The end of a dream

My friend Paul Caouette emailed me this surprising message a few days ago:

John,

How are you doing?

Progress on the boat?

We are in Curacao. Have been for a month now. Sailed from Trinidad through the islands off the coast of Venezuela. (Way off to avoid any close encounters with pirates). Had a mate aboard with us to help with the passages. He was a great sailor and a welcomed addition. I honestly don't know how couples do the long passages without succumbing to complete exhaustion.

We are taking care of this's and that's while at anchor her in Spanish Waters. Stripped the exterior varnish and will recoat with Cetol. Also redoing the deck. Lots of small blisters that are actually older blisters that weren't repaired correctly (body filling rather than epoxy). Lots and lots of them.

But the real news is that Honey and I have decided in yet another change of lifestyles. This decision precipitated, in part, by my recurring sciatica. Long passages without exercise take their toll. Numbness and weakness in my left leg does not make me a happy, or safe sailor.

In conversations with Stan Dabney about how best to list her.

I sure would like to know how much you paid for your boat and some measure of the money you've spent so far. I want to fairly represent what one can expect when purchasing an older Valiant.

Best to you and Nan.

PS

We have no idea when we'll be back in Colorado..Perhaps by mid June.....hope for an opportunity to visit then.
--
Paul Caouette
sv Wild Iris (V40-133)

Paul has been having problems with his back for at least the last few years. Back in the spring of 2009, his back issues prevented him from sailing across the Atlantic to Europe. Instead, he and Honey have been sailing through the Caribbean, slowly circumnavigating the sea in a clockwise direction. Now it appears that even that dream is coming to an end.

I feel badly for Paul. He has sailed most of his life, and he has put everything he has into his boat. It is a sad reality that the complications of advancing age have interfered with his plans, but Paul just turned 63 in February so health issues should not be unexpected.

I will turn 53 in June, which means that I am not exactly a young man either. Paul's situation makes me think that I should be trying to fulfill my sailing dreams sooner rather than later. I would hate to wait too long and then live with the regret I am sure Paul is feeling.

Circumnavigation Routes, Part 7

During our sailing trip this past spring from Bocas del Toro, Panama to Isla Mujeres, Mexico, the subject of circumnavigating came up, as it always does when Nan and I sail with John Kretschmer. Being in the Caribbean at that moment, we spent most of our time talking about the best ways to sail that particular sea.

Several books are devoted to advice about sailing the "Thorny Path" from the east coast of the United States to the Virgin Islands by way of the Bahamas, which is, as the name implies, a relentless bashing to windward. Most recommend avoiding it by staying to the north and sailing as far to the east as possible using the variable winds of those latitudes before turning south into the easterly trade winds and aiming directly for the Virgin Islands. For those with the patience to pick and choose their wind opportunities, there are books that prescribe the path itself, like Bruce Van Sant's Gentleman's Guide to Passages South: The Thornless Path to Windward, which was recommended to me by my friend Paul Caouette but which Amazon tells me is out of print.

John Kretschmer is a proponent for sailing the Caribbean islands from south to north, or more accurately, from southeast to northwest, using the trade winds to natural advantage instead of fighting them. He has crossed the Atlantic several times, and this south-to-north route is part of his normal return trip, but what about those wanting to sail directly from the United States? John says the best way is to circumnavigate the Caribbean in a counter-clockwise direction. When he first mentioned this idea, during our sailing trip last year in the Spanish Virgin Islands, I imagined that he meant sailing from Florida to Mexico, following the Central American coast to the south and then the north coast of South America to the east, arriving in Trinidad and then island-hopping back to Florida.

During this year's discussions, I discovered how wrong I was. John said that sailing east along the north coast of South America is even more of a thrashing than the Thorny Path. Instead, he recommended sailing east from Mexico's Yucatan peninsula to Cuba's southern coast to stay in the lee of the trade winds and then using the evening land breezes to make progress to the east past Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. One would still need to island-hop to windward from the Virgin Islands down to Trinidad, but then one would be in position to reverse course and enjoy the downwind sail back through the islands, hitting any points of interest missed on the way down. Hang a right at Puerto Rico, and negotiate the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas to arrive back at the original starting point.

