Our First Crossing
A young sailor writes about her family's first crossing on their sailboat.

By by Mary Allen, age 9
Posted Sunday, June 12, 2005

 

Mary Allen and her family sail and live full time aboard their boat "Unbound."

 E-mail this page
 Printer-friendly page

We started our first crossing on March 12th, 2005. We sailed from Culebra, Puerto Rico to Georgetown, Bahamas without stopping along the way. It was really fun even though I was worried about thunderstorms or capsizing.

One thing that made me feel better was that we were buddy boating with another boat called Blue Moon. Blue Moon is a really pretty monohull with big sails. My parent’s friends, Walter and Christine, own and sail Blue Moon. Our boat is called Unbound. It is a Fountaine Pajot Venezia 42 catamaran. We have owned it for six months and now live on it full time.

During our crossing we saw dolphins. I think that there were at least 60 of them. The dolphins love to swim in the wake from the bow of our boat. My Mom and Dad took a couple of movies of them. In the movie you can hear Bailey and me going oooooooooooh ooooooooooh! Dolphins are cool, especially when you can watch them off a boat!

On the first two days we weren’t getting anywhere that fast, but on the third day the wind picked up so we were going really fast. We had to reef the sails a couple of times!

You may think it might be boring having to stay on the boat for so many days, but it isn’t! On some crossings I read, crochet, listen to music, play game boy, and lots of other fun things! I also go on watch for a couple of hours with my parents! We see lots of interesting things in the water like bioluminescent things called dinoflagelents.

Our crossing was super fun! It was a great experience and gave me a feeling of accomplishment. Next time I won’t be so afraid!