It is the early wee hours of Thanksgiving Day and as I prepare to spend the day with family, my thoughts reflect on how thankfull I am to have discovered sailing some 5 years ago. Sailing as brought untold richness to our lives every day we are on the water enjoying our wonderful Robert Perry designed Islander 28, Aurion. We have goals for the future that involve sailing, we have a closeness that would be much more difficult to nurture if it were not for sailing. We spend countless enjoyable hours reliving past summer days on the water together and we spend even more hours dreaming of our next sailboat. It is a chronic aliment that we both have to be sure, this next-boat-itis! Chronic ailments can come in all forms and if I am forced to pick one, I guess this one is as good as they get.
So in the spirit of next-boat-itis in mind. Drum roll please! The current boat that keeps us happily wasting away our hours is of course another Robert Perry design and one that I have yet to find anything negative about. It is of course the Passport 40, which I wrote about previously and actually forgot about for little awhile. I think that is a sign of something, but it escapes me for the moment.
Any who, back to the dream. There is a gorgeous Passport 40 for sail on Lake Michigan that is killing us not to snatch up immediately. Now, we haven’t looked at it or anything, so don’t take this a some sort of endorsement for this particular yacht. However, she sure looks pretty! I almost didn’t want to bring her to your attention so that we could keep her for ourselves, but seems we are not really in the market right now I thought that seemed a little selfish and not in keeping with the Thanksgiving spirit.
According to an article written by John Kretschmer in his Used Boats Notebook column for Sailing Magazine, John writes that the Passport 40 exhibits a “soft ride” which made me think back to how our own Islander 28 handles in larger waves. This past summer on one particularly windy day of 25 to 29 knots, the waves had built up as large as we’ve seen so far on Lake Pepin and as we made our way back to the marina under the iron genny, I went up to the bow and was astonished at how softly the bow rose and fell on each wave. No pounding, just up and down soft as you please. In previous boats we have owned that experience would have been very different I’m afraid.
I can well imagine how having a sea kindly boat can make for a much more enjoyable time on the sea. There is much more information in his article about this model of course. There is another article written by an owner extolling the virtues of owning a Passport 40 here. This article really got my excitement up!
Coincidentally, a certain nameless individual who is given to loud, boastful bragging, trounced our previous boat speed record of the humble and soft spoken Capt. Puffy on a downwind run that day. The hull speed of our Islander 28 is approximately 6.43758091211288, I’m sure our instruments were malfunctioning at the time, but they were indicating a speed of 7.6 knots for several minutes. Previously 7.3 knots was the record set only minutes before. My arm is still sore from getting bulldozed out of the way so Honey Bunny could grab the helm and the glory!
The end results of all this dreaming and nostalgia is that we have our next new boat all picked out. What a relief!
My wish for you is that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving and all your sailing dreams for the future come true!
Happy Thanksgiving!