I spent a little (too much) time looking back over our blog posts as I thought about what to write in this post and a few things occurred to me in the process.
First - without question, the best thing about our years of sailing Saralane are the friends we've made along the way. I'm tempted to write about all of them and include links to previous posts to revisit some of the times we spent together, but that would make for a REALLY long read. Beginning with our friends who waved us off the dock in Newport in the fall of 2010... to the friends who helped us get Saralane up and going again after Hurricane Irma in 2017... and all the friends in between, we feel so fortunate to be a part of this community. Some are settled back on land; some are circumnavigating and are on the other side of the world. Some we talk to weekly and some are gone forever. There are too many memories to count.
Second - we've had an ridiculous amount of fun. Lots of adventures and lots and lots of fun. What began as 'let's take a year off and go sailing' quickly turned into 'hey, this is really fun... let's keep going!'. And so we did.
Third - we were (relatively) young when we started this! The 'kids' (aka: anyone younger than us) we meet out sailing would roll their eyes to hear me say that, and our 90+ year old friends laugh when we say we realize how much older we are now. It's just the continuum of life and we are grateful to still be moving along it. That being what it is, we decided we were ready for a change.
With that bit of an intro I'll tell you that we've sold sweet Saralane. We hauled her at Independent Boat Yard in St Thomas in April and decided it was time to move on to something else. We spent lots of time spiffing her up before listing her and she was looking good when we left her with a FOR SALE sign on the bow rail.
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| Saralane for sale in St Thomas |
It's so bittersweet. She's been ours for 15 years and we literally put our blood, sweat (Skip) and tears (me) into her. She took good care of us too. She was 'Expectation' when we bought her and she became 'Saralane' for us. I don't know what her new name will be but I hope she has more adventures with her new owner.
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| The 'boat' key ring I got Skip when we bought Saralane in 2007 |
And yes, we have moved on to something else. Something else being a new (old) boat! Skip and crew sailed her to St Thomas and arrived this past weekend. I have decided to be true to my fair weather sailing self, and will fly down to join him. I haven't yet decided about continuing the blog since we'd no longer actually be "Sailing Saralane". But, there are sure to be more adventures and more visits to Barbuda on the new boat and I know you want more Barbuda photos. Right?!
Let me introduce you to the new boat... she's a beautiful Little Harbor '54 that we've named 'Wildflower'. We'll spend the season on her in the Caribbean and plan to bring her north in the spring. If you see us around... come say hello!
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| Wildflower in the Chesapeake |
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| 'You belong among the wildflowers, you belong on a boat out at sea... Sail away, kill off the hours, you belong somewhere you feel free' |