I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Emily and I have been busy working to fill the cruising kitty, renovating a house we recently purchased and also making more upgrades on the boat. I managed to get a good deal on a slightly used simrad radar unit that will connect with the navigation system currently onboard. That will make life MUCH nicer offshore and also when running into fog on the river. I started looking into radar pole sets and decided to make my own carbon fiber pole and mounting system after seeing the prices. Yikes! Stay tuned for updates on that project. I also need to finish the dodger and cockpit canvas project sometime this spring. We will use the new year to tackle these projects, perform needed maintenance, explore the land between the lakes, and prepare the boat for more adventures on the open water. Many people ask us how we cruise on a lightweight, fin keel boat. Our Dehler has been an amazing little ship. You can load her to the waterline and she still performs beautifully and can regularly keep up with larger sailboats with the canvas(sails) up. She is also well designed and quite robust which is reassuring when pounding into waves, getting nailed by waterspouts, or bouncing off floating objects in the middle of the ocean. Don’t believe me? Don’t take my word for it. Check out this video of a sister ship put through some pretty nasty tests. Happy new year everyone. Dream big, sail fast,live slow and live life on the run.
