G Star

Most of the time I look at other sail blogs I think why don't they talk about the boat and sailing. 

 I remember one particular sailboat race when the owner brought his new wife along. We pushed things a little too hard on a broad reach with an Asym and broached fast putting the spreaders in the water. She clung to the high side primary winch like an angry cat and actually hissed. I'll never forget the look on her face. Then the boat came up, the chute filled with an explosion that nearly parted the back stay. We careened to the mark, jibed for a third and got protested by some fool for swimming during the race. The wife swore she'd never sail again. But she did and learned to enjoy it. 

Tonight we are anchored in a protective cove next to Hilton Head. There's a nice ocean breeze and all is well. Jenny made yet another wonderful dinner and we sat on the bow counting stars and satellites as they came out. The kids have advanced so well in school they breeze through more academics in a day than they'd see in a week at the public place. 

Anyway back to the boat stuff.  We had shopped for over a year before we ended up with a G50 Sloop. Perfect for our plans and what we do. We looked at a number of Oceanis 50's but there's something about bolt on keels that make for extremely vivid dreams of disaster so we chose a well proven ocean traveler that was big enough for the kids as well as something we could afford. 

The boat is sort of vintage. Ours had two previous owners, the first was a highly decorated defense coordinator for our gov. He apparently didn't use the thing much. 

The second owner took her from the west coast around to the Caribbean and eventually to NC where we snagged her. We wanted a solid boat that we could take safely across an ocean. This boat has weathered some of the ocean's worst and, they've been known to win a few long distance races in the process. We'll see. 

We are about 1/3rd of the way through a basic refit. Refitting a boat is just like remodeling an old colonial home. All antiquated systems must be upgraded to meet new technology. It is quite the task but there is no compromise when your adventures take you far offshore. 

I don't have pictures but we were boarded not only by the Coast Guard but also the Sheriff yesterday in a "dual effort" or something They were very pleasant and gave us the Gold Star award for being uber safe but it is still disconcerting when cops roll up in your home and start looking around. But these guys ended up embarrassed as they left a jacket plus weapon plus ammo on our boat and broke our life line. Not cool.