Text Author: John-Frederick Thye

On January 24th, 2005, Kate, Daniel, and I carefully tied up Wildlife inside the holding area of Super Servant 4, a Dockside Carrier, which delivers yachts across the Pacific and Atlantic. Wildlife's time in the Pacific was completed and her mission was calling her back to the Atlantic. One and a half months later on March 11th, we greeted her in Port Everglades, where we backed her off the submerged carrier and navigated up the New River in Fort Lauderdale, over to the Lauderdale Marine Center. Here we took her out of the water for 3 weeks for necessary maintenance including gel coat care, teak oiling, engine and gear box maintenance, sail repair, new bottom paint, through hull and valve checks, etc. She had served us well for the first 4 years and is now ready for the future.

On April 9th we sailed into Fort Piece in order to visit family and see the Kennedy Space Center on Cape Canaveral, a truly awe inspiring project by NASA. The way the astronauts live in confined spaces for long periods of time reminded us of our long passages at sea. The Pacific, for example, took us over 60 days sailing to cross, not including the many days exploring between the islands. The Wildlife crew gets to know each other very well, especially because communication is so vital. Our safety measures aboard require, for example, that every person announce if they go onto the yacht's foredeck or into the bathrooms below. Reason is that the watch captain needs to know where his mates are at all times. Falling overboard, unless immediately noted, leads to sure drowning in the vastness of the ocean. And, in some sea states a crew retrieval is even dangerous to the man overboard, as well as to the yacht and crew aboard.