Saturday, November 24, 2007

We're On Board

We made it!!!! We have been on board for 3 weeks now, and are finally settling down to normal life aboard. We have been cataloging where we put "stuff" since there are 33 compartments in the interior and once something is stashed, it gets lost unless we have a log of where we put it. All systems are go except the watermaker which hasn't been commissioned yet and the life raft is due to arrive on Tuesday. Then we will be kicked out of the marina and set off to explore on our own. We are actually looking forward to it. We have only sailed a few days up to Manly Beach and back, but have successfully gone out of the slip several times. The twin engines are a dream. We have met many lovely people here, who have opened up there homes to us. We are learning the local lingo and actually can say G'day almost like the locals. Sydney is a wonderful harbour with tons of boats. They actually race almost every night of the week, plus weekends, regardless of the weather. Looking forward to Vaughn and David joining us in a few weeks to start the voyage to New Zealand. Our SailMail is up now, so we can send and receive short messages.
Cheers,
Dan and Carol
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About Me

1291 Sanderling Island, Pt. Richmond, CA 94801, United States
Dan and Carol Seifers

Crazy

Crazy Caprice, or what

Like is so good to us. At 65, after 15 years of retirement, my wife, Carol and I have everything one could want Good health (for old folks), loving children ( one son and his wife Jenny is marvelous), wonderful grandchildren (one age 6 and one age 4, who have a remarkable ability to totally exhaust us in about 4 - 6 hours), a good home. Wonderful friends. What more could one want?

Then we were casually cruising in the Delta ( area between Sacramento and San Francisco) last summer with the Richmond Yacht Club Cruising Group. Life was serene, life was comfortable, and then it happened - WHAM - we saw a cruising catamaran tied up at the Rio Vista marina with a sign in the window which listed its adventures. Starting in Australia, across to New Zealand, up to Tahiti, over to Hawaii and on the the West Coast. What an adventure!!! That’s when Carol started thinking about the possibility of buying a new boat (we already had a Gemini 34’ cruising catamaran - life was good). Then sailing in Sydney basin for a few months, then either shipping it to California or sailing it across the South Pacific to California. Is she CRAZY?

That started our CRAZY file.

Over the next few months, she started feeding me articles about Australia, New Zealand, and multihulls. She even subscribed to Multihull magazine and would place various articles about sailing in the South Pacific under my nose while I was reading the morning paper.
She became obcessed. A devil (Tasmanian?) had her. Then around Christmas time, the bug really bit me. We were perfectly happy with our boat, but the idea of getting a new one (with all the new toys) and visiting “down under” seemed very appealling. A friend loaned me all his books on New Zealand and Australia, and the more read, the more I becaume enthralled with the idea