In 2006 we sold our home, bought Zenitude and moved on board. At that time Zenitude was just 3 years old, soon she will be
14. Since then we have sailed over 30,000 miles and enjoyed our cruising life immensely.
We find the sailing enjoyable when everything goes well on a perfect day, on
one of those days when you set up your sails and just go where you want to go
without having to change sails twice per hour, but it has always been the 'getting
there' and not the 'sailing there' that makes us happy. This is what defines us
as 'cruisers' and not as 'sailors' but despite of all the ups and downs, we love this cruising
life.
Before we bought Zenitude, we were actually looking for a
long-range trawler. At the time, we were living in the US East coast and after
spending about a year researching and looking for the right boat we could not
find anything that was right for us at a price we could afford. At some point, our
friend John came to our rescue by suggesting we should take a serious look at
sailing catamarans. At this proposition, we replied horrified that we always
had motor boats and had no idea how to handle sails. No matter, he said, I will
teach you and besides a catamaran has two engines suitable for going in trawler
mode and on top of that, he went on, you have sails for getting you as far as
you want to go. It was a good argument and you can read all about this story
here. Almost 100% convinced we went on a search for our sailing catamaran and
when we found Zenitude, we knew she was the one. Since then, never for a moment
we regretted our decision.
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| Cruising with Zenitude |
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| At anchor somewhere |
Eleven years and all those miles later, we find ourselves
with a dilemma, we are getting old. The stamina is not always there, we are
avoiding long trips, we are lazy when it comes to handling sails, especially
the big main and we are trying to avoid overnights. About a year ago, we
started thinking and pondering if we should switch back to the trawler/motor
cat idea, less work and more speed. We even pretended we were in the market and
got to see some boats that could be affordable. Our shopping tour did not last
too long, anything we saw looked like a big demotion of our cruising life.
The
problem, as it turns out, is we are in love with Zenitude and by now, as Oscar puts it, we know
every single screw she has. Selling Zenitude did not feel right and it seemed
like a too drastic measure.
After a lot of thinking and research we
started looking at our dilemma from a different angle. What if we re-power
Zenitude, give her two new engines a bit more powerful, change her propellers
for better and more efficient ones and treat her as a power cat when we do not
feel like handling sails.
This ‘what-if’ scenario started looking like a good idea.
Serious costing considerations came next. Negotiations for new Volvo Penta MD
40’s and their installation proved affordable if we could sell our old Volvo
Penta MD-30 engines, which we did and sooner than expected our 2 engines went
to another cat in need. Now our two new engines are waiting for installation in
May and Oscar is busy preparing the engine ‘rooms’ to receive two shiny new
engines.
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| Port engine 'room' ready |
We think these changes will better suit our new (older age) cruising life style. Gone are the long ocean passages, instead coastal cruising in warm Queensland is our current pattern. If we change our minds, Zenitude is still with us to take us as far as we want to go.
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| At the yard in Gold Coast City Marina, ready for the new engines |
G.