This is the route I hope to take beginning next spring, when Whispering Jesse is set to sail. Depending on what we find along the way, it may take a year or more to return home. Then what? As John has suggested, why not get Europe out of the way sooner rather than later?

Boat Quest, Part 14

It has been well over a year since I last wrote a Boat Quest post. The most recent one, Part 13, was about Otter II, the Valiant 40 I looked at with Stan Dabney while I was in Miami in January 2009 helping the Caouettes prepare their Valiant 40, Wild Iris, for a transatlantic crossing. Otter II sold several months later, much to my disappointment, before I could get anywhere close to making an offer. I went back occasionally to YachtWorld.com to check the Valiant 40 listings, but there were no other affordable boats worth considering.

Late last fall, I was checking the listings and noticed a 1980 Valiant located in Baltimore. As I looked at the photos in the listing's slideshow, I had the feeling that I had seen the boat before. I dug through my computer's photo archive and found the set of photos I had taken of Little Walk (Boat Quest, Part 10 and Part 11) back in May 2008 when I was in the Washington, D.C. area for an Internet conference. There was no question about it. It was the same boat, just located in a new place and listed with a new broker. I had not been able to get adequate answers from the previous broker to my questions about the boat's condition, so I had given up on it and assumed when it disappeared out of the listings that it had been sold. Apparently not. It was still priced higher than I thought it should have been but not as high as the previous broker said it would be based on some improvements the owner was putting into place.

I studied the description and the photos in the listing, and I studied the many photos I had taken myself. In addition to the basic design of the Valiant 40, which I had decided several years ago was the perfect boat for us, there were many features to like about this particular boat. Some Valiants have been almost excessively customized to meet the needs and desires of their owners, but not this one. It was close to stock, looking very much like it must have when it left the Uniflite factory in Bellingham, Washington back in 1980. The distinctive wooden hatchcovers, the fold-down saloon table, the tapered mast, the port-side pilot berth, the original electrical panel--it was all there.

I watched the listing compulsively through the winter, hoping for the right combination of factors that would make my dream of owning a Valiant 40 come true. The first factor was, of course, my wife Nan. If she was not in agreement, then that would be the end of it. But then, during her charmed birthday weekend in Denver back in January, Nan proposed the idea of living in Isla Mujeres, Mexico for a year. We could rent an apartment at Color de Verano on Laguna Macax. And since there is a pier right out back, we could maybe have a sailboat there to sail on weekends in order to help build Nan's confidence for more ambitious trips. Since I can work from anywhere that I can get a high-speed Internet connection, as I did last fall when we spent a month in Isla Mujeres, I was thrilled with the idea.

The second factor fell into place at the beginning of April: the listed price came down by $10K. At the previous price, the boat might never have sold, but at the new price, I was afraid it would sell quickly, so I called the broker to find out what it would take to put in an offer. He emailed me a form that I completed and faxed back to him, and I mailed him a deposit check for ten percent of the listed price--I didn't want to lose the boat to a better offer. I had been saving money in a "boat fund" for just this day since giving up on Sea Hawk back in November 2007. The offer was contingent on the results of a marine survey, so there was no risk of losing my deposit if the boat proved to be unseaworthy. I was able to coordinate getting the survey conducted before Nan and I left for our Central America sailing trip, but I wasn't able to get the results until we arrived in Roatan.

Update on the Wild Iris Transatlantic Passage

When I saw an email message from Paul Caouette pop up in my inbox yesterday, I expected he was letting me know that he had successfully sailed his Valiant 40, Wild Iris, across the Atlantic and arrived safely in Lisbon, Portugal with his wife Honey and their crew of three. Instead I received a lengthy description of the bad luck and misadventures that have plagued him and his boat since before I went to Miami to help get the boat ready back in January ("Back from Miami").

They haven't made it to Lisbon. They haven't gotten beyond a shakedown sail to Key West and back. And now the crewmembers have returned home. Part of me felt badly for Paul, Honey and the crew, and part of me was relieved that I had not been able to join them as was originally planned.

Here is what happened in Paul's own words:

If you want to learn about the early (mis)adventures of Wild Iris go to http://www.sailingwildiris.com/

Here's my latest....with a caveat

I think each of the crew members has his/her own version of what follows:

Limping Back to Miami after Paul Loses round one in a fight with sciatica.

