Tag: USA

Farewell to Americas

Farewell to Americas

Way overtime, overbudget and over any attempt in predicting, controlling and scheduling boatwork Tranquility and I finally hit the water.

We dance with the natural change of the tides and the winds in a quasi stationary equilibrium tethered to the muddy bottom of the North River. Here we are merging again, as she is back doing what she was designed for and I reunite with the familiar feeling that I had not experienced since Hong Kong: The sensation of resting on the surface of water supported by the Archimede’s principle is engraved in my vestibular system as for the most part of the last 11 years I lived on floating objects.

Tranquility is not just my home, my mean of transportation and my survival pod, she is an extension of myself through which I explore the cosmos, and now that we are back in our element the senses are enhanced.

Since floating in the river dreaming activity surged together with levels of relaxation that I have not felt for months. Tranquility rig are the strings that capture atmospheric variations, the hull a sound box that amplifies the waves of the liquid environment. Her shell enhances my connection with the environment: enough to be dry and comfortable but inadequate to mask environmental changes around me.

The preparation to voyage has officially ended. As other times before I pushed the bar a little over my actual capacities, tried some weird experiments and dealt with the consequences. I take all this as a game. It is serious playing because financial risks and potential danger are part of it, but my inner child would not let me play safe or lower the bar. I like to keep learning so I push a bit over the comfort zone.

Andy, a very generous solo sailor and pizza tinkerer here at the boatyard, allowed me to use his dinghy to move back and forth to the shipyard for the last showers, laundry, errands and farewells. Rowing to get ashore is a degree of separation that helps detach from land life.

In few hours I will bring onboard the line that ties me to the muddy bottom, brave few shoals and turns for roughly three miles before I enter the St Marys river. There the outgoing tide and the favorable SW winds should push me effortless East through the inlet and out in the Atlantic Ocean en route to the Azores lying some 2700 nautical miles away.

From the Azores I will point to the island of Tenerife, where a special person has been waiting for too long for me to reunite in that wonderful place. This is the main aim of this voyage, the energy that kept me motivated to overcome the endogenous and exogenous variables I encountered, and for which I am extremely grateful.

There are however other reasons behind this voyage. One is that I am moving my home from America back to Europe. I spent more than a decade in the New World an exploration that put me in touch with new experiences.

I had the fortune to be welcomed wherever I went and be brought into homes regarded as a family member. The level of generosity I experienced is overwhelming and when I tried the exercise of bringing to mind all the people that helped me on this side of the world I felt overwhelmed and tears came up.

In the Americas I encountered the most friendly and generous people, people who never hesitated in making me feel welcomed and at home. For seven wonderful years I also had in Kate a generous, loving and brilliant companion and wife who shepherded me through this unknown continent. Adoptive parents and family, mentors, friends and comrades, they all allowed me to see life through their eyes and opened up their hearts to my presence.

I am not painting an idealized picture of my recent years. There has been incidents, suffering, discomfort and cultural shocks. Positive experiences though outweighed negative ones by far. This continent is still vast and rich and mysterious, full of magical energy, both good and bad, and I bathed in it.

Welcomed by the bald eagle, I am ushered to the door by the vulture. This magnificent bird, so ugly and clumsy on land and so graceful when it glides, is a rare sight in the Old World where I come from. In North and South America different species of vulture are instead very common. I grew accustomed to see them on the side of roads taking care of the business of life, dismembering corpses, removing harmful bacteria and diseases from the environment, and complying with the rules of transformation we all obey to.

I will leave part of my soul to the spirit of this bird for it to be digested into the ethereal connections of my legacy, so the last remaining ties will be severed.

After more than ten years it is time to move on. My rootlessness is taking over supported by the desire for more solo sailing, this uncommon human experience full of discomfort and awe. It will take few days of laziness and uneasiness for my vestibular system to incorporate the sudden changes of direction and acceleration experienced on a vessel that sails offshore and to fall into the routine of the watch system.

The southernmost outpost of Europe is waiting for me. It will be a long journey during which I will be removed from the usual flux of information that connects us all, suspended in the parallel reality of this planet without the chatter of society, to exercise my right and responsibility to awe in this incredibly beautiful universe.

Follow my dot….

Singlehanding my way back: from Panama to the US

Singlehanding my way back: from Panama to the US

As usual departing was laborious. Breaking the inertia was necessary to abandon Panama, a place that ended up feeling like a trap. Maybe I am just not that good with change anymore, and everything seem like a struggle. Or maybe I hit a dark spot while drifting about on the Atlantic coast of Panama and dealing with its fascinating cultures.

