Cruising spring/summer 2007

This season's cruise on Avante will take us from Victoria, Canada to Juneau, Alaska and back. It's a trip of approximately 2200 nm through magnificent areas of pristine wilderness. We spent last winter doing research on the area, studying charts and taking a series of Red Cross courses to help us handle those medical emergencies we hope never to have. We feel prepared, excited and eager to launch.

For those who may not recall, Avante is a 52' performance cruiser made by J Boat. Officially, she's called a J/160. We bought Avante in April 2006. She was then in San Diego. Last July 2006, we sailed her from San Diego to Seattle. We then returned to Telluride to enjoy the rest of the summer there, and, in the early fall, we headed back to the Pacific Northwest for 6 weeks of sailing through the San Juan and Gulf Islands. In total, we cruised almost 2500 nm in 2006. Avante wintered on the hard in British Columbia while we enjoyed the winter in Telluride.

Our 10-year goal is to sail as much of the world as we are interested in doing. We will do this in segments, sailing for a while, then leaving the boat in various ports while we return to our other lives. This season our cruise to Alaska should last from late May till early August.

On Sunday, May 6th, we left Telluride, Colorado, dropping Jake off at "doggy summer camp". We drove north to Seattle and had time for dinner with Telluride friends, Marilyn and Tom Fleming. Tuesday morning we caught the ferry to Sidney on Vancouver Island. Of course, the first thing we did was drive to Canoe Cove Marina to check out Avante. She spent the winter cradled on land. Her new bottom paint job looks great, but, to our dismay, many of the smaller projects the yard was supposed to do had not been done. Dealing with boat repairs is teaching Bill a deeper understanding of the word "patience". Some of our list will be done before we set sail this Monday. Some will get done next winter.

Avante weathered the winter well. It does need a good wash down and polish. Bill seems to have forgotten that "polish, oil and wax" were descriptive words we agreed were not going into my boat vocabulary. We'll see. I feel there's enough for me to get cleaned, organized and provisioned below decks without having time to worry about above decks for now. The boat is to go back in the water this Friday. Saturday and Sunday are to be work days with plans to set sail on Monday.