After we had determined that a run along the Cuban coastline might be misinterpreted by our own government we had some hard decisions to make. First was how to deal with the sciatica that had debilitated the captain, me. Second was whether or not a run up to Bermuda or any place north of the Chessapeake was at all possible. Roger had lost much of his enthusiasm with Kim’s departure. It didn’t take long for him to make the decision any young man in love would make when faced with the choice of either being with his beautiful new love or a bunch of cranky and smelly old folks. He informed us that he was shipping out. That essentially buried any possibility of a northern cruise and we all decided to run back to Miami. So the next day we shove off.

We ran up from Key West without incident. Actually got some sailing in light breezes. So by the time we reached Marathon the count was 10 hours of sailing and ...about 1600 hours of preparation. (this is based on three people working for 60 days ten hours per day, a conservative estimate. Our reason for choosing Marathon as the first port on our run back to Miami was so I could get a second opinion and perhaps an MRI. The very kind clerk at the gas dock even gave me a lift to Fisherman’s Hospital while the crew continued on to the mooring field when they tied up and got the dinghy down to come into the municipal marina to pick me up.

The visit was not very enlightening. No MRI and the emergency room doctor simply and efficiently confirmed what the Key West doctor had told me. "Next." Wow, was I frustrated. I was looking for succor and she was looking for an injury. Conversations with my Denver physician were somewhat more productive and she told me to definitely get to an MRI if I had any further deterioration. We spent two nights. The crew took in a visit to a sea turtle hospital while I convalesced.

On day two we let go of the mooring ball and headed back offshore to catch the Gulfstream..There was no wind whatsoever. Trusty ol Westy, our 17 year old diesel, was rattling away as all good diesels do. Its an old engine but it has never failed to start and runs without complaint for hours and hours. Wish this were true of the other elements of our propulsion system, namely the transmission and V-Drive, the auto pilot, the refer, the charging system, the manually operated flush toilet, the lp stove, the leaking sink, (don't ask me to describe a V-drive I know too much.)

Our plan was to snuggle up behind Rodriguez Key as we often do, an uninhabited key just offshore from Key Largo. There really wasn’t any need of shelter as the seas were glassy and all forecasts pointed to more of the same. By the time we were six miles out we were in a dead calm. Since we had about 2.5 knots of Gulf Stream current moving north to Labrador our 4 knots gave us some good “over ground velocity.” We figured the motor would be running until we the set down about 9 PM. But the gremlin that has taken up residence in this Ol boat had other plans. No sooner had we altered course for a northeasterly run that the engine took on a very noticeable change in pitch. Upward! It sounded like it wasn't working at all, just humming away. The light bulb lit. I knew that sound. A look astern was all I needed to confirm that Iwe had lost forward thrust. That is, a) there was no prop wash, therefore the propeller wasn’t turning. Which could only mean Argh! The infamous coupling problem. Argh! A quick inspection of the prop shaft under the engine confirmed it. Three bald bolt heads were rolling around in a thin soup of oil and transmission fluid. Once again, Wild Iris had chosen to guillotine those three modest bolts that connected the engine to the propeller shaft. Perhaps I make too much of it but all these things breaking smack of a conspiracy.

This was especially exasperating, as we had just dropped one and a half boat units on a new coupling and a complete alignment. Since I was ruined physically I had to take on the role of coach as Roger and Jeff wrestled with the "V" drive and the engine mounts. Prior to beginining the work we set the parachute sea anchor on deck in case a gale came up unexpectedly (fat chance). We then hung out all the canvas to catch the occasional puff of wind and Honey took the helm. trying to. The breeze we did have was more of a rumor. Luckily the Gulf Stream kept pushing us north and east rather than the scant few miles east to the reefs that protect the keys.

It took us (them) five hours of wrestling before we were able to get the problem sorted. Jeff played the pretzel in the engine room prying up the diesel with a timber I had salvaged (never know when you need an occasional timber) while Roger played strong man and arm wrestled a fifty pound chunk of steel on to a delicate transmission spline. Ah youth! We did a seat of the pants alignment of the propeller shaft and the V-drive coupling and fired up Westy. Everything seemed fine when we put the tranmission in "forward." Prop turrned, nothing shook....but I was not willing to trust the repair to be our major source of propulsion. We were still hours away from the only cut in the reef that would have taken us safely to Rodriguez and I was not about to thread through the reefs in the early hours of the morning with an exhausted and somewhat nervous crew....and a sketchy propulsion system.. So we stayed out in the deep water and sailed with what little wind we could find hoping to hit Miami around daybreak.

