I am in touch with Coronado owners the world over. These people
are a happy bunch and they check in with me now and then when
they get a chance. Here is an an example of a typical letter from
a happy Coronado owner. In this case, a Coronado 25.

Name withheld to protect the writer against the likelyhood of
theft of his fine vessel.

Hi Neal,

Just an update on becoming a real sailor...

First, I'm not there yet but have been getting
good experience. I love my Coronado 25. It's the
best small boat ever built. Period. I went through
hurricane Claudett. I mean smack dab through it.
The eye actually passed right over the top of me.
I got tons of pictures if you ever want to see any.
I rode it out on the boat. All the other liveaboards
were cowering in the marina dayroom. It's probably
a good thing for them too as many of their boats
got wrecked. One was dismasted.

Most of the damage to the boats came from other
boats that broke their lines. Mine all held fine
and my rigging which is taunt and in excellent
condition simply whistled me tunes as the 90mph
winds screamed through. I loved it every minute
of it. Frankly, I was expecting a little more
excitement. The roughest part was the first half
of the storm where I took the brunt of the wind
on port side aft. After the eye passed, I took the
second half pretty much over the bow. I believe that
particular storm would have been better weathered
at anchor or on a mooring. In that case, the
aerodynamics would have harmoniously matched boat
and wind.

One boat, a Columbia 40 was victim of the harbor
masters boat which broke it's dock lines and came
down on it. Just cosmetic damage occurred to it but
the dock broke in two places. The finger dock
completly seperated from the main dock and the
concrete on the main dock snapped in two. You can
see the styrofoam through the crack.

My boat is at the xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Marina in Port
xxxxxxxxx, Texas. What a **** hole that town is. But
the marina people are all very friendly even if a
bit clickish. They are much better people than
exist in the town in general though. They are good
to each other.

I havent moved aboard full time yet but will keep
going back and forth from Dallas til November. One
of my new buddies and I will be heading down to the
keys then. Generally, I'm planning on the Tank
Island anchorage or the Key West mooring field but
could change on a whim. He has a Hunter 37. If
Key West is too much of a fag set up as I keep hearing,
I may look for another place. I just need
to find a place to work. I have been to KW but did
not find it to be too repulsive. There were a lot
of pretty cool regular people there but I was only
there a week.

Anyway, thanks for all your advice.