Discretion being the better pat of valor, we elected not to challenge what looked to be a few days of bad weather the Mississippi Sound; so instead of heading for Biloxi, we turned around and backtracked 25 miles to downtown Pensacola. Besides, Calypso's anchor windlass motor needed some work. We were there the next day when we were hit with a ferocious thunderstorm, the same one that drowned five sailors in the Mobile Bay Regatta. We felt fortunate to have suffered no damage.
After that, we traveled back west to Jim and Jackie's home on Ono Island to await the completion of windlass motor repairs and to let Jim get some bimini repairs done. After several days of enforced idleness, we ventured off westward under clearing weather and spent a night at Dauphin Island's Alabama Sport Fish Rodeo docks. They must all use small boats during the rodeo days because we could only get in the slips to our midship cleats.
Finally we plowed through calm seas to Biloxi and spent five days there. We had hoped to anchor off Horn and Ship Island for a couple of days, but the winds picked up strongly from the east making any anchorage out there uncomfortable. Eventually we retraced our steps to Dauphin Island, Ono Island and thence to visit Tom Bresnahan in the Fort Walton Beach yacht Harbor where he keeps his MT 44 Somewhere. Next day it was the long haul to home.
For some years I have been contemplating the type of boating we have pursued with Calypso and the heavy toll in time she exacts from me to keep her up. A forty-three year old wooden boat takes a lot of time and treasure. As we trudged back home from Biloxi, I finally came to the conclusion that long, slow trips in the ICW were not the sorts of things I enjoyed doing some much any more. The large slow Calypso always seemed too big and ungainly for local trips round the bay and to Crooked Island - more like a battleship in a bathtub. I wanted a smaller, less complex, and non-wooden boat with no exterior varnish, and I wanted to put it on a lift so as not to worry over bottom fouling and other in-water boat issues.
So I decided that when we got home I would prepare the boat for sale and planned on taking a longish time to sell. The boat would not eat too much money sitting at our covered slip, and I was not going to just give her away cheaply to achieve a quick sale. On the other hand, I determined not to be greedy trying to get some unreasonably large amount of money for the boat.
It took us nine days to clear everything off the boat that would not sell with it. we by NO means stripped it and left and over abundance of spares, a complete tool box, dinghy/motor, and on and on. To make a long story short, the boat sold at 94% of my asking price fifteen days after I posted the webpage Warren Drake helped me build. The gentleman from Texas who bought the boat came over here to look at it with a friend in tow as crew on a Saturday, and departed with the boat on the following Monday at noon with all insurance correct and money transferred to my account. What a whirlwind!
I rode the boat with them for two hours to West Bay Bridge just make sure all was correct with the navigation plan I had laid out for them. Then it was time to climb off onto the bridge and watch Calypso pull away from under me under the command of somebody new for the first time in 29 years. Mary met me there, and we stood watching for some minutes as Calypso made her way up the channel and then disappeared around a bend.
So ended a lifestyle. Next thing to do was to find a new boat.
Coincidentally, the boat we selected happened to be right her in our area, AND Mary and I had gone aboard it in the boat storage barn at Pirates Cove Marina in 2014 to check it out for a friend of mine in Michigan who was in the hunt for a new boat. At the time, we were not in the market ourselves, but I thought what a beauty she was having spent most of her life in a darkened barn.
The long and the short was we bought Stray Dog, a Mainship 30 Pilot II on the 18th of June, less than two weeks after Calypso disappeared around that bend in the ICW. The boat will remain at Pirates Cove until the current rental month runs out after which it will come home here to Southport where its new lift will hopefully be ready. Here is our ne toy.
