THE EARLY ADVENTURES OF BEYOND THE BLUE David Zaharik The dream started in 1975 when I declared, “when I retire, I’m going to sail around the world”, and in 2019 the dream began to become a reality. Against all odds and during years of layoffs, in 1979 I started a career as a pilot and, after almost 40 years with Air Canada, I did indeed retire. Within a year Boréal Yachts, in Tréguier on France’s North Brittany coast, completed construction of our semi-custom aluminium Boréal 47 and Beyond the Blue was launched in February 2019.
Jean-François Delvoye (left), the designer and joint-owner of Boréal Yachts, shakes with David on the deal for a Boréal 47 In early May 2019 my wife Scarlet and I moved aboard and began the learning curve, not only of a new and relatively complex sailing boat but of tides and tidal currents. We come from the west coast of British Columbia and thought we knew about tides and currents, but in Northern France the range can reach 10m and in places the currents can run up to 9∙5 knots! Attention to detail in planning is essential. After a few training sails we left in early June for a delightful visit to the Channel Islands, in the English Channel northeast of Tréguier. It was our first experience with ‘cills’. Because of the huge tidal range, many marinas build walls or cills at the entrance to trap the water as tide drops. It was quite something to wait for high tide to cross the cill, trusting that we had calculated the time correctly. We spent a week motoring around Jersey, Sark and Guernsey due to lack of wind, and returned to Tréguier for 196
