kateandjohnsail.boats

Well, it seems that our fall sailing season has come to an end. We are in Marmaris, Turkey for Thanksgiving week—a week to be thankful and also to prepare Quintessa for winter. This year we will have some maintenance done so she will be on the hard in the boatyard here with a few hundred…

Our last visitor of this sailing season was our friend Sara, a salty sailor with whom we have raced for several years on Iris, a Hylas 42 on the Columbia River. Sara is a great sailor, flexible traveler, and all-around fun human: therefore a good fit for Quintessa. We have now deployed all of Quintessa’s…

Last spring we unexpectedly realized that sailing the Med meant that we could have a front row seat to quite a bit of volcanic activity: we viewed Vesuvius looming over Pompeii, buzzed glowing Stromboli at night, climbed to the mouth of the original Vulcan’s blacksmith shop, and parked the boat under a smoldering Etna. Months…

­When we purchased Quintessa a year ago, I had inspected the boat from top to bottom, but had not actually sailed on her. This is actually quite normal, as we were quite familiar with the model of the boat, and a yacht surveyor had taken her out on a sea trial. Imagine my surprise, however,…

There are only five identified Blue Zones in the world, and in the course of twelve months we have stumbled onto two of them. The first was Sardinia, last fall. Now we have reached the Greek island of Ikaria, where many of the people enjoy good health past the age of 90, with quite a…

­My friend Johanna, who is married to a Dakolopolos, has requested more mythology. Well, today is Johanna’s day, because we have been transiting along the stunning south coast of Ikaria, Greece. Just as I was speculating about the name of the island, we spotted an intriguing spot and slowed to investigate. Sure enough, it was…

Long before John and I resolved to live on a cruising sailboat, our friends Ann and Ed showed us how it is done. Windswept Dreams, a 39 foot Island Packet, was the boat of their dreams, and in 2008 we joined them for a week in the Bahamas, and a few years later a week…

Seventy-one. That is how many Hylas 49 sailing yachts were ever manufactured since they were designed by Sparkman and Stevens in 19  . Presumably most of these boats are still afloat around the world, many of them on the east coast of the Americas, since they were conceived and created especially for conditions in the…

Once again we have found ourselves in a town on the day of a national holiday, when the people take to the streets to celebrate an important historical event. October 28 is Oxi Day, when Greeks loudly and proudly remember the day in 1940 when Mussolini offered to not attack Greece so long as the…

“Kate” is what I said to the Montenegrin woman who was taking our laundry. We hadn’t had access to a laundromat in a couple of weeks and the flies were beginning to swarm around us. K-a-j-t is what she carefully wrote down. Two countries later, the same thing happened when we made a restaurant reservation.…