Charlie: Well here we are back on If Only for few days. It's good to be able to unwind. We've now got passage oranised from St Maarten to Panama with Hannah and Matt - they were on the ARC and we've met them a couple of times, and most importantly they did the Atlantic crossing quickly with no reported breakages and 'ate well, caught fish and relaxed'. Their boat's called Nooka and we're meeting them on Monday the 21st. We're planning to top in Bonaire so they can go diving and I may have even pursuaded H to do some too!
When we get to Panama we've arranged (via www.findacrew.net) to meet Stuart and sail through the Canal and on to NZ by November. Having been twice bitten by terrible skippers/boats we produced a LONG list of questions which he was kind enough to answer...

- Can you tell us a bit about your background and experience, specifically what significant journeys have you skippered on?
- When was the boat last sailed by you (not motored)?
- How old are the sails and the running rigging?
- What preparations are you making for a long ocean passage in terms of equipment, avoiding wear on sails & spreaders, halyards etc... and provisioning, cooking rotas, watch rotas etc.. ?
- Can you / do you cook?
- How many people are you expecting to have on board for the Pacific crossing?
- What equipment do you have on board? Liferaft, SSB, Watermaker, EPIRB etc..
If you have SSB, do you have experience using it - there is an SSB on the boat we're currently on, but no-one on board knows how to use it! If no water maker, how large are the water tanks?
- Are you planning to cross the Pacific as part of an SSB radio net?
- Where are you planning to visit in the Pacific, what's the planned route and how long do you want to take? We'd really like to see the Galapagos and take our time crusing the islands...
- How do you normally plot your course? GPS chart plotter? GPS + Paper charts etc...?
- How much do you expect things to cost and what are we expected to pay for?
- Do you have a slot booked for going through the Canal, when do you need to leave and how flexible is your timing?

I feel encouraged by the fact that he was actually able to answer these questions, our previous two skippers (read idiots) would not have been able to do so.

I felt pretty guilty leaving David on Santana in Union Island. Without a crew he couldn't move the boat - especially as the engine was bust. So he was stuck at anchor there until he either got more crew or got his engine fixed (or both). Helen said he treated us badly and took advantage so I shouldn't feel bad, but I just don't like to see people stuck, no matter how revolting they are or how much he took advantage. Anyway, I voted with my feet so I was fed up enough to overcome my guilt! Our progress had been so slow, every time we did even a short passage we'd have to stop for days for repairs! - First time it was the gear selecor mechanism for the engine, second time it was the mainsail, third time it was the engine overheating and setting fire to all the oil that had been spilled all over it! This was on top of the rest of the massive list of stuff that needed to be done - fix the outboard, fix the dinghy punctures, fix the leaks in the forepeak hatch, fix the log, fix the depth gauge, fix the wind gauge (I could go on...). Plus he didn't shower for many days even when he had the opportunity and had really started to smell, the cat walked its litter over all the surfaces - he thought it was cute and did nothing to prevent it, he left open tins of catfood in the fridge (bear in mind that sailing fridges are normally top-opening hatches in kitchen surfaces, so stuff is normally stacked inside. If you leave open things in there they almost always get upset and pour their contents over everything else in the fridge.)

He was frail enough that when he went forward whilst at sea, he nearly fell overboard, had to be told what charts to buy, didn't navigate, couldn't operate the sails, didn't cook (except when we were out!), so on our last passage the ONLY useful function he performed was steering! Again I could go on, but I think that's enough ranting and complaining for now!!