The wind finally came up around 1 AM along with a beautiful orange moon. We all took turns at the helm since we had no auto pilot and it really was a beautiful sail. We arrived at the Stiltville entrance to Biscayne Bay at 8:30 AM.... still greasy from the transmission work.

The next day we moved to boat across Biscayne Bay to an anchorage off of Dinner Key! And set anchor in about 7 feet of water. Since we anticipate being on the hook for a few days I decided to dive down and confirm that that our 60 pound CQR was set deep into the bay mud. I thought it would be a great idea to dive in with the shorts I had been wearing for the past few days since a bit of salty water might help rinse away some of the grease and oil. So, I lowered myself slowly into the warm waters and dog paddled to the anchor about sixty feet away. Just as I got there I realized I still had my "water resistant" Timex on my wrist. "Oh well." I thought, "One more item broken." Then the light bulb lit.

"If I still had the wrist watch on I must also still have other items that might not fare so well in salt water like...MY WALLET!"

Too late. The pocket was empty. My wallet and quite a few Jacksons were now in Neptune’s court.

Day three dawned with a resolve to not do anything on the boat.... if we weren’t working on it or in close proximity to it nothing would break, right? So we mounted the Honda outboard on the transom of our new dinghy and motored the 1/2 mile into Dinner Key and had a wonderful day and evening.....

At 9:30 we came back to a very crowded dinghy dock and started to look for ours.....nothing familiar was in sight except for a single pontoon that was visible between two Boston Whalers. I made some comment about how the threesome looked like a soggy Coney Island special.....then the light bulb lit (again?) That ain't no hot dog! That's my dinghy!" Or should I say half of my dinghy. The rest of it along with
the Honda outboard motor was underwater...

We spent two hours fishing out the Honda and hosing it off. Then we strapped it to the remaining pontoon and towed it out to Wild Iris. I swear I could hear some chuckling from the rudder when we tied off at the barding ladder. It took me four more hours of flushing and hosing to burp all the foul water out of the Honda. I hit the sack at 2 AM........ so much for recuperation.

The following day we returned the borrowed dinghy (INTACT) to our friend Betty and went off on our next errand; getting tires for the Audi that we had abandoned in Miami. The original plan had been to sell it prior to our European departure but there were no takers. yet. So we were quite pleased to have it waiting for us. ...But it was in serious need of some new rubber.

We're two miles from our destination driving south on US 1. Suddenly a big truck goes blasting by us. Almost simultaneously we get doused with antifreeze. I wisecrack about the fool who is rushing to get to the garage before he loses all his precious bodily fluids. We come to the next stoplight and someone pulls up next to me rolling down his window....not something that normally happens in Macho Miami. I obliged him by rolling mine down. "Excusa." He says and points to my hood. Little geysers of steam were puffing up around the edges.

"Not to worry" I said. I recalled that I had packed extra hoses when Skip and I drove down. I even have a gallon of antifreeze.

I pull up the hood...looking for a split hose...and found....a split radiator!

No wonder Jeff chose to spend his last night in Miami at a hotel close to the airport, and as far away from us as possible.

All this is true...and I have witnesses to confirm it.......although they might not really want to talk about it for a while. Who wants replay a nightmare?

The rest of the week was pretty much uneventful. I saw yet another doctor, this time an orthopedist, who said “sciatica.” (there's a song lurking in that name) We got the outboard running, only to have it quit again yesterday. The diagnosis from our mechanic friend is the little black box that connects all the electrical systems. It doesn’t like to swim. Last night the refrigerator compressor started making funny noises and it stopped sending cold to the refrigerator. …..which lead to some long discussions about the sailing future for Honey and me.

Stay tuned

-- Paul Caouette

No-go on sailing to Bermuda

Nan and I had a discussion on Sunday night about my planned sailing trip with Paul and Honey Caouette from Miami to Bermuda, the first leg of their trans-Atlantic passage, which is scheduled to set sail on May 16. In the end, we decided that I should not go.

