Paying Our Dues

The big news is that we slipped lines in Vancouver on April 20th at 7:50 a.m..  Whew!  We did it!  We're cruising!  We're "doers"!  Although we left two weeks later than planned.......it's still April 2011!  Three years almost to the day after purchasing our 1992 Bristol 47.7 we left to" live the dream"!
Well, so far although it's not the "dream" dream....it's not a nightmare either.  Our journey has begun very slowly.  A leisurely pace with long stopovers, not unlike most cruisers.  However, we haven't really gone very far and our stopovers are spent working on the "things to do before we leave" list!  My fault I must admit as I was the one pushing us to go, saying "let's get this show on the road".  Yes, we know full-well that "cruising is doing maintenance in exotic locations".  That's okay we're prepared for that.  They also do regular maintenance all the time.  We're okay with that too.  But what we're facing is just not being ready so....we'll take our time.

You might have noticed that I didn't say we bought Iridium three years ago and that's because we didn't.  We bought a boat called Boat-Itch that needed a great deal of loving care and attention, along with many, many ``boat units`` (one boat unit = $1000), not the boat we have today.  We searched long and hard for a name and finally came up with `Iridium``.  As we peeled off the old name the dockyard crew cheered!  We all felt the same.....that this beautiful boat deserved a much prettier name.

How did we choose the name Iridium?  Well, from day one we knew we had to come up with a new name and the sooner the better.  We tried all sorts of names but nothing seemed quite right until one night while eating dinner and listening to jazz the DJ said "and that was from the "Iridium" Jazz Club".  We loved the rhythm of the word.  When I say it I feel her reaching across the water, slicing the waves, in rhythm with the sea...... Of course it turns out that iridium is a lot more than just a beautiful word and means different things to different people.  It's an element of course, which we already knew, it's number 77 on the periodic table which Mel already knew (lucky 77....you need all the luck you can get owning a boat!), it's the most non-corrosive metal (another plus when owning a boat), it's white (she's white), Canada has the largest deposit of iridium in the world (we're Canadian) and so she was christened Iridium.  Now nautical lore says it's bad luck to change the name of a boat.  Well, we're sure you'll agree that in our case it was worth the gamble!  Having said that though, we did not treat it lightly.  After much searching and planning we performed the proven luck changing rituals with great pleading to the gods of the sea and the four winds (taken from the internet and proclaimed word for word in the presence of great friends and sailors Clive and Susan Caton) so that we can confidently state here that all hints of evil heading in Iridium's direction have been halted and wiped out.  Oh yes forgot to mention that all of the aforementioned gods must also be apeased with copious amounts of champagne (poured into the sea and thrown to the winds).  And of course, the thirsty actors and audience are expected to partake also.  It was a great day and the sun and gods smiled on Iridium!  Skipper and crew were smiling too!

I know, I know....the whole iridium thing doesn't end there.  As some of you know there is also a large satellite phone company in the US called Iridium.  Unfortunately for us we just hadn't bothered to think about it.  Iridium originally had 77 satellites and almost went bankrupct etc. etc. but....they're still alive and well and the best satellite phone company around.  We have one onboard which we'll activate shortly.  As previously mentioned we were very "green" and just hadn't connected any of that yet.  As soon as an American cruiser sees the name though they immediately wonder why we would name our boat after a Satellite phone company.  Well we didn't and it doesn't help that there are an awful lot of wealthy americans out here all with Iridium Satphones onboard constantly reminding us.  I had the owner of a US mega yacht come up and ask me why we named our boat Iridium.  I proceeded to tell him all the reasons but most of all that I just loved the word.  He agreed it was a pretty name for a boat.  He then proceeded to tell me that a good friend of his owned the company.  Guess we'll be thinking of his good friend drinking his vintage wine as we pay our satellite phone bill, won't we?  That's okay I guess,  as long as he's listening to jazz and knows where the name comes from!

Iridium has had a huge amount of work done on her as is the case with all used and many new boats preparing to go offshore.  I think we've had a bit more than our share by now but suffice to say (without boring you all) that we've paid our dues.  So on with the story.