Sort of Heart of Darkness feeling, if you know what I mean.

Eventually, I found myself alone with Beta on Tranquility pointing North under full sail. I left Linton Bay in the early afternoon of the 28th of November. Hurricane season seemed to had finally cooled off, and the strong trade winds had not arrived yet.

It was the first time I sailed singlehanded in a long passage. I felt both excited and worried. My mind was more concerned about discomfort than personal safety. I trusted my boat. I couldn’t say the same about myself.

Selfie of a singlehanded sailor

Final destination was Brunswick in Georgia and, another first time for me, I had a schedule. I had booked a flight to Italy leaving from Jacksonville on Christmas Eve. There was enough time to make it… if everything went well.

Set on a close reach, I let the boat going more or less the direction I wanted. I forgot how easy is to pull the anchor and sail. The complicated stuff has always to do with land based activities.

I kept an eye on my new AIS as well as doing frequent scan of the horizons. For a hundred miles or so all the inbound and outbound traffic of the Panama Canal funnels in this stretch of water.

Thanks to the little dAISy 2+, the inexpensive dual channel AIS receiver I had just installed, I could see traffic around me. With the name of the vessel coming up in the information I even dared to establish radio contact with the ships that had a close CPA with Tranquility.

CPA stands for Closest Point of Approach and refers to the minimum value between two dynamically moving objects. Surprisingly the officers on watch picked up my calls, assuring that they were aware of my presence.

Soon the wind increased to 15-20 knots, still blowing from the NE. I kept the bow of the boat as close to it as possible. Soon the impacts with bigger waves started to shake the hull. Every loud hit shook me until I realized that this was what the boat is designed for. The adaptation to open waters took some time, after months spent in a protected basin.

At first it felt bad. Lack of appetite, boredom, struggle in reasoning were all the symptoms of too much time spent attached to land. I did the bare minimum, enough to keep Tranquility as close to the intended course as possible.

Sailing-Panama-to-USA

I wanted to sail straight to the Cayman Islands, almost due North from Puerto Lindo. Winds blew from the NE, perhaps NNE. The combinations of the 5 ft waves and the breeze made us drift towards the West, but we were still able to make northerly progress.

I avoided to sail too close to the Nicaraguan/Honduran coasts, as piracy was reported along those shoals. The crew of fishing boats were often looking for a way to make something on the side of their miserable incomes.

I am always comforted by the modest appearance of my boat, but I can’t always factor the level of desperation some people live with. Unfortunately even my small and old 30 footer can look like a luxurious target in certain situations.

The first problem arose soon in the trip. I tried to unfurl the jib after rolling it away for an incoming squall that ended up being not a big deal. The sail won’t unfurl, no matter how hard I pulled the furling line on the drum. I immediately suspected the swivel and the halyard up on the mast were misbehaving.

Two hundred miles or so in a seventeen hundred nautical miles passage and I could not use the jib. It was no bueno.

Determined to solve the problem, I donned my harness and my tethers and started climbing the mast steps installed on Tranquility’s rig. One third of my way up a bigger wave shook the boat and I found myself hugging the aluminum profile like a baby koala on mother’s back.

That scared the living crap out of me. Up higher the oscillation of the mast in such seas would be even greater, something I would not dare to try.

I immediately computed that my best option was to find a protected bay in the San Andrés archipelago, a group of islands off the Nicaraguan coast that belong to Colombia. It would be a deviation from my intended route and a delay I hoped not to incur in.

Kate, checking on me on the Delorme, put me in touch with Mike and Laura, friendly cruisers I met in Turtle Cay that were frequent visitors of the archipelago. They spoke with the immigration agent they use to clear in, who suggested I anchored for 48hrs in plain sight claiming the need for rest or even better illness.

Then I had the idea to try and release the halyard to see if that helped. Once I got some slack on the line the furler started to work again. I was elated! No need to stop, no delay and no dealing with authorities!

When I put the sail up in Turtle Cay after keeping it stowed for months, I must have put too much tension on the halyard, making the furling difficult. At least this was my quick diagnosis.

With the jib now back in service the boat continued as if she had a mind of her own. Tranquility quickly moved away from the San Andrés islands, tracking steadily as she usually does on a close reach. On my side, I was still trying to find my own rhythm.

The second scare came right after. I was cooking a meal when I went out on deck to deal with the autopilot that needed adjustments. After a little I noticed black smoke coming out of the companionway.

