The Boat, the Crew, the Project

The Sundancer is a completely different kind of boat than the other two I've been crewing on so far. So is the cause of the sailing trip. The boat itself is way bigger, super rustic and more an operating boat than a recreational cruiser's sailboat. The venture is the delivery of a multi-million dollar powerboat accross the Gulf of Mexico and not island hopping and snorkeling all day long.

Captain Steve posted in a Facebook group called "Sailboat Hitchhikers and Crew Connection" that he was looking for crew for a planned journey from Miami to New Orleans and back. As I was in the region anyways and his short explanation sounded extremely interesting I contacted him immediately and as soon as I got to Miami we met up and exchanged further information. Now, a few weeks later I got back to Miami again and Steve even picked me up directly from my previous boat.

The Sundancer is a sailboat, a so-called ketch but it is also equipped with two strong engines which are necessary to tow other boats unless the wind cooperates 100%. A ketch is a two-masted sailboat whose mainmast is taller than the mizzen mast (or aft-mast). A ketch is generally at least 40-foot long, the Sundancer measures 65-foot. The boat was designed and built by captain Steve himself more than 40 years ago. Since then he has been sailing it all the time, taking out people to the Bahamas and Cuba and towing a lot of other boats within the last years. The Sundancer has survived category 5 hurricanes and was running into reefs which cracked not only the keel but also fuel tanks and engine rooms. Nevertheless there hasn't been anything yet that could have stopped Steve from replacing to not only fix it up but even make it better. The boat is incredibly rustic in comparison to recreational sailboats, it isn't equipped with neither a marine radar (for collision avoidance) nor a AIS (Automatic Identification System; digital VHF radio-based transponder system). Right now it does not even have an electric windlass to pull up the anchor so we will have to do that by our muscle power. However, the Sundancer is equipped with all essential and functional facilities which are necessary for a voyage like ours. This journey will be the last one for the Sundancer under captain Steve as he's planning to sell his boat afterwards.

Steve is a real expert on how to save money, in Germany we would call him a "Sparfuchs" or a "Schwabe". We spent one day running from store to store in Miami buying the best deals on groceries for the planned trip. We went to a bakery outlet where we bought plenty of bread, reduced from the normal price of approximately 3-4 Dollars for which it is sold in almost every common store, to less than one dollar. Steve and his wife Barbara have many decades of experience in finding the best offers for everything as they were running a sailing adventure business to the Bahamas and Cuba before getting into the business of towing boats. We were also looking into advertising leaflets trying to find the best price for tomatoes and finally ended up buying them at a local market. So it came that one of the first things we did was unloading a 100 foot long fence he bought the other day from a family who decided to get rid of it and reemplace it with a new one. It will serve as a new burglar-proof protection in combination with hedges of roses at Steve's place in the near future. There is also a daily flee market in Fort Lauderdale where you can buy and sell absolutely everything you can think of. Steve loves to go there every now and then and look for tools and material he might need for his construction sites at his own home or other places. My impression so far was that the prices for all kinds of groceries are way more expensive than in Germany. Even locally grown or produced products like bananas or apples for example are not cheap in any of the well-known supermarkets or grocery stores like Walmart, Publix, Trader Joe's, Central Market. In Miami I gained new insights due to the places Steve took me to.

Steve also introduced me to Goodwill, Salvation Army Family Stores and Bargain Pound (you buy stuff by the pound). Goodwill is an American non-profit organization that provides employment for people who are prevented from finding work elsewhere. Big enterprises as well as private people can donate all kinds of things which don't sell or which they don't need anymore to Goodwill. Generally accepted donations include clothing, shoes, books, accessories, dishes, household decorations, small appliances, consumer electronics and many more. These are sorted and sold in Goodwill stores cheaply and even if they don't sell in a store, these items can be sold as bulk lots and thus can still generate income for the employees. The most commonly sold items are clothes and you can find absolutely everything from brandnew Tommy Hilfiger suits to old uniforms of the local firefighter department or advertising T-shirts of West Marine. Just to mention as an example for how little money you can get something: Almost all shirts are sold for five dollars, unless they have a tag with the colour of the week or they do have a certain number written on the tag. Every week a different tag colour is chosen and the products with a tag in the current colour get a 50% discount, thus only 2,50$, unless they have a number. As you can see, there is a rotating system with certain rules, designed to get everything sold. What doesn't get sold ends up as "bargain pound". Clothes are sold here only by weight, you can reach into containers and buy them by the kilo. The Salvation Army (TSA), a Protestant Christian church and international charitable organisation, also has stores like that, among other things. We just stopped both at a Goodwill store as well as at a Salvation Army Family Store so that I got a bunch of long-sleeved shirts providing me with sun protection for the journey.

The crew for this trip consists of four people, including captain Steve himself. With him is Charlie, a lifelong friend and highly experienced marine. Paul from Canada is the third of our team, also having been out on the water on his own sailboat and hitchhiking other people's boats for many years. And last but not least myself, the by far youngest and most inexperienced sailor between the four of us. Captain Steve has done comparable jouneys with a similar amount of people before and considered us as a good group. The boat would offer enough space for way more people and Steve was in contact with other potential crew members but either they cancelled or Steve considered them as not fitting for this venture.

Someone flooded the engine room of a very expensive poweryacht because of stupidness so that the motorboat has been out of order for some time. After some time passed someone else wants to repair this yacht now and due to more favourable repairment conditions in New Orleans in comparison to Miami the boat has to be relocated.

The journey is approximately 700 nautical miles, one-way. It includes some rivers and canals in Miami and New Orleans and there are various options which route to take in between. Travel speed will be approximately a 100 miles per day, running 24 hours. Depending on wind and weather we may be a little faster or we might have to find a secure anchorage somewhere and stop our journey for up to several days if the weather doesn't cooperate at all. The draft of the Sundancer is only 4.5-foot, the poweryacht merely 3-foot. This means that we can also cross very shallow waters and we are not dependent on sailing in the high seas far away from the coast.

A boat is not a democracy, it's more like a dictatorship but everybody needs to communicate with everybody and feedback is always welcome. This was how our safety briefing started. Captain Steve then continued with making it clear to us that we should get to know every part of the boat on our own to know where to find what. He continued with the man overboard procedure and warned me to stay off the rails if I should try to shoot photos and video footage from there. There are two different kinds of toilets aboard which must be used properly. It was followed by galley rules, pollution control, the electric system as well as emergency equipment. Also other topics like putting on sunscreen etc. were on captain Steve's list. All we can do is hope that everthing of importance remains in our heads and comes up at the right moment.