A short history of SV Companion -
In April of 2005, Kim and I signed an agreement to purchase a Leopard Catamaran and place it in the Moorings Charter Program for 5 years.

Buying the last 40' Catamaran built in 2005 by Robinson and Caine of South Africa, the boat was to be chartered in Placencia, Belize. It arrived in Belize in late November, and was used by Moorings Chartering until June of 2010. During that time, we were able to sail our boat many times, and have a few charters in other parts of the world; LaPaz Mexico, Abaco Bahama, British Virgin Islands, Nice France, Gocek Turkey (Turquoise Coast).

Max , our nephew and his dad, Mike will be joining, Kim and I for part of the voyage. We are also looking forward to meeting family and friends along the way.

Our blog is intended to share our journey, memories and information to sailors.

Enjoy, Dale & Kim

PS: 10 years after the start of our voyage, we are living in LaConner with SV Companion and the adventure continues.











Thursday, December 1, 2011

Birthday celebration!

Birthday celebration!

Nov 21 night was crazy - a great way to ring in Ed’s birthday …
We had sailed to another outcropping of islands - Coco Bandores
They were gorgeous and pristine - the water - the beautiful blue that we have so come to love.

Our own private beach ...

Set our anchor in deeper than normal waters - about 30 feet deep - 
I sometimes get a feeling or inkling that something isn’t quite right - almost a sixth sense…so I stayed up and put myself on a self-imposed anchor watch for about 5 hours … then of course the wind and waves kicked up a bit and by 1AM we knew we were dragging… not a good thing when there are reefs and other boats close by.. so we had to lift the anchor and get ourselves out to the open sea - tough to do in the dark let alone a downpour that came from no where… That sure got all of our adrenaline going - we took shifts going in circles till the dawn broke.  Motoring one way and sailing back downwind. But at least we didn’t hurt the boat….  Dale and Ed took the morning shift and sailed Companion to another little anchorage near a village  - Rio Diablo - that had some provisions available. Quite an interesting little village; connected by a walking bridge two of the poorest islands we have seen so far…. but they did have food to purchase.

We enjoyed being stable that morning - with all of us taking naps and recouping from the evening “drill”.  And of course we needed to be rested for the birthday celebration!

Thank goodness we had decorated the boat before the “episode” ….  Pretty sure Ed enjoyed his day - Right before happy hour … we had a special DVD birthday greeting from Adri and Rylan - it was nice to be able to surprise Ed with a “family treat!” 


Dinner for the Birthday Boy was a lobster red curry - pretty darn fabulous if I say so myself. And of course Ed had to tempt everyone with his verbal rendition of what his favorite birthday cake, pie or Blizzard might have been for the evening.  Oh well - we need civilization for that to happen.

Finishing the evening off with a couple of rounds of “Oh Hell!”  It was a good day and we were safe.






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