Four very happy sailors are celebrating the sale of Moonshadow to her new owners  Deb and John Rogers on Tuesday March 27 in Jacksonville Florida.

John grew up in San Diego in a sailing family that includes the likes of Dennis Conner.  Deb started her sailing career on her first date with John aboard a sail boat in Coronado Bay.  For 39 years they have owned various yachts and dreamed about spending their retirement living aboard and cruising.  We are all delighted that they chose Moonshadow to be their new home.

We couldn’t be more pleased that Deb and John will be looking after Moonshadow and continuing the adventures which she is so well suited for.  They invite you to follow their advenures on www.saillegacy.com.

As for us, we are definitely not hanging up our sailing gloves and have plans for some different types of boating and travel.  Watch this space!

Brooks and Gatehouse, B & G or “Broken Gauges.” Whatever you may think of them, they still rate pretty high with cruising and racing sailors alike. We still have most of the original set installed on Moonshadow in 1986 and they continue to serve us well.

From time to time we have a minor issue and need some service. There aren’t many companies that service, let alone stock spare parts for electronic gear that is a quarter of a century old. The big budget boats change this stuff out every five years or so as a matter of course.

As we approached the Canary Islands last Fall, bits of the masthead unit for our wind instruments began to appear on the deck. I decided to go aloft sooner rather than later to see what was going on 65 feet above the water. While the wind instruments were working OK, the fitting connecting the wand to the top of the mast had basically disintegrated and the whole affair was being held on by a stainless steel clip. Great-we were about to do a trans-Atlantic passage and our wind gear might not have even made it to the start line.

I called Brooks and Gatehouse headquarters in England and spoke to a very helpful fellow in technical support. He asked me the model number of the masthead unit. Of course I had no idea. He gave me a link to a PDF file which I downloaded while I was still chatting with him on Skype. Cool-there was our exact unit in one of the drawings. Even more cool, it was still in production after 26 years. So much for “planned obsolescence.” I ordered the unit and it reached us in Las Palmas a few days before the ARC Rally. The local B & G service agent installed the unit the day before the start of the rall. We dodged that bullet!

During the Rally, our Hornet Cruise Repeater (pictured above) started to play up. I can’t believe we’re having these problems after only 25 years! One of our crew, the ace mechanic Graham Jones, managed to dissect the instrument, diagnose the problem and then fabricate a new key pad which had deteriorated from years of use/abuse and U/V exposure. We had wind instruments till we got to Florida.

Graham’s fix was temporary at best, so I began calling some of the local B & G people in Ft. Lauderdale when we returned to the boat. None of the authorised dealers had parts let alone any interest in fixing my 25 year old gear and were hoping I’d hand over ten grand for some new stuff. How UN-Kiwi.

A bit more searching on line and I foud the web site of an outfit called Myles Marine Electronics in DeLand, Florida which sells and services new and used marine electronics. Their web site is www.myleselectronics.com I rang Myles and asked if he could help me out with my “broken gauges.” He said he had a stock of old parts and felt confident he could repair the instrument. I packed up the Cruise Repeater, as well as my Hornet 4 Sailing Monitor which had a niggly fault in the illumination, and sent them to Myles via UPS on a Friday. I spoke to him the following Tuesday and he had both items repaired and sent them back to me at the marina via UPS. They arrived the follwing day, I hooked them back up and both work great. Not only did he replace the keypad with what appears to be a new one, he replaced the old and fading liquid crystal display and we now have bright clear characters

Myles also sells some new gear and services other brands, so if you have anything in need of repair that you can remove and send off, HE IS THE MAN!

A mailmanatee at a waterfront home along the New River

A month had flown by since we arrived back in Fort Lauderdale.  With our new Bimini top completed and everything else on board tikkity boo, we headed down the New River from “Marina Miguel” to the Atlantic Ocean.

Moonshadow tied up at “Marina Miguel” in Ft. Lauderdale

“Marina Miguel” is behind the waterfront home of sailing friends Mike and Sue, just a short ways upstream from downtown Fort Lauderdale.  Thanks to Sue, Moonshadow was well looked after while we were at home for the summer.

We were looking to get out of the hurricane belt for what NOAA predicts will be an active hurricane season, and plan to head up the East Coast of the States for some easy cruising along the Intracoastal Waterway.  The most challenging part of the first leg was to get from the New River to the Atlantic Ocean.

This spit of land known as “Little Florida” is the back yard to a lovely waterfront home and creates a hairpin turn in the New River.

One draw bridge behind us, four to go

Two more before downtown Ft. Lauderdale

The Downtowner Saloon is a great little happy hour joint

A good place to stop during rush hours when the bridges are kept closed

Things can get a bit cozy in the downtown area

And we’re a lot smaller than some of the traffic we’ve seen on the River

Like the mighty Jungle Queen which does numerous daily tourist cruises on the River

Rush hour traffic in downtown Fort Lauderdale

On either side of town, there are lots of lovely waterfront homes

Fort Lauderdale is called the Venice of the US.  Not a lot of palm trees in Venice.

We arrived at the 17th Street Bridge just minutes before its hourly opening

Past the 17th Street bridge we hoisted the main (and broke the main halyard) and had a lovely 45 mile day sail up to Palm Beach in pleasant trade wind conditions.  The Gulf Stream gave us a positve current of about two knots so we averaged nearly ten knots while we were out in the Atlantic.  We even caught a small bluefin tuna which we returned to the Sea Gods in hopes of a larger offering.  It was good to be sailing again!

The new Bimini top for the aft cockpit will give us some great shade while helming

“Iggy,” who lives next door at Al Capone’s old place, was the first to hop on board and enjoy the shade from the new Bimini

We’re planning to head north in a few days for some lazy cruising up the east coast.  Plans are loose but we want to enjoy a bit of the South East Coast and the Intracoastal Waterway and move Moonshadow into (hopefully) safer waters while we reason with hurricane season.