Hello all,
It seems strange to be sitting around the house when Flying Colours is all ready to head out cruising – particularly since it’s Memorial Day, with everything closed and no way to speed up getting Kap’s wrist looked at. She’s whiling away the time, watching movies and learning how not to bump an extremely sore wrist on things – with swelling of the fingers not going down, but seemingly to increase.
Meanwhile, I’ve been checking a great cruising blog – at www.kensblog.com – by Ken Williams, who seems like he should be a friend, but we’ve never met. Ken and his wife, Roberta, founded a software company in 1979 (same year we did) called Sierra On-Line – one of the greatest PC game companies ever – and sold it in 1996. One of their hit games, Leisure Suit Larry, was a riot to play, and we played it a lot – in fact, it’s still on our PCs. Another one, King’s Quest, was one of Kap’s all-time favorites, and she keeps an ancient early-Windows PC around just to play it when the mood strikes.
Ken and Roberta have been cruising around – and I mean long distance, blue water cruising – on their Nordhavn 68, Sans Souci. Starting out last April (2009) with two other Nordhavn’s from Seattle – Seabird, with Carol and Steven Argosy aboard (who we cruised with in SE Alaska in 2008), and Grey Pearl with Braun and Tina Jones – they’ve cruised to Japan, via the Aleutians, on a venture they’re calling The Great Siberian Sushi Run. Ken’s blog is great to read, as are the blogs of the Seabird (www.seabirdlrc.com) and Grey Pearl (www.greypearl.talkspot.com). Their adventures for the past several months in Japan are a real treat to read about, plus they have some very good nuggets to learn from.
While the Nordhavn is in the same general class of yachts – a trawler – that Flying Colours is, the type of cruising possible with a Nordhavn isn’t in the cards for us. The Nordhavn is designed with what’s called a full displacement hull – which means the hull remains fully in the water throughout its entire speed range, and doesn’t climb out of its bow wave to plane on the water’s surface. With this, it fairly sips fuel, but at the same time is restricted to about 7 knots maximum speed (9 kts if they really push it), with a cruising range about 1,000 nm further than we have.
The Fleming 55, such as we have, has a semi-displacement hull that cruises very efficiently at 9-10 knots (which is a speed we prefer). That seemingly small speed difference doesn’t seem like much, but it can cut 1½ – 2 hours off a 35 nm cruising day. And, when the need requires – such as darkness or bad weather closing in – we can push it up to 16-18 knots and get there (and, as Kap likes to say, “all you hear is the great sucking sound of diesel being pulled into the engines”, which is why we rarely do it). Overall, since our plans are to do mostly coastal cruising, the Fleming 55 was the choice for us.
At some point, we very well may take Flying Colours down the West Coast (which is a run where the extra speed may be beneficial, as ports where you can duck in from the weather along the Pacific Coast mostly have treacherous bars to cross getting in, and the Coast Guard may close them when the weather kicks up). We’d like to take her through the Panama Canal, then across to the Caribbean, where it would be great fun to explore the islands and mainland. The designer of the Fleming series, Tony Fleming, has done this trip, and writes extensively about it on the Fleming Yachts website – www.flemingyachts.com.
Lastly, while searching around on the Internet today, I ran across a recipe for Whale Stew. Since I’m not much of a fish eater, I think I’ll stay away from it – but it’s a fun one:
Ingredients:- 1 whale
- 2 rabbits (optional)
- Salt and pepper to taste