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| Dedicated to Anna: 'Night Watch, Mid Ocean' Cat and Rich Ian-Frese, 2018 |
WE HAVE HAD THE PRIVILEGE to sail Anna for nearly twenty years. A generation. Anna has been exciting to us since the very first day we laid eyes on her. Crossing oceans is what she excels at, and it is because she does that so well, we have never felt endangered by the circumstances that we have so often found ourselves in; e.g., in the grips of serious weather and seas. We have on occasion been terrified by the power and intensity that raw nature can dish out, and who hasn't - but that has never stopped us from venturing out yet again, once we regained our composure.
We have always trusted Anna to bring us through, in difficult times, even when we were beyond exhausted by the conditions that we had faced, and could do no more than shut our eyes and go below decks to sleep, and to let Anna take over for us until the worst had passed, sometimes, days later.
Anna, truly is of, and belongs to, the big ocean and we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go along for the ride. To experience her and live completely within her little world for so long. And that has been a rare opportunity, which has not been lost on us.
There is probably nothing that we will ever experience in our lifetimes again that could measure up to that level of pure immersion into the raw elements, for such extended periods of time as we have come to know on those occasional long, wild passages, in the utter remoteness of mid ocean, aboard Anna, where the night was our companion and all that we needed to be content.
We left Anna in New Zealand at the conclusion of our fourth crossing of the immensity of the Pacific Ocean. In the time that we have been back on land - less than a year now as of this writing - we have come to the conclusion that it is simply not right to let Anna sit unattended and idle, 7,000 nautical miles away. All sailing vessels need to be active to stay in good working order. And we know that a boat like Anna is simply champing at the bit to be in her natural element - the open sea.
And it is in this regard that we have come to the point of our last post, about our adventures on Anna. After giving it much hard thought, we have decided that it is time to let someone else pick up on Anna where we left off. We've had our fill and it's been a remarkable ride. But it's not an easy thing to merely pass a boat like Anna along to someone else, a boat that we have in some deeper sense, become at one with.
Nevertheless, Anna is a lucky girl, the right person has appeared out of the blue. Someone who had been tracking Anna's progress and reading everything we had ever wrote about her for some time now, unbeknownst to us.
We received an e-mail recently, from the far side of the world, asking us if we'd be willing to consider selling Anna to a person who wants more than anything else, a rugged ocean-going boat and, Anna, in particular, to live aboard, sail, and explore new places.
And so it would happen that after two months and eighty-one e-mails, a survey and a sea trial later, Anna would change hands and find her new home base on the wonderful South Island of New Zealand, until which time she is ready to take her next leap into the open ocean, yet once again.
We truly believe that Anna has found the perfect new home, and we shall be very happy to read about her upcoming adventures some day, just as you have read about ours.
And on that note, we hope that you've had a good read over the years. We've certainly had a fun time giving you a glimpse into our life aboard Anna, for the last two decades.
Anna, is the namesake of both of our grandmothers. It was our intention to do them proud.
Rich and Cat Ian-Frese
28 March 2018
We have always trusted Anna to bring us through, in difficult times, even when we were beyond exhausted by the conditions that we had faced, and could do no more than shut our eyes and go below decks to sleep, and to let Anna take over for us until the worst had passed, sometimes, days later.
Anna, truly is of, and belongs to, the big ocean and we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go along for the ride. To experience her and live completely within her little world for so long. And that has been a rare opportunity, which has not been lost on us.
There is probably nothing that we will ever experience in our lifetimes again that could measure up to that level of pure immersion into the raw elements, for such extended periods of time as we have come to know on those occasional long, wild passages, in the utter remoteness of mid ocean, aboard Anna, where the night was our companion and all that we needed to be content.
We left Anna in New Zealand at the conclusion of our fourth crossing of the immensity of the Pacific Ocean. In the time that we have been back on land - less than a year now as of this writing - we have come to the conclusion that it is simply not right to let Anna sit unattended and idle, 7,000 nautical miles away. All sailing vessels need to be active to stay in good working order. And we know that a boat like Anna is simply champing at the bit to be in her natural element - the open sea.
And it is in this regard that we have come to the point of our last post, about our adventures on Anna. After giving it much hard thought, we have decided that it is time to let someone else pick up on Anna where we left off. We've had our fill and it's been a remarkable ride. But it's not an easy thing to merely pass a boat like Anna along to someone else, a boat that we have in some deeper sense, become at one with.
Nevertheless, Anna is a lucky girl, the right person has appeared out of the blue. Someone who had been tracking Anna's progress and reading everything we had ever wrote about her for some time now, unbeknownst to us.
We received an e-mail recently, from the far side of the world, asking us if we'd be willing to consider selling Anna to a person who wants more than anything else, a rugged ocean-going boat and, Anna, in particular, to live aboard, sail, and explore new places.
And so it would happen that after two months and eighty-one e-mails, a survey and a sea trial later, Anna would change hands and find her new home base on the wonderful South Island of New Zealand, until which time she is ready to take her next leap into the open ocean, yet once again.
We truly believe that Anna has found the perfect new home, and we shall be very happy to read about her upcoming adventures some day, just as you have read about ours.
And on that note, we hope that you've had a good read over the years. We've certainly had a fun time giving you a glimpse into our life aboard Anna, for the last two decades.
Anna, is the namesake of both of our grandmothers. It was our intention to do them proud.
Rich and Cat Ian-Frese
28 March 2018
What are Rich and Cat up to now? Visit our latest project: Two Peas in an Aircraft-Aluminum Pod
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A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
-- John A. Shedd, 1928
-- John A. Shedd, 1928
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And last but not least, we'd like to finish up with
a little tribute to Gary Larson's - The Far Side...
a little tribute to Gary Larson's - The Far Side...
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What a lovely and loving post, and what a wonderful ride the two/three of you had!
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