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Raymarine For over four years Richard worked in the QA department of Raymarine in Portsmouth. During this time he was at the forefront of the industry, testing and fettling new products and software before their release to market. Wild Bird has benefited by becoming a test bed in her own right. |
LifestyleWe're not out to break any records or win any medals. We all love the lifestyle - and who wouldn't?! As far as passage making goes, we feel it'd be unpleasant for Libby to take her offshore for long periods, and Penny is not keen on long passages anyway. |
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Repairs Richard is well placed to assist other yachties in fault trace, location and fixing. A Master Mariner who was originally in the communications industry, qualified in telecomms and electronics, Richard enjoys solving problems on board vessels of all types. As well as commanding yachts all over the world, he has served as engineer on a very prestigious sailing yacht. |
Website As you can see, I've completely re-vamped the site with a brand new "top" or index page. I'm trying to get to grips with Dreamweaver 8. It's still guesswork, and I'm still having to use "Notepad" and and WS_FTP to fiddle the files so they display properly. I gave up using MS Word as the code gets very cumbersome, but DW8 has slowly revealed some of its more important secrets to me over the past months. |
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Wild Bird Wonderings
Penny and I met in Croatia in 2001. She was managing a large charter-yacht base and I was First Officer on a large prestigious private motor yacht. Over a glass of wine, we dreamed about one day buying a yacht of our own and living the life without deference to owners or charterers. In the intervening years we ran large yachts in the Med and Australasia, got married, bought and renovated an old house, had a daughter - but all the time saving every spare penny until the day in October 2009 when we finally bought our own fine vessel, "Wild Bird".
May: Flights Booked
The ship which will carry Wild Bird back home is due here in the USVI around May 16th. She's called the "Sampogracht", happily re-named from the tongue twister "Scheepvaartonderneming", but still it's worth having a hanky at the ready should you try to speak the name out loud! The Dutch are famed of course for their linguistic abilities, but it's hardly surprising when you consider the alternative fate of having to only speak Dutch all your life. (Happily our cousins from The Netherlands are also renowned for a fine sense of humour ;-))
When we shipped Wild Bird over here from Palma, the cargo vessel (Spiegelgracht - bless you) arrived in Mallorca some two weeks late. It complicated our logistics at the time, but wasn't disastrous. Now however we have had to take the plunge and book the very expensive flights from here to Miami, and Miami home. Also we hope to take the Girl to Orlando in order to experience Disney first hand. (Daddy, they're only pretend princesses though.)
We've just checked out of the BVI for the last time, and the mood aboard can only be described as "melancholy". There are going to be more and more of these "last time we do" moments, and although none of us relishes them, we all recognise the bigger picture, and none of us want to become permanent boat gypsies, no matter how good the weather.
I've drafted a new Curriculum Vitae which can be found on the link at the bottom of this page. It's now just a page long, and it was hard to find a recent picture of me with my clothes on! However, it's time to start looking for work or I may indeed find myself stacking shelves at Tesco come September. Any ideas from every corner are welcome. I really want to find something in the yacht service/maritime industry, and one ideal would be to be tasked with looking after one or more private yachts in the Solent. Other ideas include teaching RYA courses locally. Libby has reached an age where Penny says she wouldn't mind if I were away for a week at a time, or occasionally longer. (Or could this be cabin fever talking??!)
We've had some leads already apropos the sale of Wild Bird, and even a very low tentative offer, (not a chance mate!). One or two of them seem quite genuine however, but until she is available for viewing back in England, we don't expect any significant developments.
Beyond May - we hope to catch a bit of the Olympics, and also nip over to explore the Morbihan area of Brittany. More importantly, we’ll be close to Dad, who’s been experiencing a period of decline recently.
OUR LOCAL PHONE NUMBER: +1 340 244 6183 for US Virgin Islands. If you'd like to call, we'd always love to hear from you, but please don't leave voice mail, just try texting the UK numbers, thanks.
(You can follow our progress on this site: www.marinetraffic.com/ais. )
Trintella 44 Ketch For Sale ... £89,000
Yacht "Wild Bird", our fine ship is for sale. Our adventures aboard are expected to come to an end in September 2012. Regular readers will know that our immediate plans are to ship back to Southampton from the Caribbean in May 2012.
FOR SALE: We have listed the Bird with "whyboats.com". They offer, for a very low fee to advertise on ALL major internet sites such as "yachtworld.com" which is normally out of bounds for private sellers. Already offers are coming in, much to my dismay!
Anyone interested in a well found, blue-water family cruising yacht should look no further! We have a virtually new Perkins main engine, (2008), refurbished, re-caulked and screwed decks 2011, new mizzen sail, (2010) new mainsail (2008), rebuilt roller furling genoa with new UV strip, (2011) top of the range Raymarine navigation suite - essentially all the kit needed to set off over the horizon. Above all perhaps, she LOOKS GORGEOUS!! Part of the pride of ownership is simply appreciating her aesthetics.
We absolutely LOVE the boat, and there's never been any doubt that we bought exactly the right vessel for our 3 year sabbatical. She was built at the world renowned "Anne Weaver" yard in Holland in 1980. She is very strong and very sea kindly. She eats up the miles in safety and comfort and is very easily handled by two. There are several enhancements to original spec - most obviously the electronics and inverter and machinery etc, but notably in addition - the bed in the master suite has been widened, as has the top bunk bed. Also sail handling has been enhanced with "stack packs", lazy jacks and roller furling.
As time goes by I shall refine and fill in the gaps in the specs, but do feel free to get in touch if you're planning YOUR dream voyage to start late 2012 / 13. We expect to berth Wild Bird in the Solent, southern England in early June, and from Late August she will go on the hard. However, if a serious buyer would like her in the Med, or Scotland say, then we can do that..