S/V Destarte

[Delezynski]

A New Adventure Begins

Marina Mazatlan, 31 march ? 1 April, 2010

Dawn. Marina Mazatlan is covered with a light coating of neblina, or fog. Our last full day in port before the shakedown cruise begins. The hard physical labor of scraping, sanding, varnishing, rigging, provisioning, stowing, and a thousand other tasks is nearly complete. We are now doing the paperwork, email, and radio work to enable an escape from land. Once more, Destarte?, my little 28 foot Bristol Channel Cutter, will be lifting to the sea and exploring the Pacific.

No longer single handing, I have been joined by two intelligent, motivated, young women who will serve as crew, trading ship?s work and watchstanding for learning how to sail and seeing the Pacific from three feet above sea level. We have now lived in Destarte? together for 5 weeks and have learned to adapt to each others? ways. So far it has been cordial and interesting. Both crew enjoy cooking spicy food, so meals have been tasty. They are not big on meat, but the lower meat diet has made me feel healthier. Although, I do work in my occasional tuna aboard or shredded beef ashore ;-)

The next phase of this voyage, is to sail a Shakedown Cruise along the coast of the Mexican Riviera. These are waters Destarte? sailed with great joy two years ago. This time, the goal is to test gear and equipment, measure consumption of critical supplies like water, and train the crew in ocean sailing. All are eager to give it a try. One can only learn so much at the dock. We had our first day sail last Saturday, and it went pretty well. Both crew can steer and no one puked?a good sign.

Now, Lydia and Maisie, Destarte?s new crew, are patiently waiting while the skipper finishes the last few tasks that only he can do. Hopefully, we will be off Thursday afternoon, to anchor off Stone Island, just south of Mazatlan, where we will test the ground tackle (anchor, etc.) and adjust to the motion of the sea. There will be other adjustments, such as using the head on the boat and being completely self contained.

After 2 weeks, we will have our formal meeting to decide on the planned passage to the Marquesas Islands, the Tuomotu Archipelago, and Tahiti. The weather window for this passage has already opened and lasts until the end of April. We recently learned of a solar eclipse that will occur in July in the South Pacific. The northern edge of totality will be just 14 miles south of Tahiti. If we time it right, we can be there, underweigh, for the eclipse.

It is now 1000 Thursday morning, 1st of April, 2010, and we hope to be underweigh in a few hours. I?ll send this out to start the communications flowing. Having changed computers, I do not have everone?s email address, so please feel free to pass this on and we will build a contact list over the next 2 weeks. Once underweigh, we can get very short emails by HAM radio. We?ll ask just a few people to be our HAM Radio-Email contact points and they can distribute email to and from all who are interested. HAM email comes down at about 1200 baud, so short text messages only please? Eventually, perhaps a website will evolve.

Thanks to everyone for the help getting Destarte? ready. Especial thanks to Don and Judy Healy in San Diego, Phil and Carol of Maradon, Greg and Jill of Guenevere and Ruben Pineda of Mazatlan. Best wishes to you all.

Jerry Murphy
S/V Destarte?

[Chattcatdaddy]

Sounds like a real adventure is about to start on Destarte!

[evantica]

all the best! (I have been joined by two intelligent, motivated, young women ) you lucky bastage  ;)