Friday, July 24, 2020

Evanston: GANNET 2s; momentous





I know of other sailboats named GANNET and believe that there was once a Royal Navy ship GANNET, but GANNET 2s are rare.  Above you have Layne and Michael with their Golden Van parked just across the street from our Evanston condo yesterday afternoon and a power boat in Thailand sent to me by Nathan for which I thank him.  I note that both GANNET 2s are powered craft.

Michael and Layne are on their ‘shake-up’ cruise in their van, having taken possession a month ago.  When I pointed out that it is a shake down cruise, I was told that when they bought a 34’ catamaran a couple of decades ago, which they subsequently cruised from California to Key West, their first sail was on windy San Francisco Bay and it was definitely a shake up, so the expression has endured..

They are accompanied by their companion, Rusty.  

When I met Carol she had a cat, Shatters, who lived with us on THE HAWKE OF TUONELA in Boston Harbor until she died shortly before we sailed away in 2001.  Shatters was an elderly cabin cat.  She never ventured up to the cockpit and she did not like HAWKE to be away from the dock under either sail or power.  I called her Shatters, the reluctant ship’s cat.

Rusty does not like the van.  He prefers soft beds in land dwellings with no bumps, swaying or engine noise. He may be Rusty the reluctant van dog.

Michael and Layne’s GANNET 2 is very ship like.  She has full standing headroom, clever stowage space, solar panels on the roof, good insulation, and even a solar shower.  I was impressed by how Michael had parked her in a normal space on the street, but then in his varied past he once drove 18 wheelers, so to him this was easy.

Their shake up cruise was originally intended to go to Maine, but the pandemic changed that.  They drove north yesterday heading for the Wisconsin woods.

Voyage on.




Yesterday I removed two commas from the lists page of the main site and capitalized a letter.
I’m sure you noticed.

3 comments:

  1. I only noticed too many S’s in buses in your previous post!

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  2. Thank you, Paul. I have made the correction, It is in the book and I can’t easily change that. No one else has ever caught it. I am glad you did.

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  3. Not my van, but one belonging to my friends, Michael and Layne, and named after my boat. They are crossing to Mexico today and heading to the tip of South America, too. You will likely meet up. Say 'hello'. They are friendly people.

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