We've lived on a 22 m
steel boat (converted to a houseboat) for 37 years. OK, she doesn't sail, but she moves around a lot in a blow. We stay fit by cutting, splitting and stacking firewood, building, rebuilding and refitting and maintaining the external woodwork. I recently built a new jetty, 20m x 6m, from poles, to beam shelves to beams (37 hardwood beams at 95 kg each) to
deck. Then I built a workshop on it.
We're now in the process of selling our property and will be
buying a
Formosa 51, our first 'real' sailing boat (apart from having sailed some smaller boats and having crewed for a short while on a large 3-mast schooner). We'll be sailing the
Formosa in the
Adriatic and the
Med. then up the Atlantic coast. For our 'shakedown'
cruise we'll have the company and
advice of a friend who is qualified as Ocean master, probably also a couple more friends who are sailing enthusiasts.
My wife and I are both 71, and hope for a fair number of years on the boat, possibly including a
circumnavigation (we have lots of far-flung friends we'd like to visit).
We expect that sailing the boat will keep us fit, if not make us even fitter.
Are there any health issues? Well, yes, I have had cancer, but am considered to be clear. Apart from that, we are as reasonably healthy as you could expect from 71 y.o., reasonably fit people.
The shake-down
cruise will be utilised, among other things, to make sure that either of us is capable of single-handing the boat if it should become necessary.
If anybody wishes to offer us
advice, or just tell us we're daft, feel free