The financial situation with my employer, Aspen Valley Hospital, is not good due to the slow economy and reduced skier numbers this ski season, so they are looking to do everything they can to reduce expenses short of lay-offs and pay-cuts. I would not have had enough paid time off accumulated to cover the almost three weeks the trip would take, and it would jeopardize my full-time status and benefits to take too many unpaid days off during these uncertain times.

I emailed Paul this morning with my regrets. I haven't heard back from him but I hope he understands. He and Honey have two other people lined up for the entire passage from Miami to Portugal, so they should have adequate watch coverage without needing to find a new fifth crewmember. I left open the idea of Nan and me joining them for a future trip, so there may still be an opportunity to sail with them aboard their Valiant 40, Wild Iris, if they don't decide to sell her in Europe at the conclusion of their adventure.

In the meantime, I offered to do whatever I could for them while they are in transit. Jeff, one of the crewmembers, has set up a Google Group, "WildIris", so I'll post updates from it as they come in, starting with the photo in this post, which was taken during the Caouettes' trip to the Bahamas last year and is the group's icon. Stay tuned.

Moby-Dick revisited

Paul and Honey Caouette enjoy hosting dinner parties. While I was with them in Miami aboard their Valiant 40, Wild Iris, they invited people over for dinner almost every evening. This was no easy feat since the boat was moored about a hundred yards from shore. They would have their dinner guests call from their cell phones when they arrived at the dock, and Paul would row the dinghy over to pick them up while Honey worked her vegetarian magic in the galley and I did little else but set the table and pour the wine.

Our guests at the second dinner party were Randy Boiko, a local marine surveyor who had done the survey on Wild Iris, and Matt Hennings, a marine mechanic who had done work on Wild Iris's diesel engine. Once the wine started flowing, Matt launched into stories about his experiences with delivering boats and working on fishing boats, where he learned his current trade out of sheer necessity. For a guy in his mid-twenties, he had already had some serious adventures.

One story Matt told reminded me of a key scene from Moby-Dick, the one where Pip the cabin boy falls overboard and almost drowns. Matt was working on a large fishing boat bottom trawling off Georges Bank near Nova Scotia. They were working around the clock and hauling in the nets every three hours. He was on deck at night when the boat's crane brought over a full net. A young man who was new onboard was trying to release the net's contents into the hold, but he was short and needed to jump to reach the catch. He slipped and fell overboard into 35-degree water. Matt said he didn't even think about what he was doing and went right in after him. He was able to grab the young man and swim him back to the boat before they were both overtaken by hypothermia, but they were both badly shaken by the event. Matt said it took him almost eight hours to stop shivering, whether from the extreme cold or from the adrenaline. He said the young man basically shut down, that after he recovered he would not return to work and wanted only to get off the boat and never return.

Moby-Dick's Pip reacted similarly to his near-death experience. It put the insignificance of his life into horrifying perspective and drew him into himself, to the extent that his shipmates thought him insane.

Matt is far enough removed from the experience now that he can chuckle about it and strong enough in his constitution that he can be humble about saving a life and yet exuberant that he is alive to tell the story.

Boat Quest, Part 13

On the Saturday while I was in Miami, I drove up to Fort Pierce to meet with Stan Dabney and take a look at a Valiant 40 sailboat he had listed through his brokerage, Offshore Atlantic Yachts, Inc. Stan is one of the founders of Valiant Yachts, and no one knows that boat or its history better than he does. The boat we looked at was Otter II, a 1979 centerboard model that is currently owned by Bruce and Phyllis from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. They had just spent thirty days sailing up from Panama, and Phyllis, who was on hand to show the boat, said they had taken a pounding beating upwind in heavy seas. You wouldn't have known it to look at the boat, which was in immaculate condition. I had studied the listing on YachtWorld.com carefully, but text and photos didn't do her justice.

Coming directly from the Caouettes' Valiant 40, which is crammed to the gills with stuff, Otter II looked almost austere. In place of the standard teak, there was light-colored Formica on most of the vertical surfaces, which brightened the interior dramatically. The original plastic hatches had been replaced with steel ones and the woodwork was freshly varnished, making the boat shine all the more. The navigation station was nicely laid out and well organized. There was an SSB radio but Phyllis said they had not had success with getting it set up for use with email. The radar screen could be viewed easily from both the station and the cockpit.

