Pretty Much a Port Tack the Whole Way

What do you get when you mix a chef-turned-cyber-security-expert, an erstwhile collegiate sailor, now company comptroller, a retired Marine F18 pilot, and an Italian major? You get the captain, first mate, and crew of our forty-two-foot cutter-rigged sailboat bound for Antigua. 

Some of us have just rounded the corner to age forty; others (me) are pushing the outer edge of sixty-four. In terms of maritime experience, the first mate has crossed the Atlantic, sailed the Mediterranean, crewed on schooners, and raced Sprites. Our Marine speed-reads books in his berth and has ten thousand nautical miles under his belt, while our captain is our onboard engineer who can fix, wire, and resolve any issue. Me? I learned to sail more than fifty years ago but then stepped aside for about four decades. These last couple of years have been a process of rubbing off the rust.

Our vessel, who turns forty years old next month, needs no such rubbing off of the rust. Her owners have spent the last two years readying her for her sea trials. Her mast has been re-stepped, new chainplates installed, and a myriad of other safety measures put into place. Built in Taiwan in the nineteen eighties, she has teak interiors and finishes. She is a sound, blue-water vessel and one of the oldest boats in our flotilla of seventy or eighty that departed the East Coast of the United States bound for Antigua, in the Eastern Caribbean's Lesser Antilles eleven days ago.

Welcome aboard. Skip the seasickness and any gymnastics required to step into the head while heeled over plowing through the Atlantic.