Gene's family Bahamas cruise on an 18ft Alicrity

[Frank]

Thought I'd be bold and start this thread for you  ;) Gene...you have peeked my interest of you and your family in the Bahamas for a year on a 18ft Alacrity sailboat.Plese give us stories and pictures once Flight is safely 'off' and you have time.I'm sure others here would also love to see pics and an accounting of that trip.Happy new year

[Frank]

Gene,boat and crew  ;D

[FLIGHT]

Hi Frank -

Ha ha - man, you're gonna' MAKE me talk about the Alacrity, huh?  Yes, it was a marvelous boat and an incomparable year - almost a year and a half - voyage!

First of all, before I forget, there are dozens of great photos of various Alacrity sailboats at http://www.sail.to/Alacrity.

It was - still is - an incredibly seaworthy and comfortable boat for only 18' 6" overall!  With an excellent sailor at the helm, one could readily be sailed around the world.

I bought ours in England, and had it shipped over.  I also had the factory install an extra forward lower shroud and chainplate on each side.  The stock rig looked a little weak to me for my planned ocean sailing.

So Dorothy (my wife), Heather, age ~3, Gene III and I loaded up in mid winter, and headed for the Bahamas.  And mid winter is not a great time to cross the Gulf Stream, because of the northers which come roaring down quite often, against the set of the Stream.  And we DID get hit by a series of them, right out in the middle of the Gulf Stream, and had to lie to a sea anchor for two days and three nights.  The waves - and Dorothy will confirm this, if you doubt me - were significantly taller than our mast, many of them breaking.  But we were quite secure and reasonably comfortable, lying to our old-fashioned iron-ringed sea anchor, though a dozen or more huge ships came within sight of us.

Anyway, when the wind and waves subsided a bit, I turned my little mickey-mouse RDF on a Fort Pierce radio station, and it was directly off our port beam.  We had drifted a hundred miles too far North, and had to fight the Gulf Stream current, sailing back toward the northernmost tip of the Bahamas, Mantilla Shoals.  The seas were still too rough to sail, but I couldn't allow us to drift all the way up to Virginia!

It was rough enough our stock laminated tiller broke in my hands, fighting the waves, but then I stuck our little .22 rifle barrel in the rudder and started steering with the stock.  But then the 1/4" bolt which held the barrel to the stock broke, so I crammed our oak crawfish gig into the rudder, and steered the rest of the way with it!

But again - the Alacrity was perfectly safe - it was just rough in all those storms.

So we finally anchored at the Mantilla Shoals light, then sailed on into West End the next day.  The only navigational instruments I had were the compass, the RDF and a sextant.

Then all over the Abacos, the Berry Islands, Nassau, the Exumas, clear down to the Jumentos Cays - still our favorite spot in all the Bahamas - just 50 miles off the coast of Cuba.

If any of you want to buy an inexpensive but extremely seaworthy MORC sailboat, hop on Google and buy yourself and Alacrity - there are a lot of them still out there.  And they made a slightly larger but very similar boat called the Vivacity, but I never sailed one, so can't judge it.

The only pictures which we have left of the trip are posted on Heather's site at http://www.solo-sailor.com/Captain_Heather.htm.  And you can see Heather sitting on my right knee.  Wow - and now she's 40 years older and fixin' to sail around the world alone!

And yeah - I'm indeed proud of her!

Thanks guy for your kindness.

Reef early!

Gene