One feature I was curious about but couldn't figure out from the listing was the centerboard's workings. The Valiant 40's off-center companionway allows the cable that raises and lowers the centerboard to run through the boat's centerline, making it relatively unobtrusive. There is a separate steel pipe next to the one that acts to connect the deck to the hull just aft of the mast. Where that pipe meets the cabin ceiling, there is a teak box containing a block which redirects the cable coming through the pipe to a winch located at the cockpit bulkhead. According to Phyllis, it takes exactly thirty turns of the winch handle to completely raise or lower the centerboard; there is no easy way to gauge its intermediate positions. The listing showed photos of the boat hauled out, with the centerboard partially lowered, but in the boatyard where she is now sitting, the boat is resting on her keel with the centerboard fully raised.

There were several nice features topsides. The mast-furled mainsail is operated electrically, making reefing as simple as pushing a button. There is a small crane for raising and lowering the heavy dinghy outboard and for moving heavy items like fuel tanks and batteries in and out of the boat. The cockpit has a nicely designed folding binnacle table, a propane barbecue on the stern rail and a booster step behind the wheel for extra height when looking over the dodger.

The only negative aspect of Otter II is that she is a "blister boat," one of the Valiant 40s built by Uniflite between 1976 and 1981 that have a blistering problem in the fiberglass laminates. Stan pointed out the many small blisters on the hull and even chipped off a few with his thumbnail. They are more cosmetic than structural and can be repaired by stripping off and replacing the outer layers of fiberglass. Stan said that this is an expensive and unpredictable process in the United States but that when President Obama loosens restrictions with Cuba, it could probably be done there for about $5000, with a higher quality result. In addition to the blisters on their hulls, blister boats usually have blisters on their decks but there were none visible, so it is possible that the decks had been repaired at some point but I didn't get a chance to ask Phyllis for the details.

All in all, Otter II is an excellent boat and an excellent value at an asking price of $95,000. These current economic conditions favor the buyer over the seller, but Stan says that sales have been especially slow in the last few months as people wait to see if the recession has bottomed out or if it will continue into the foreseeable future. If things turn around before too long and Otter II is still available, who knows what might happen?

Back from Miami

The trip to Miami to assist Paul and Honey Caouette with Wild Iris, their Valiant 40, was an eye-opener. The previous owner had sailed her extensively for twenty years and accumulated a vast collection of tools and spare parts, and all of it is still on the boat. To say the boat is cluttered would be an understatement. It's like an overstuffed refrigerator, where you have to take armfuls of stuff out of it just to get to what you're looking for. The Caouettes have owned her for about four years now and they are still sifting through it all. Part of their problem is that they live and work in Denver, so they can only get down to the boat every other month or so. Another part of the problem is that to keep expenses down they are moored rather than slipped at the Crandon Park Marina in Key Biscayne, so there is no place to move anything off the boat except into the dinghy, but then there is no storage space to move it to after reaching shore. Still another part of the problem is that they stay on the boat while they are working on it, so every project must take into account that they will be eating, sleeping and trying to keep clean in the midst of ongoing chaos.

Those are some serious impediments to preparing the boat for a May trans-Atlantic crossing, but Paul will be taking leave from his work starting in March in order to work on the boat full time. He plans to have it pulled out of the water in order to paint the hull and address any below-waterline issues. And he is planning to reduce the boat's weight by at least four thousand pounds by removing most of that heavy clutter. We had some difficulty with the diesel engine and power generation while I was there, so he will also be addressing those systems carefully to be sure they are working reliably. Finally, Paul and Honey will take a shakedown cruise up the coast to put everything to the test.