Fire on a boat is possibly the worst situation a sailor could face. If a fire gets out of control the only option is abandoning ship, with very limited time to act and collect gear.

The source of the fire was a plastic lighter I used to light the stove with. I found it on fire and jammed between the burner and the pot after falling on the stove from the shelf right behind in a strong wave. Still a small fire, I immediately realized that using water was the best way to put it out.

Had it been an electrical or liquid fuel fire I would have used a fire extinguisher. A splash of water I collected from the nearby sink put an end to the threat.

Once the danger was over I realized how lucky I was. For just a second I got very scared, probably the most scared I had been in my life. It could have been the end of me, Beta and Tranquility.

Now black sooth from the burnt plastic was all over the boat, hard to clean. I felt like a stupid, and decided that now on I would not go on deck if the stove was on down below. Safety rule for singlehanded sailors!

Chatting on the Delorme, I asked Kate to check if she had any information about Thunder Knoll, which I intended to sail by. She came back to me with a story from a cruising blog that reported an attempted act of piracy by local fishermen.

Immediately I became worried that a similar fate was awaiting for me on the shoals. Too late to set another course, and with really no other options, I started to watch frantically with my binoculars, while keeping my navigation lights off, a trick used years back when sailing in Venezuela. That night I did not dare to sleep or nap.

Nothing happened, as I did not spot anybody fishing around Thunder Knoll. Instead, I broke Tranquility’s personal record, aided by favorable current and by a wind angle that finally shifted a little more to her beam. The fear of piracy contributed to record, making me sail a little harder than I would in normal conditions.

153 nautical miles was not a bad 24hrs log for a 53 year old boat with 22,5 feet at the waterline!

Being by yourself makes you realize how vulnerable you are. At the same time it awakes awareness and sharpness in the senses. Walking on deck my steps were conscious, my hands holding tight to the boat, my vision and my hearing focused on the surrounding ocean. I did use my harness and my tether at discretion, knowing that I was vulnerable when I wasn’t attached to the boat.

Sometimes dark thoughts came up in unison. I felt very vulnerable to fire, a fall overboard, a debilitating injury, all the way to fear of bankruptcy, and other existential worries. The dark thoughts came and go. I felt surprisingly comfortable being hundreds of miles away from any land, especially when I focused on the boat, on her secure and steady progress. I was finally feeling used to being at sea.

No marine traffic came my way since the approaches to the Panama Canal, the AIS receiver remained silent. Every night I clocked good hours of sleep, broken up in smaller chunks to allow a quick scan of the horizon in every direction. During the day I also kept napping.

Finally I understood Beta’s behavior, the feline necessity of long rests in case something happens and immediate action is required. It resonated with my naps and lying down, interrupted by burst of activity.

I had windy conditions for most of the trip, manna from heaven when you sail a boat with limited auxiliary propulsion like Tranquility. The noises on the boat, at every wave, roll or pitch became familiar. I could judge the intensity of the wind by the speed of the wind generator and by the pressure on the rig. For the first time I noticed how the boat is more silent in dry weather. Sheets and lines squeak louder under load when it’s humid and rainy.

I finally felt myself entering the middle zone, accustomed to the pure chaos happening on the ocean’s surface. The swell followed a regular pattern, disturbed by waves coming from different directions, separating or building up one on top of the other. The boat just tried to dance on this mysterious rhythm, sliding on an invisible track, sustained by forces that I can’t understand completely.

This middle zone of the passage had no specific duration in my memory, and time ceased to be a factor. It was too far to think about the arrival. A lot could still happen, and the decisions taken in the present may not count in the end. I focused on making steady progress, and I relaxed. I was finally far from the abundant lush of Panama. It was time to move over, even if the next move had not yet a clear path.

In the middle zone I accepted this and accepted the waves’ gentle lulls and ferocious spanks. It’s the temple of nothing, built nowhere. I breath calmly. I am breath.

This ephemeral mental state could vanish unexpectedly. I could suddenly find myself fretting about the arrival or feeling that again that the trip was just started. Then worry faded again.

Cayman-Islands-to-Cuba

Following this spell I decided that stopping in Cayman Islands was not necessary. Weather was good and winds finally moved onto Tranquility’s beam. The boat stopped pitching and started rolling. Neither one is comfortable as the trade winds raised waves up to seven feet, but the progress was encouraging.

A warning from afar awoke me from my meditations. Elliott, who kindly fed me weather forecast through the Delorme, alerted me of a cold front moving from the US and reaching as far down as Honduras. Right were I was.

