Since you might be wondering but haven’t plucked up the courage to ask, we’ll do some occasional posts on what gear we use for various things, pros and cons for us, and what our dream replacements would be.
Obviously these are our personal opinions; what works for us won’t necessarily be the same for you.
So to kick it all off: yacht, since it’s an obvious item required to be doing this cruising thing 🙂
YACHT:
Waimanu is a 32foot Townson Twilight, her shell (hull, decks, keel etc) were built by Atkinson’s in their Browns Bay boat yard. After trucking up to Algies Bay, Jack Algie spent his evenings completing her insides, and finishing the outside, then she was launched in the bay in April 1974.
She’s the typical Townson build of double diagonal kauri planking, pretty as a dream and sails beautifully. For what is now considered to be an old design style she sails surprisingly fast. Maybe because we’ve kept things fairly simple.
We appear to be a minority in the cruising community: yes we have electricity and an engine, but we don’t have the frills. No fridge, freezer, shower, watermaker, bbq, nuclear fall-out shelter, wine cellar or recording studio. (Just kidding: I haven’t met any cruisers with the last three either.) We do have LED lights, a solar panel, tiller-pilot and wind-vane self-steering gear – but more on those another time.
When day dreaming about bigger, fancier yachts Captain Relentless once commented:
Waimanu is the best boat for us, because she’s the boat we have. Everything else is a dream, this is the reality.
Can’t get more to the point than that, can you?
So what boat do you have? Have you stopped dreaming of something you don’t have so that you can make the most of what you do have?
