WHy WOULD WE TRADE IN THE BELOVED POLÉPOLÉ I?
As you know, we loved our first boat…so why on earth would we want to trade her in for a new model?
In a word…comfort.
Next year we want to get to the pacific, where the distances are long. Our first boat was perfect for the Caribbean, where distances are short (you can island hop day sail all the way from Trinidad to Florida). In contrast, the sails between most of the pacific islands are 4 or 5 days at least, and the main crossing is more like 25 days.
And when you are covering those kind of distances you want a boat designed to do just that.
So we chose….this one. A Catana 53.
SO... HOW IS SHE?
Fantastic. Fast, fun and dependable.
The top speed we ever hit in old PolePole was 12 knots. and that was surfing down a wave, feeling terrified that we were going to take off. New PolePole maintains 15/16 knots and hits 22 knots in a good blow. But the best bit is that she feels stable and safe while doing it.
It is an amazing feeling….in pitch darkness, without a hand on a wheel, in a 15 ton apartment, flying over waves at 35km per hour. You can’t sleep, because we fly over the waves and levitate off the bed and then come down with a big thump…its more like riding a toboggan than anything you’d recognise as sailing.
AND WHAT's SHE LIKE?
Catana are the boating equivalent of Toyota Land Cruisers…not the fastest or the prettiest, but a boat you can trust to get you in there and back again.
So what makes it so perfect for the job?
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It is bigger - at 53 feet (vs 40 ft for our old boat) and bigger means faster
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It is more rugged. Just bristling with carbon fibre
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It is more luxurious - we have a dishwasher, a full size washing machine and a water-maker that makes 4x as much water as the old one.
Aside from that, it is very similar to the old PolePole
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She is a catamaran - loads of space, faster, stable and with a lovely trampoline for the gals to suntan on
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She is an “open design”. This is hard to explain, so let's try an analogy…when you buy an old house, you improve it by knocking the dining room into the lounge and into the kitchen.
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She has “aft helms” - again, hard to explain, but right at the back and the outside of the boat, so you get to see the sails and feel the breeze.
WELL, WHAT'S THE PLAN, CAP-I-TAN?
Side note - the one bit of trouble that we won’t forget in a hurry, was when I needed to go up a mast to free a line - in big swells, 25 metres up is a very scary place to be - and I have the bruises to prove it. But the funny part was that Jen got home, told the kids that i had been flying around the mast like a wrecking ball, which inspired this song….
We picked her up from Catana’s yard on the French/Spanish Mediterranean border in mid November.
After two weeks of sea trials (and fixing teething troubles) we picked up a crew (the buyers of the next Catana 53 to come off the line) and sailed for Madrid. We had long periods of motoring, some winds at 36 knots (eek) and some glorious sailing.
From Gibraltar we picked up another crew and sailed to the Canaries. Again, the god of wind chose to run out of puff and we landed up doing quite a lot of motoring…but we also managed to use our downwind sails (more of that later) with an experienced crew on hand to get us out of trouble
And now.. we are preparing to cross the atlantic. Luke and Hannie are coming with us, and Phoebe is seeing us off from the Canaries AND welcoming us into St Lucia for Jenny’s 60th birthday. If you haven’t picked your tasteful gift yet, Phoebe has an excellent recommendation service that i can recommend.
From St Lucia we will spend 5 months getting from St Lucia to Panama, via Colombia, where we will leave her for hurricane season. And then next year we will go through the Panama canal, and do the Pacific!
