Juliet is a 1990 Mason 44 cutter-rigged sailboat. We purchased her in order to prepare for our dream: to go long-term cruising around the Pacific once we retire in a few years. What exactly do we mean by "long-term cruising around the Pacific"?
What we mean is, we plan on quitting our jobs, renting out our house, and sailing off into the sunset! The plan so far is to start off with the Baja HaHa, which is an annual group cruising rally in which a hundred or so boats spend a couple weeks sailing from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas, stopping at a couple of remote Mexican fishing villages along the way. Once we're down in Mexico we plan to sail on to the Sea of Cortex, and kick around there for a year or two, then do the "Pacific Puddle Jump", which is an annual rally across the Pacific to the Marquesas Islands. From there we'll head to French Polynesia for however long we can stay there (current max time is 6 months), then on to other islands in the South Pacific (Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji) and on to either Australia or New Zealand. That should keep us busy for at least a few years.
From there...who knows? Maybe head north to Hawaii, then back over to the US and back down the coast to Mexico, and start all over again. Or we might get bold and head further west to Indonesia or the Philippines. One thing we will NOT do is go anywhere near Africa, the Middle East, or the Red Sea...nope, no interest in getting abducted by Somalian pirates! We're figuring there are more than enough paradisaical destinations in the Pacific Ocean that will keep us occupied.
So why did we buy this boat now, when we don't plan on leaving for a few years? Well, we're already avid sailors and have been spending lots of time on our boat Spray, a 1980 Islander Freeport 36 (which we still own and are trying to sell...wanna buy a boat?). Charlie, being the meticulous guy that he is, can't help himself but spend massive amounts of time (and money!) upgrading, fixing up and perfecting whatever boat we own, so we figured he might as well start expending those resources on the boat we're eventually going to cruise on, rather than one that's going to get sold.
So, after many months of searching and seeing dozens of boats, Juliet turned out to be THE BOAT (we both knew it the moment we boarded her), so we bought her right before the holidays. She was berthed in San Diego, so we spent the week between Christmas and New Years living aboard and getting to know her. While in San Diego we performed some maintenance (e.g. new exhaust elbow, oil & filter change for the auxiliary engine), made a few upgrades (e.g. new VHF radio with AIS & DSC, registered the MMSI, added a remote radio mic in cockpit, rewired the generator ground, etc.). We then motored her north to our home port of Channel Island Harbor in Oxnard on Dec 28th-29th (23-1/2 hours straight).
Here are some shots of our first week aboard our beautiful new Juliet.
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