And so it begins...

Jan and Deb with Quester in Sweden '07

Hello Friends, Family and anyone else who happens by.  We're delighted to have your company on our sail half way across the Pacific Ocean!

Our quest is to sail aboard Quester with our friends Mike and Deb (Boulder, CO) and helping hand Joe (New Jersey) from Panama to Tahiti.  We'll be joining the boat in Colon, Panama Feb 14 after a few days in Panama City being tourists.  After a week or two transiting the Canal and final provisioning in Panama City we'll head SW to the Galapagos Is., a distance of about 1,000 mi. expected to take about a week on the open ocean.

Read on to hear more about our trip!


This is a picture of Quester on her maiden voyage from SE England to Norway, then down the Swedish coast to Copenhagen in 2007.  She is a 56' Oyster, made in the UK.  Compared to our recently sold Mystique, a C&C Landfall 43', she is new, large and spacious and has:
- a center cockpit
- roller-reefing mainsail, staysail and jenny, plus one (or more?) asymmetrical spinnakers
- master aft suite with its own head
- forward stateroom (where Jan and I will be) and head
- forward crew room with several bunk beds (Joe's home)
- comfortable galley with propane stove, upright side-opening fridge and spacious freezer
- large main cabin with plentiful seating, large table, nav station, etc.

We'll share some pictures of the boat as we go along.  Oyster makes some of the best ocean-going sailing vessels in the world.  We will be part of an Oyster rally [ http://www.oystermarine.com/worldrally/ ], with 25-30 boats sailing in loose proximity from Antiqua (they left in early January) through the Panama Canal and on to the Galapagos, Marquesas, Tahiti, Bora Bora, Fiji and on westward around South Africa and back to the Caribbean.  Jan and I will get off in Tahiti, spend some days there and in Moorea, then fly home May 12 - almost exactly three months.  Quester is headed for New Zealand.

We leave for Panama Monday, Feb 11, and will try to update you then.  Leaving Frisco, CO this ski season is not too painful because of the general lack of snow.  We have friends from Michigan renting our house and taking care of Samantha-the-cat while we're gone.  Hopefully Sammy will grow to like their Golden!!

To track the fleet, you can go to the Oyster link above and click on Fleet Tracker.  On the left-hand side (on a PC anyway) or elsewhere on the screen, you can view individual "teams" or boats.  Clicking on "Quester" will show you our boat's color track.  Right now, most of the boats are in the San Blas islands, a beautiful cruising ground east of the Canal entrance.  There is also a Yellow Brick tracker app for your mobile devices.  The Yellow Brick device on each boat automatically pings the longitude, latitude, speed and bearing every few hours via satellite to the ground station which updates the chart.

We'll be able to post updates and use e-mail whenever we have wifi access, which should be when we're on land.  We will not be able to blog or e-mail while we're at sea which will be about half of our time aboard Quester.  Thanks again for following us.  It's comforting to know we're still in touch with friends and family!

Steve & Jan