Even if this added extra miles to my trip, I decided to shoot for the Cayman Islands for two reasons. It could be a port of call for problems on board. It was also putting me more on the lee of Cuba in case of a cold front. As the feared cold front was bound to show up, I kept my course North trying to hug the Coast of Cuba

As expected the wind calmed down, and veered around the boat. Finally the fair winds and following seas visited me, after many people tried to send them my way. I prepared the whisker pole to keep the jib open and catch the following breeze. The operation took me a good half an hour. It was the first time I did it singlehanded on a rolling deck.

That night I was completely becalmed, on a flat ocean. I rolled the jib in, reefed the mainsail, and set up to sleep while the boat moved at less than a knot. At dawn light NErlies started to blow, destined to intensify. I hurried to get as close to the southern coast of Cuba as possible.

With sunset the squalls came, bringing rain and gusty winds. A little after they dissipated the wall of the cold front hit us, with 25 to 30 knots from the NNE. Getting the jib back in as fast as I could, the furler was giving me problems again, and the operation lasted more than necessary with the jib flogging badly.

I eventually packed the sail away, and kept the minimum sail area. Only a deep reefed mainsail and the staysail drove the boat. The night became quickly dark and a little chilly, and I tried to spend as much time as I could down below.

Cuba’s landmass was acting as a wall that protected from big waves. Only fifteen miles separated us from Isla Juventud, offering little fetch to the wind. The rig turned into a whistling symphony I listen to in the breaks of my slumber.

The following day I kept the boat on a slower pace while approached Cabo San Antonio and the Yucatan Channel. During the cold fronts the passage between Cuba and Mexico funnels big waves originating in the Gulf of Mexico. I figured that spending extra time in the lee of Cuba could be beneficial to have the seas calm down a bit.

Before sunset, as the winds decreased further I took courage and opened the jib. The speed immediately got up. Happy about my schedule and the successful trip so far I started to take a closer look to the charts to see where it was convenient to cross the Traffic Separation Scheme that runs along the North coast of Cuba. All the efforts to avoid dealing with shipping are rewarded by more rest on passage.

While touring the foredeck for the last check before darkness, I noticed a small vertical slit in the the dacron of the jib, close to the reinforced area of the clew. My heart sank in my chest. It must have happened with the flogging of the sail while furling the jib in the squall. What was maybe a four inch tear could easily spread and render my headsail useless. My satisfaction for how I dealt with the cold front turned into a sour feeling.

The damaged jib

Continuing the trip without the jib, meant slow progress and less windward ability. Florida was still more than 300 miles to the NE and the forecast anticipated the most difficult upwind leg of the trip. No bueno, again

[TO READ PART 2 CLICK HERE]

Embracing the ocean again

Embracing the ocean again

The sky is cloudy and the temperature quite cool while I get ready to depart the Linton Bay anchorage in Panama to sail back to the US. Last minute issues got me a little delayed but now everything seems quite ready.

Kate is in NYC and I waited for hurricane season to cool off before sailing back with Tranquility and Beta. We are going to meet for Christmas which we will spend seeing my family in Italy.

Yesterday I did the clearance papers that grant me 48hrs to leave and I am at anchor tending to final preparations, setting up the dAISy 2+ (AIS receiver) with my navigation app, cleaning and organizing stowage, but mostly resting.

Emotions go all over the places, from abysmal fear to sheer joy, from dull apathy to total fret. Luckily this turmoil balances itself as I do a constant effort to find a middle point while I complete the last tasks and catch brief naps.

Hopefully I will depart tomorrow. I plotted a straight course to Cayman Islands and the Yucatan Channel then around Florida and up the East Coast.

If weather cooperates, and the humane/feline crew can handle it, I will attempt a non stop passage, at least to the US. Other convenient points of refuge could be Cayman Islands and Isla Mujeres Mexico depending on the decisions I will make about weather routing with the data that my friend Elliott will kindly provide through the satellite messenger.
I will keep the InReach on throughout the trip. Here is the address:
https://share.garmin.com/sytranquility

On the website you can see my position in real time and you are welcome to send me a message anytime of the day. Hopefully I will have plenty of free time and hands during the passage. Just make sure you write your name so I know who I am talking to.

Now I go back to clean some coffee spilled by the wakes of a passing speedboat. <<beeeeep>>
See you on the other side.
Two years living aboard Tranquility and voyaging on the ocean

Two years living aboard Tranquility and voyaging on the ocean

Just recently we hit the 2 years or 730 days since we’ve been living aboard our tiny sailboat. I don’t remember the exact date we moved in.

