SV Sara B sailing around the world
SV Sara B
The 'Sara B' is a
Lello 34 sloop that
was build near Johannesburg, South African and launched in Durban in
1979.
The couple that built her sailed from Durban to Cape Town with help, and then headed for the Mediterranean by themselves. Both of them spend the whole time sea-sick, and after several days turned back to Cape Town, tied her to the dock, and put up a 'For Sale' sign.
My ex-wfe and I bought her on 29 February 1984, and set off for the USA a year later after figuring out the basics of sailing.
Voyage 1: Cape Town - Florida
We left Cape Town and got thumped all the way to St. Helena because I thought it would be best to sail where the isobars between the south Atlantic high and the coastal low were closest together.
We reached the tropics halfway between St. Helena and Ascension Island. One day is was cold, and the next it was warm. We stopped at Natal, Forteleza, Sao Luis, and Belem along the northeastern coast of Brazil, and then ducked up the Amazon river a little.
After French Guiana we arrived at Grenada and hung in the southern Caribbean to avoid the hurricanes. When my family came to visit we moved north, and survived an overnight storm passing.
It seemed as if we would never reach the Virgin Islands or the Bahamas, but we finally did, and then arrived at Lake Worth, Florida.
Voyage 2: Florida - New Zealand
Fort Lauderdale to Nassau was wet and rough, because I once again misjudged the weather. A bad first passage makes the rest of the trip seem perfect.
Voyage 3: New Zealand - Sydney
The Tasman Sea has a bad reputation and this passage was marred by a tropical cycle than came south named Sarah.
Voyage 4: Sydney - Venice
I left Australia sailing by myself. I'd never done various things aboard, and I had to learn them quickly. When you're docking or anchoring by yourself, one person can't stay at the tiller and engine controls while the other tends the lines or deals with the anchor at the opposite end of the boat.
Voyage 4: Venice - Malaysia
Friends and I were looking at the map during our winter in Venice and decided the western Mediterranean was only going to be expensive marinas, which are no fun to enter single-handed, and then the Caribbean once again.
If we went east …
There was Israel, which is always interesting, for the wrong reasons, India – which was worth more time than I'd given it, and then southeast Asia.