"twoguns" wrote in
ups.com:

We were out a few miles and a sudden storm came
up. The skipper gave us life vests and told us to put them on. I was
having the time of my life going up and down those waves. I didn't
realize how much danger we were in until we got back to the dock and
some of the locals started talking to the skipper telling him what an
idiot he was for being out there. I guess ignorance is bliss but I had
a helluva good time.



I love it out there, myself, in a well found sailboat. I sail with an
Englishman I'd follow anywhere on a French-made Amel Sharki 41 ketch.
She's not fast, but very solid with watertight bulkheads 2 fore and 1 aft.
Plenty of diesel power if she needs it from a Perkins 50hp 4-cyl diesel
with 90 gallons of fuel. Her rigging is very heavy, made for ocean
crossings, as is her hull and fittings. With 200 gallons of water tank in
the keel, she also has plenty to wash the stink off out there.

I think we were in 15-18' seas in a storm about 250 miles off the Georgia
coast, last year. Most seas here are in the 5-10' range. She feels very
safe in her deep center cockpit under a fiberglass hardtop to deflect the
spray. Sometimes we sail just the two or three of us....others we have a
nice crew of 6-8 which makes watchstanding much easier on everyone being
able to actually sleep 4 hours straight.

I've equipped her with all the electronic toys. All of Icom's best radios,
Raymarine radar/color chart plotter/gyro compass, B&G sailing instruments
and electrohydraulic autopilot directly on the rudder post, Yeoman
electronic paper chart plotter for backup, as is the Garmin 185 backup
GPS/sonar/chartplotter. Primary Navigation is The Cap'n running on a Dell
Latitude notebook....everything networked through it, or switchable for
backup if it fails. Cap'n Geoffrey loves the toys...(c;