We have a yacht...

And we shall call her Orion!

Orion, often referred to as The Hunter, is a prominent constellation located on the celestial equator and visible throughout the world. It is one of the most conspicuous, and most recognisable constellations in the night sky. Its name refers to Orion, a hunter in Greek mythology. - Wikipedia

When we first saw her online, she ticked almost every box for us. Plus, she is in Grenada!

Something was indeed written in the stars, for in November of 2011, I bought Sally's Christmas present. It was a star in Orion's Belt. The thought process being that as we cruised with nothing but the stars to blanket us, we could look up and try and find her star in one of the most visible constellations. 

It was a heck of a gamble buying one way flights to come to a foreign country to look at a boat, but it was well worth it, for she is beautiful.

She is a 1979 Tartan 37 Centre Board. 

There is all the cruising gear onboard that we could need, including a monitor wind vane for long passages.

What a relief to finally have a boat. She cost us a packet and is slightly older than what we had originally set out to buy, but the previous owner has looked after her incredibly well. Buying it from Mike Young (from Vermont) was a tough exercise as you could just see the emotion in his eyes. He was a VERY reluctant seller. What a great guy too. He spent hours showing us all the additions and tweaks that he had made to the boat. How they all work and what goes where. We are very grateful to him for his help in teaching us all about her.

Although she is 33 years old now, Orion has spent most of her life in fresh water or on the hard. The first 20 years she was on Lake Champlain in Vermont. The sailing season is only about 4 months of the year up there and the rest of the time she was wintered on the hard. 

Mike and his wife Joanne bought the boat in 1996 and got her cruising ready to sail down to the Caribbean in 2000. After sailing her down there they kept her out the water and would use her for 4 / 5 months of the year. As such she has very little wear on her. Hull is in great condition as are the sails.

We are very excited to get aboard and start making her ours. Mike has left us a ton of stuff on board and we need to get our heads around what goes where etc.

We have got some work to do on her, like paint the bottom and sort out a few issues with canvas while she is on the hard, but looking even more forward to getting her onto a mooring and chilling out!