Welcome to our Website
Stories of Our Adventures Aboard Taka Trois and Beyond 

​To Sail or Sell?

Welcome back friends and neighbors. For those of you who are new to this site, this is where I tell tales of our sailing adventures aboard the good ship Taka Trois (T3), our 45 foot sailboat. If you’re having trouble sleeping, you might want to dig into the archives on “Debbie’s blog” on this website to read about where we’ve been with her and what we’ve done.
 
For my faithful followers from the past, you will know that the last time I posted on this website was in 2015, when we brought T3 from Saint Martin to Trinidad. Patrice had several consulting projects he was working on there, so we decided she would make a good base for us to live and work from when we were there. Equally, if not more important, Trinidad is a relatively safe place for a boat to wait out the hurricane season. Case in point, if she had been in Saint Martin in September 2018, we would have surely lost her to a little ‘storm’ called Irma (for details about that you can read an account I just posted on the blog of what I saw when I visited the island 7 months after the hurricane.
 
When we arrived in Trinidad on T3 four years ago, we never dreamed she would stay at the dock for four years, but life intervened, and it was just not possible for us to sail her,  so she became our houseboat. However, as we’re not getting any younger and a sailboat needs an owner to sail her, the time has come for us to do something about her. 

Unfortunately we cannot afford to take off on another sabbatical year or even an extended trip at this point in our lives, and truth be told, we are not sure whether sailing really suits us anymore. However, selling the boat would be a real wrench, as sailing has been a big part of our life for over 20 years; and Taka Trois has been our home, off and on, for 10.

To be honest, part of me is fed up with the work, the cost, and the ENDLESS problems that a boat brings, but I confess that even though I am no longer very excited about sailing, I have no peace in my heart about selling her. Patrice aptly stated it would be like losing a limb, but has admitted that he is weary of the responsibility of having a boat and all that it entails as well.
 
Since the decision is not clear to us as of yet, we decided to take her out of mothballs this year and try to do some sailing to test whether or not this lifestyle still appeals to us—and it is indeed a lifestyle. Patrice thought he could manage his work commitments from the boat for a month or so, which would give us enough time to sail up to the French island of Martinique and back. T3 is a French boat and there are repairs we hope to get done there and boat parts we need to buy--not to mention confit de canard and wine. 

If it turns out we really don’t want to sail anymore, Martinique would be the perfect place to start the process of selling her. T3 is an RM, made by Fora Marine in La Rochelle, France and RMs are generally highly regarded,  even sought-after, in the French sailing community (for more about T3 see "About the Boat" under the section "Taka Trois"). And if we decide not to sell her, then we would have had the time to assess options and come to some sort of plan for her future role in our life.
 
It took 6 weeks to get her sail-ready again,​ which were fraught with fits and starts, a lot of back-breaking work and the usual song and dance with local workers. Miraculously we managed to get the essentials done. Tune in to my blog to find out how we fared...