Dr John Savage who had just purchased a pre owned 37ft Etap sailboat.
John needed his boat moved from Newcastle New Hampshire where it was located down to its new home in Beaufort South Carolina.
Since this was his first sailboat, and not being from this area he hired me to deliver his new boat as a training delivery.
He picked is crew, which would be his son John, and his nephew Preston Luce.
He flew in from up state New York, and his son and Preston flew in from Florida and West Virginia respectively.
We left New Castle on October 19th 2009. It was a cold, and windy day but it was sunny and the weather outlook for the next couple of days looked pretty good. The weather on the day before, when I picked them all up at the airport, was nasty being cold and snowy. We spent that day provisioning the boat for the trip.
During the trip on a new boat, with a new, inexperienced crew we hit all kinds of weather. The crew had to deal with a bit of sea sickness probably encouraged by having a meal at Burger king before we left.
During the trip we dealt with a few mechanical problems such as the motor over heating, loosing battery power to our instruments, and the bilge to the shower not pumping out. We also had to figure how the radar interconnected to the chart plotter worked.
John and John left the boat in the hands of Preston Luce and myself once we made it to Hampton VA. The worst part of the trip being over, Preston and I took the boat down the intercostal water way to Beaufort NC then back out to sea for a Yankee sleigh ride in front of northeast winds that blew us to Beaufort SC in 3 days.
The only problem on this part of the trip was that the propeller fell of the shaft. We only found this out three days later as we tried to motor up Port Royal sound.
So in 13 days we were able to safely deliver this boat From New Hampshire to South Carolina while learning how to sail and operate a cruising sail boat. It is what I do, I have been on quite a few boats now and as problems come up I usually know how to deal with them, plus I have the understanding that someone new to sailing or one who only gets a few weekends out a year does have a lot of experience with, their boat so I have a lot of patience with them.
If you would like you can read the log Sailing south on the Ker mor