive questionnaire to ascertain the perfect Cat for your requirements and then make some recommendations. If you sign with him, he will start the search, but if you happen find a boat on the net, or however, that you like the look of, do not contact that boat’s broker or directly request information on that boat. Leave that to Phil. He will source a Cat on the second hand market in the geography of your choice, provide a list of recommended surveyors, arrange the survey, handle the transaction, the flagging, the name change….. read the mine field that is buying a boat on the other side of the World, and he will do this at no cost to you. You see, Phil makes his money by sharing the broker fee with the broker that you agreed not to contact. But unlike that broker, Phil is operating on your behalf.
After checking out a few references, I signed with Phil at the end of July 2013, and that was the start of something quite unique.
Everything from this point went into overdrive. Thanks to Sally’s recalibration of the timing for this event, we now planned to leave Australia at the end of January 2014…. That was less than 6 months away.
Sal was now totally into it. She started working on house rental, long term furniture storage, car storage or rental, dog minding, older children resettling, younger children home schooling and the search for the perfect boat.
Step out of your comfort zone and it does amazing things for your relationship. You start operating as a team again.
To gain a Certificate of Competency, which you will need if you want to sail in the Med, you need certain accreditations like Basic Keelboat Sailing, Coastal Cruising, Bareboat Cruising, Coastal Navigation and in my case, Cruising Catamaran sailing….
I hunted for any organisation that could provide the Catamaran piece, I figured if I could find such an outfit, I may as well do the lot with them. No such organisation exists in Australia.
So, back to old mate Phil.
He had just the guy! Capt. Will Miller, owner of the Charlestown Sailing School in South Carolina.
I contacted Will, he did indeed have a Cat in his fleet and so we co-ordinated the dates. He figured it would take a week of intensive training in Charlestown Harbour and outside open water and so we settled on the week of the 19th to the 26th September. In the mean time I got started by completing the RYA Shore Based Day Skippers Course in early September 2013.
I booked the flights through my sister, founder and CEO of Bay Travel, Melbourne… plug, plug, and we were all set…. Well, not quite. On the 29th August Capt. Will called to say that the Cat he had was on charter and the owner wanted it back. He had no other Catamarans in his fleet.
So, back to old mate Phil.
“Do not cancel your flights Greg, I will find you a Catamaran, we can fly down to Fort Lauderdale, stay in my condo there and Will can come down and train you. Leave it to me, I promise you will have a great experience.”
After a few Skypes involving possible boats to buy and trying to get the accreditation thing to gel, we came up with some new dates.. “You could fly in on the 25 October spend a couple of days getting over the jet lag, my wife Anne is a senior director of the Philadelphia Eagles who are playing the New York Giants that weekend so you can come along to the game and have the whole Americana experience…. good and bad. Then we could fly down to Fort Lauderdale, I could show you a range of boats so you can really make an informed choice on the type of boat to look for and Capt. Will can come down from Charlestown and get this training thing done!”
So, I changed my flights.
Two weeks before I was due to leave, I hadn’t heard a thing from either Phil or Will so I emailed Phil asking if anything had gelled regarding my training.
In true Phil style, “I have just sold an Ausie built Lightwave 38 catamaran in Norwalk, Connecticut and it needs to be delivered to Charlestown, South Carolina. Capt. Will is a Delivery Captain, so he can do the delivery, you can go along and do your training en route and the owner gets a free delivery…. How does that sound?”
“Freaking awesome Phil!”
No comments:
Post a Comment