CHANGES With reports this month from Sierra Wind on supplementing the cruising kitty
with a different sort of cruise; Cool Change on life choices and the right time to go; Part II of Element's wide-ranging South Seas cruise before COVID hit; followed by scattered Cruise Notes toward morning.
Eitan and Amanda are hoping to do a puddle jump this year — COVID permitting.
Annapolis, Maryland. In November 2020, we were the youngest boat on the Nada Ha-Ha, with plans of crossing the Pacific in early spring as the first leg of our attempt at a circumnavigation. Due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and country closures, we begrudgingly decided, along with many other boats, that the crossing would have to wait until 2021. With those plans thwarted, two of our crew decided to take to land and backpack across Mexico. Eitan and I decided to wait out the year, exploring the Sea of Cortez and the Pacific coast of Mexico, and appreciating the extra space aboard our 36-footer. Lost in translation: After months of smelling-theroses cruising, steering from an air-conditioned pilothouse seems a bit … removed.
Although we were saddened not to cross the Pacific, it allowed us to travel at a much more relaxed pace and enjoy more places with cruising friends, both old and new. We sailed along the Mexican mainland south, to Zihuatanejo, then turned around to head back north. We enjoyed the French bakery in Barra de Navidad, tequila tasting in Tenacatita, and the Full Moon Festival in Manzanillo. While returning to Puerto Vallarta, we got to reconnect with other boats we'd met during the Nada Ha-Ha, including Atalaya, Kismet, Sauce-Sea, and Bohemia. Since Eitan has a 500-ton captain's license, he receives regular solicitations for deliveries and private charters. With our newfound downtime, he began exploring short-term captain opportunities. He was contacted by the owner of a Nordhavn 68, a luxury, trawler-style motor yacht, to travel up the East Coast of the US from Florida, and spend the summer in New England. Although the owners were only looking for a captain, they were willing to include me as a deckhand/stewardess. So, we spent our last few weeks of April on Sierra Wind, sailing back up into the Sea of Cortez, hauling out at Marina Puerto Escondido, and boarding a flight to Fort Lauderdale. Although I had put my career on hold in October 2020 in hopes of taking a couple of years off to circumnavigate, it seems I was already out of my mini-retirement and back to work. Except now, I was working even more hours and making a small fraction of my former salary. But being a 'deck stew' didn't seem like much work at first. I found myself listening to audiobooks and podcasts as I detailed the interior, washed linens, and aided in meal prepping — all things I was used to doing in my free time. The first month, while waiting for contractors to finish work on the boat, Eitan and I did the weekly washdown and continued to ready the boat for departure from Florida. Although working on a luxury yacht is glamorized by shows like Bravo's Below Deck, I quickly realized it's primarily just cleaning, laundering, doing dishes, and more cleaning, even for a comparatively small, 68-foot yacht. SIERRA WIND
SIERRA WIND
Sierra Wind — S2 11.0 (36 ft) Eitan Zur and Amanda Hi-c A Different Sort of Cruising San Diego After appearing on the cover of the April 2021 issue of Latitude 38, the crew of Sierra Wind is once again at latitude 38°N, but this time on the East Coast, in
We finally departed Florida in early June and headed north along the Atlantic coast. I was used to the steady, rolling swells of the Pacific, but the Atlantic was an entirely new feeling with short, choppy waves. Although the boat has hydraulic stabilizers to minimize rolling, I found myself feeling a little seasick, which I had never felt on a sailboat. I attributed the seasickness to the disconnection from the elements. On a motor yacht, most of the time underway is spent in the climatecontrolled pilothouse, where you hardly have a sense of the wind or sea state. Due to this, combined with the artificial movement of the stabilizers, my body had a