This does not take in account the eight months we spent living and traveling on a primitive Tranquility before we settled in Coastal Georgia, where we moved back on land. That still belonged to a transformative process into full time cruisers.

It was the beginning of April 2016, when we left the apartment in Brunswick, GA where we lived for almost two years with Susan, our roommate and owner of the famous Tipsy McSways, and boarded a barely complete (will she ever be?) Tranquility at the Frederica Yacht Club.

Our Columbia 29 had been tied to the same dock for two years, patiently awaiting the end of all the modifications and tortures she received.

We moved from the comforts of a fully equipped house and the companionship of Susan and the band of house animals (in alphabetical order Beta, Betty White, Fluffy Butt, and Roxy) to the pokey interior of a sailboat and the constant presence of each other. Living aboard a second time was tough, as if those 2 years on land made us forget everything  we knew about it.

The enthusiasm for something we waited for such a long time was somehow mitigated by the shock of the transition.

During the two years spent in the Frederica River, Tranquility almost became part of the marsh ecosystem, growing a thick and impervious beard around her underwater surface, harboring a very diverse collection of marine life. She also suffered the transition  from long quiet to sudden movement.

We took the boat out of the water in St. Marys,GA to address this extraordinary growth and to complete many other projects that I left behind for lack of time. It was there, after going back into the water, that we officially re-started cruising and living aboard, embarking on a very slow voyage that still endures to date.

We celebrated with a Battlestar Galactica marathon while we were slowly adapting to our new house and lifestyle.

This 2 year anniversary will coincide with another haul out. We are taking arrangements  for new bottom paint and a new topside coat for Tranquility, here on the Atlantic coast of Panama.

After two years of almost no boat work (there is no such a thing), we will tackle a couple of big projects that had been slowly taking form on the drawing board.

During the last longer passage from Bahamas to Panama we took note of a couple features to improve comfort during long offshore passages, both for living inside and in the cockpit. She will also get ready for less pleasant weather. You never know.

It is hard to believe how well we adapted to our scarce 200 sq feet of living space. We do enjoy very much when we have the opportunity of staying in hotel rooms or friends and family houses, with real bed, showers and bath tubs, broadband WiFi, huge kitchens with refrigerators and comfy sofas.

For some strange reasons, after a while immersed in such luxury we end up missing our tiny boat.

Sea legs and watch system

Sea legs and watch system

Sitting at anchor enjoying the nice breeze and the shade provided by Kate (and her mom’s) newly designed boom tent is a good payback for all the sweat and effort, all the tense moment when we couldn’t see an end to our work and it seemed that we could never leave. Gazing at the nearby beach, observing any kind of wildlife, from sea birds to dolphins to bros riding jet skis and rude power boaters (there are few kind individuals in the category) put all this preparation labor on perspective. Now it’s time to enjoy.

Blog_Anchor
Sunset at anchor in Sullivan’s Island, SC

Nonetheless to fully enjoy our new life afloat we had to go trough countless details and preparation. A couple of passages in the open ocean and very soon we found where our preparation lacked and how bad our sea legs were. Cooking meals, resting and even personal hygiene can become difficult tasks out there. Exhaustion by sun exposure, waves shaking and wind can bring to episodes of delirious speech with a low deep tone of voice. Auditory hallucinations are not rare either and happen when your brain mistakes a particular sound for a baby’s cry or for somebody calling your name.

It took a long time to get our sea legs and cruising routines back on track. Sea legs are what keep you standing (or sitting) on top of a vessel accelerating and decelerating under the action of wind and waves. I suspect sea legs are a combination of motor control (governed by the cerebellum in the brain) and muscle tone of the core, so it takes training and exercise to establish a harmonic posture in relation with a shaky floor.

The very first offshore legs put us in survival mode, with the rolling and tossing of the boat depriving us of our natural strength, appetite and comfort. Even without being fully seasick, we were carrying a sort of  malaise. We hung in there resting as much as we could and holding on as of we were waiting for the ride to come to a stop.

 

“One thing about the sea. Men will get tired, metal will get tired,
anything will get tired before the sea gets tired”
An engineer’s observation about the collapse of Texas Tower 4 in 1961

 

Gradually we built up some resistance and developed routines. On board Tranquility we use a 4 hours watch system that starts at 20:00 (8 pm, First Watch) and cover the rest of the 24 hours so the boat is never unattended.The person on watch is in charge of navigation duties, making sure the boat stays on course, keeping a proper lookout for hazards and weather change and updating the Ship’s Log. The other crew member lays in the bunk, trying to rest but ready to be summoned in case of “all hands on deck” situation, or “condition one” as we like to call it. We strictly stick to the schedule but we are also flexible in case conditions arise or if it’s time to make landfall.

