Comillas49

Why? That seems to be the first thing people ask when we tell them about our plans to sail across the Atlantic. Why are we doing this? Why is the sailboat named O’Comillas? Why did we create this blog?

It is not that the plans are so unique or daring that seem to intrigue people. After all, we are not climbing K2 where one in four people die in the attempt. Perhaps what intrigues most people is what is motivating my father and me to do something that involves the combination of uncertainty, isolation, and self-reliance.

Our current answers do not seem to satisfy anyone, partly because we are not sure we really fully understand ourselves. In fact, we often feel like responding with “Why not?” since after all that would probably get the same reaction.

The journey is in itself a discovery process — discovery process for my father and me. It is not just about getting to the other side of the ocean. If that were the case, we would just fly on an airplane. It is about the journey itself. We cannot yet truly explain to you why, other than never in our lives have we felt so compelled to do something together as we feel about this. So this blog is our attempt to answer many questions for ourselves, our families and our friends.

We thought about doing this just on email, but then the geek in me surfaced. Why not publish it on the web? In preparing for the journey I came across web sites that discussed equipment for ocean journeys, interesting captain’s logs from similar voyages, and books about ocean cruising. All of these things were both very interesting and useful to read so one definite goal behind our writing and publishing online is to help people who are contemplating similar adventures.

But what if we took the concept of writing about this journey a step further? What if we do it live as the trip unfolds, without the benefit of hindsight or clever editing after the fact? What if my father and I were to write independently, him in Spanish and me in English? What if we could allow people to check out where we are and what the weather is like?

Well, of course, we need a blog!

If this blog helps our family and closest friends participate in the journey and on top of that it helps one single person contemplating a dream to move forward and act on it, then we would have achieved the main purpose behind publishing this.

So keep coming back to visit and discover with us.

Welcome boys and girls!

I’m Sloopy the sailboat.

I love to sail so much that I am going to sail all the way from the United States to Spain across the Atlantic.

If you are interested in my story, come back again in a few days and I will tell you all about it.

See you later!

Bienvenidos niños y niñas!

Soy el velero Sloopy.

Me gusta velear tanto, que voy a velear desde Estados Unidos a España cruzando el Atlantico.

Si les interesa mi historia, regresen en unos días y les contare todo al respecto.

¡Hasta luego!

This blog will record the journeys of O’Comillas, a 49 foot single mast sailboat. In May, we will be sailing across the Atlantic – from Newport, Rhode Island to La Coruña, Spain with a stop in the Azores – and we will chronicle that journey live on the blog. We are currently testing the sailboat and fine tuning things, but feel free to check out the other sections of the blog.

Once the voyage starts, you will be able to track our weather, location, see photos, read our journals and hopefully participate with us in this experience.

Until then, happy voyages !