I\u2019ve owned several boats over the years, ranging from a 7\u2032 thing that would not sail upwind to a 43\u2032 Catamaran that carried my crew and me from Cape Town, South Africa to Trinidad.<\/p>\n
Shared Pleasure<\/em>\u00a0was a nice 35\u2032 sloop designed for club racing and cruising. I owned it with a work friend, Barry Lewis. He adopted her shortly after purchase.<\/p>\n The first\u00a0Shearwater<\/em>\u00a0was a 36\u2032 sloop with comfortable accommodations and a fairly shallow draft designed for cruising in smaller bays and rivers that might be a bit too shallow for many sailboats. The theory is that I would not run aground as often, but it turned out, I just went into thinner water. She served me well for about 15 years as I transitioned from a 16\u2032 Hobie Cat daysailer to a USCG licensed Master who ocean sailed as far as the Virgin Islands on several adventures.<\/p>\n Shearwater\u00a0<\/em>became\u00a0Shearwater II,\u00a0<\/em>the beautiful 43\u2032 Voyage Catamaran purchased at the factory in Paarden Island, just outside Cape Town. During the five years I lived aboard, I sailed across the Atlantic to Trinidad and about 23 other countries according to my hard-to-read passport. I also sailed to Cape Cod, Houston (twice), and Bermuda, once on\u00a0Shearwater II<\/em>\u00a0and a second trip as a delivery skipper. Bermuda was the most difficult sailing I encountered.<\/p>\n A planned trip to Europe and the Mediterranean never happened because 9\/11 triggered second thoughts from my insurance company and my crew. It seemed safer to stay in our half of the world.<\/p>\n Shearwater II<\/em>\u00a0led to a brief stint at home ownership in a nice community in Florida.<\/p>\n Then I adopted\u00a0Shearwater III,\u00a0<\/em>an older Gemini Catamaran in need of lots of love. A year later she had new sails, new interior, new plumbing and new bedding so I set off to sail the East Coast to Washington, DC where she blew an engine. This Gemini was outboard powered so I was able to drift into the nearest marina and motor off the next day with a brand new Mercury outboard.<\/p>\n Engine failures on older boats are common since the engines are infrequently run and sprayed continuously with salt water. A 20+ year old engine served its time and one delay for a new engine install is far better than the weeks I had to spend each time my previous Diesels acted up.<\/p>\n Shearwater III\u00a0<\/em>sold in a few days for a fair price temporarily ending our sailing era.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sailboats I\u2019ve owned several boats over the years, ranging from a 7\u2032 thing that would not sail upwind to a 43\u2032 Catamaran that carried my crew and me from Cape Town, South Africa to Trinidad. Shared Pleasure Shared Pleasure\u00a0was a nice 35\u2032 sloop designed for club racing and cruising. I owned it with a work … Continue reading Stu’s Previous Boats<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":6576,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6233","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6233"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6650,"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6233\/revisions\/6650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shearwater-sailing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}The first 3\u00a0Shearwater\u00a0<\/em>Sailboats<\/h4>\n