Based on what little we were able to accomplish while I was there, Paul will need all of those two months to get Wild Iris ready. The days passed quickly as we worked on numerous projects, everything from installing a new mainsail and running some new wiring to repairing the dodger and doing routine maintenance on the winches. The highlight was getting to finally sail on the fifth day. We needed to field test the new sail, didn't we? So we motored out into Biscayne Bay, put up all the sails--main, genoa and staysail--and then cut the engine. There were big smiles all around as we sailed out toward Stiltsville, until the wind died. We started up the engine again and turned around since it was getting late in the day. But then the engine started cycling strangely, so Paul shut it off, gave me a heading and went below to investigate. Fifteen minutes later, I ran us aground. Completely ignoring the shallow-water warning marker about a hundred yards to port, I had doggedly kept us on Paul's heading, noting that the depth meter was showing a relatively safe four feet from the bottom of the keel, when there was a shuddering and the boat stopped moving. Instead of being angry, Paul and Honey shrugged as if running aground were a common occurrence. It turned out they even had insurance against it through BoatUS. Paul got on the VHF to summon a towing service, and within a half-hour we were safely back on our mooring.

Aside from my role as unpaid labor, how do I fit into Paul and Honey's plans? Well, if things go as hoped, I (and maybe Nan as well) will be joining them for the first leg of their trans-Atlantic crossing, sailing from Miami to Bermuda. They have only one other crew member lined up for that leg at this point, so they really need the assistance, especially considering that if anything is going to go wrong, it will probably happen in those first several days. I'll keep you posted as plans develop.

Miami in January

As I mentioned in the recent "Wild Iris" post, Paul Caouette and his wife Honey have invited Nan and me to join them when they go to Miami to work on their boat next month. I have decided to take them up on their inviation, but Nan is going to go home to Wisconsin instead.

During a phone conversation a few weeks ago, Paul and I talked about Wild Iris, his 1977 Valiant 40, and the work that needs to be done to prepare her for their anticipated trans-Atlantic passage in May. The older Valiants do not have self-tailing winches as standard equipment, so Paul would like to replace them some day, but in the meantime, one of them needs to be rebuilt. In an email exchange, Paul mentioned that he also needs to reinstall his anchor roller after a recent anchoring mishap in the Bahamas.

These are just two items on an endless list of tasks that need to be done between now and May. I think it's probably impossible to be overly prepared for a trip across the Atlantic. With only two landfalls, in Bermuda and the Azores, between Miami and Spain, there is little room for error, whether in judgment or in equipment failure. So I don't envy Paul and Honey their preparations, but I am more than happy to help them in any way I can in exchange for the opportunity to spend some time on a Valiant 40, the boat of my dreams. And if we can get the sails back from repairs, maybe we'll even be able to take Wild Iris out for a sail.

"Wild Iris"

Last weekend, when Nan and I were in Denver for the Coldplay concert, we met Paul and Honey Caouette on Saturday morning for breakfast. Paul had contacted me by email a couple of months before based on a posting he read on a Valiant owners group website about my experience with "Sea Hawk," the Valiant 40 I looked at in Fort Lauderdale (Boat Quest, Part 7 and Boat Quest, Part 9). In his message, Paul said that they lived in Denver but owned a Valiant 40 in Miami, and he was wondering if I would be interested in helping them sail the boat to Spain next May.

The four of us hit it off well, chatting about everything from John Irving's books to sailing, of course, to Paul's acting in community theatre, all in the course of a breakfast at Dixon's in LoDo that stretched to almost three hours. Paul told the story of how he had come to own a well-equipped 1977 Valiant 40, the result of his winning an IRS auction. That was almost five years ago. Since then, he and Honey have sailed "Wild Iris" (formerly "Chanticleer") up and down the Florida coast and across to the Bahamas for an extended cruise. They travel to Florida every couple of months to check on the boat and take her out for a sail. She is currently swinging on a mooring in Key Biscayne.

Now Paul and Honey are ready to sail across the Atlantic, with the idea of touring the coast of Spain and exploring the Mediterranean. They are hoping to set sail in May: "Anchors aweigh on the seventh of May," as Paul puts it. The idea is for their departure to correspond with Paul's official retirement, but given current economic conditions, he's keeping his options open. Regardless, the plan is in the works; they just need to sign on additional crew to make it a safe and pleasant voyage.

If it were up to me, I'd say sure, let's join them on their trans-Atlantic passage, but Nan is less confident. It's at least a three-week commitment depending on the weather conditions, and they will be unlike anything we have ever experienced. So I don't blame her. Near the end of breakfast, Paul and Honey invited us to join them when they go to check on the boat in mid-January, and that might be a good time to see if we're really up to the challenge of making the passage with them. Stay tuned.