Our Ten Year Love Affair with a beautiful Canadian Lady of the Sea

Time flies when you are having fun and these words definitely describe the last decade. Today marks the day ten years ago that we took ownership of Our Dreamtime, a Canadian built Whitby42 Ketch that we love even more as time goes by. 

Rewinding those 10 years the story goes like this. Karen was in charge of finding suitable boats in our price range and organising appointments with brokers to show us over boats. We had a definite budget, a “must have” features list, a “that would be nice list” and a definite “don’t want” list. However we were open to view any boat in our budget.

On the day that had been arranged with our broker Anita to view 6 boats, we were walking down the Marina dock to inspect the first of 6. Picture this, broker leading the way and us following, when Karen starts to give the run down of attributes about the first boat we are about to view, so far all sounded good, then she said “However she has a few things we definitely DON’T want, namely she’s a ketch and she’s navy blue”. I’m not sure what our broker thought at the time but she could definitely feel the temperature change and a certain cold wind starting to blow down the dock from Rob’s direction.

It just shows that if you walk into a situation with an open minds the world can tilt in your favour. Yes a navy blue ketch has become our floating home and pride and joy for the past 10 years. She has safely carried us and will continue to take us for many more years to amazing destinations that you can only do if you have a lady like her.

So why didn’t we want a ketch? We had only sailed one ketch previously and her owner implied that there were too many sails to deal with and we only ever sailed her “jib and jigger” (mizzen and genoa). We incorrectly assumed and miss understood the way ketches can be very good for shorthanded sailing. We also had the image that ketches are old school and not very “sexy”. 

So navy blue boats! Yes we have all heard the story they are hot, they take extra work to look after especially as the paint oxidation can make your boat look very unloved. Thankfully Our Dreamtime was built in Ontario Canada and was insulted for the cold which of course reduces temperatures in the tropical heat as well and yes we do need to be more careful with coming along side a dock or local canoes banging against the hull. Her glorious navy blue is still deep blue and apart from a good wash and polish occasionally she still looks as beautiful as the first day we saw her.

Thank you ‘Our Dreamtime’ for safely carrying us thousands of nautical miles to experiences we could never have imagined. May we sail many more miles together and continue living everyday to the fullest. 

If you would like to see the full boat tour of Our Dreamtime you can catch them here

https://tinyurl.com/Boat-tour-part-1

https://tinyurl.com/Boat-tour-part-2

If you would like to see the moving pictures of how we released the stuck chain and anchor you can watch it here. 👉  http://tinyurl.com/DreamtimeSailEp87

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