His Scott, If you want to sail the Flicka to Europe, you first have to get it to the East coast, or into the Atlantic.
You can do that three ways: Sail it yourself - which takes lot's of time Ship it by truck; which means recommissioning it on the East coast, then sailing to Europe Or, put in container in Seattle, and ship to Europe: one decommissioning; one recommissioning. The problem here will be to have a destination address (a Dutch shipyard) that can extract the Flicka from the container; help you step the mast; and put it back in the water. Then you would be off on your adventures............. sailing amongst the tulip fields; eating smoked eel from street vendor pushcarts; enjoying Heineken or Amstel beer direct from the tap and not from a bottle; and Bokma, the sailor's gin. Bokma is old Genevre (gin); comes in a squat square bottle that doesn't tip over at any reasonable angle of heel; and stows well ...........obviously a "must have" aboard a sailing vessel. When I lost my job in Munich in August '74, I wanted to sail the Tripp-Lentsch back to the USA. The children were the right age: they did excellently in school so loosing a school year wouldn't have been a problem. I wanted to have the boat trucked to Italy, and then we would have been able to cruise the remainder of the southern end of the Yugoslavian coast, that we hadn't seen before, then on to the Greek islands, exiting the Med by late October, while sailing is still reasonably pleasant. You sail to the Canary Islands, and wait there till the winter trade winds are established - about early December - and then use them to slide across to Barbados, arriving there about the end of December. You are forced to sit in the sun, and enjoy a tropical paradise, because - as a prudent sailor - you certainly don't want to be sailing for Connecticut in February! You have to wait till about mid May to arrive there. But, those nice plans were scrapped when I got a new job, and my new employer wanted me in Connecticut ASAP. So, I had a Dutch company build a cradle for the T-L, and drive from Rotterdam to the Chiemsee (between Munich and Salzburg) to pick up the boat. They put it on a Finnish cargo ship as deck cargo, and I picked it up about two weeks later at the container terminal in New Jersey; cleared customs; and then it was trucked to Noank, CT where it was covered for the winter, while we looked for a house and got settled in the new surroundings. Dreaming is fun, eh? Connie _______________________________________________ http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/montgomery_boats
