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                                                                  ASPERIDA

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Conclusion

How did I get myself into this situation? I guess if you are invited onto an incredible trip, a sail on the ocean to the Island of Tortola, which would have been pretty exciting in the very least, it is difficult to refuse. Well I bit the bait ‘A sail to Tortola’. I myself who is attracted to a life of adventure and excitement, this trip seemed to fit the ticket.

  If I look back into the near past, this is not the first time that this has happened to me. A year ago I was invited to sail in the ‘Marion to Bermuda’ race. Again I was immediately interested. So the Captain of that boat sends me a survey of his boat indicating how great of shape the boat was in. I go to visit the boat, and found it to be a disaster case. The life lines were full of rust and sagging, cotter pins missing, the forestay had a rusted ring clip holding it in place. So feeling that I was going to be involved in this race  I immediately starting working on the boat in order to get it ready. It turns out that the boat was in so bad of shape that the race committee failed it on two inspections. The captain, he was a pretty nice guy, unfortuatully though with not much In the way of common sense, was still determined to enter the race. So he leaves his port in Connecticut to sail to the start line of the race in Marion, Mass.. BTW the originally crew of three all dropped out for various reasons. I was the only make up crew. Anyway as we are sailing out of the Long Island Sound the boat is literally falling apart underneath us. After about 6 or so hours of sailing I tell the Captain that his boat was not going to make it. At this point he believes me and we sail it into a near by port.

     A mistake I made with this captain, and also the captain of ASPERIDA is that in both cases I asked them to take the boat out beforehand to get an idea of performance, you know how it sails, In both cases the captains had an excuse as to how they were not able to do that. Either because of a lack of time or in the case of  ASPERIDA, once he got it out of the marina he would not be able to get it back. I believed that. But, you know, he could of sailed it out of the marina on the Toms River and only returned it to the front of the marina and anchored there. He could of used his dinghy to transport people and supplies back and forth. In this way we might have had an idea of how the boat performed. Actually though, If the trials runs were not done at night we would not of had the full impact of the boat’s short comings.

    Another thing, which is equally as important as the condition of the boat, is the personality of the captain. A short cruise with this person beforehand hand, maybe, could  tell you  of what you might be able to expect from him. The hint to me was when I had put myself on the boat permanently. It was at that time that the captain turned out to be not so pleasant. A funny thing though, for the two weeks before he was pretty nice, pretty friendly. Also just about any suggestion that I made to him, with respect to  getting the boat ready, he accepted.
  They say that a Sailing trip is not about getting from one point to another, It is about what happens along the way. Honestly I am happy that I went through this experience. Just like the one that I referred to from the year before. I learned a lot. About boats, about people..