Beside navigation duties we have daily chores that are split between the two of us and include cooking three meals a day and washing dishes, redding up (Pittsburghese for cleaning), ensuring that the cockpit snack bag is always full, washing and drying rags, towels and clothes,  waste management (composting toilet redd up, trash and recycle locker) and Personal care and Beta care.

The watch schedule and the work routines help to keep us busy and comfortable. When it is properly planned a passage at sea will be mainly smooth, with occasional rougher bits, so it’s important to be ready to face the unpleasant weather in good condition and spirit. If you let the boat get dirty and messy it will affect your well being. If you don’t eat, drink or rest enough you will be tired soon.

As they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and so we are picking up with the old habits and safety protocols, by trial and errors. Three years ago, we sailed the opposite route in much worse conditions, during the winter and in a barely fixed boat. Now we remember that trip as if it was not a big deal. Why we became such wimps? It’s probable that memory erases the bad parts and retain the good ones.

We are still learning a lot, and we are lucky that Tranquility behaves so well. She is a tough girl, we have been the weak ones so far. She protected and transported us during the first thousand miles of sailing while experiencing winds in the range of 4 to 40knots, the latter number only briefly during thunderstorm gusts.We have an ample range of sail area available to adapt to different wind and sea conditions and the modifications to the deck and sail controls seem all very successful. The introduction of a third reef in the mainsail, the new boom vang, the sheeting blocks for the staysail, the bowsprit for the cruising gennaker all contributes to a finer sail tuning and ultimately boat handling.

Now we are taking a prolonged stop in the friendly Fairhaven, in the South Coast of Massachussets. This is the place where Joshua Slocum rebuilt his 36ft. gaff rigged sloop Spray, before setting sail for the first ever recorder singlehanded circumnavigation of earth 121 years ago. Incidentally this is where we purchased Tranquility, fixed her up and set sail in November 2013.

We don’t have such an ambitious circumnavigation plan, but we feel the power of the maritime lore of this place. Fairhaven is the fairy tale New England village in front of the rougher city of New Bedford, the “city that lit the world”, the whaling capital of the world portrayed in Melville’s Moby Dick and the city where Tranquility was on stands in a boatyard while we feverishly prepared her for sailing. We have so much connection to this area, friends that keep helping us, favorite places and memories. We are going to keep sailing, visiting other wonders of New England, but this is probably going to be our home base for the next few months. Until winter will force our next move.

 

"Daydream" Columbia 9.6 for sale

"Daydream" Columbia 9.6 for sale

Daydream is a Columbia 9.6 originally built in 1977 and professionally rebuilt since 2005 by a boat engineer, ready to sail. She is an ideal boat for liveaboard, exceptionally spacious for a 32 footer and with all the possible comforts, and tons of extra. The boat is on the hard in Clinton, CT and will be available from Spring 2014.

Please write me from my contact page if you are interested.

Columbia 9.6 sailboat

Propulsion

  • Engine Volvo MD6B rebuilt
  • New propeller
  • New Prop shaft
  • New diesel tank 12 gallons

Rigging

  • New chain plates
  • Mast inspected and polished
  • New electrical cables inside the mast

Deck

  • New deck paint
  • 4 Andersen self tailing winches 2 speed
  • New hatches and portlights
  • New anchor windlass, 300 ft chain high test 1/4 inch

Sails

  • Mainsail, Jib, Genoa, and Spinnaker in very good conditions

Electrical

  • New Electrical system, DC12v and AC 120v
  • 3 solar panels (100,60,10 watts)
  • New battery charger 30amps
  • Flat screen tv

Galley

  • Stainless steel propane stove
  • Double sink
  • Microwave
  • Fridge 3 stages (freezer, fridge and vegetables cooler)
  • External Barbecue

Plumbing

  • New Thru-hulls
  • Hot/cold pressure water (new boiler)
  • New plumbing system
  • Shower inside and in the cockpit
  • Pressurized sea water for galley, anchor chain wash, cockpit and head
  • 2 original water tank plus 1 new (80 gallons total capacity)
  • New toilet plumbing with holding tank

Heating

  • Force 10 cabin heather (propane)
  • A/C 9000 btu with electric heating
  • Electric heater AC 250 w 1500w

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