Where do you plan to go on your boat?

Yesterday I attended, as emcee, the 75th anniversary meeting of The Corinthians.  We met at the home club of our Master, Beach Point Yacht Club in Mamaroneck NY.

It's an old fashioned, magnificent club with a commanding view of Long Island Sound.  It was a beautiful sunny Fall day with lunch in the main dining room with a 270 degree view of the water.  I have been the shore activities chair for the group for years now and it's always a thrill for me to see that so many come, about 100, to enjoy an event that I helped plan.  To stand in front of a big group and see them all looking at me is just great fun.

At the meeting Brenda and I met a very interesting guy, Bob, who was a guest of the Master and is interested in joining the group.  In the course of conversation he mentioned that he and his wife had taken their 60+' boat to the Med and spent four seasons sailing there before sailing back over to the US.  I asked him what part of the Med he had enjoyed most and, without hesitation, he said Turkey. It's interesting that the other couple near Annapolis in November that we met said the same thing.  Bob mentioned that on their first visit they had chartered a local style of boat called the Gulet.  This local wooden boat type seems to be the same sort of business in Turkey as the Maine Schooners have that take out groups of people on a large wooden boat for coastal cruising.  However, this style of boat is clearly a lot different than what you see in Maine, and based on what I have seen on the Web there are a lot more of them than schooners in Maine.  You can join one of the Gulets with others as part of a somewhat random group or just charter one on your own with some friends.  Sounds like fun. 

With both couples that Brenda and I have met, what was planned as a one season visit to the Med turned out to be many years as they loved it so much.   Like the couple that we met on Alcid, a SAGA 43 that had done the same trip and kept their boat there for 7 seasons, Bob and his wife couldn't get enough of the Med and Turkey in particular.

I guess that's just one more place that I have to sail to.  Brenda gave me a cruising guide to the Mediterranean for Christmas last year which has given me a lot to think about.

Speaking of sailing far and wide, Jessica Watson, the young girl sailing around the world from Australia crossed the equator this week and will be soon turning south again to head for Cape Horn.  This photo montage was posted by her family on YouTube this week and is worth looking at and very touching even if it makes you wonder how such a young girl will do when she is in the Southern Ocean.    Her blog is fun to follow as she makes her way around.  Her website has a Google Earth tracker to keep tabs on where she is.




This is a very different view of sailing but the Southern Ocean is the same body of water regardless of what sort of boat you are on. Here's a video from the Volvo Ocean Race last year.   Of course, they picked the worst to show how it can get but Cape Horn doesn't have the reputation that it has for nothing.     This video shows just how fast the Open 60s go.  Very fast and certainly would pull away from Pandora without much sweat.  I don't know how I would do under such conditions.  I do know for sure that Brenda wouldn't like it at all.

Well, signing off for now as yard work awaits.  Lot's to think about however as we plan our sailing for the coming season.