[
The following was emailed to editor@westsail.org. I'm re-posting it for all to enjoy.]
Ahoy! I am Todd Duff and in September my fiance' Gail Suhich and I
bought a Westsail 42. We had begun watching the boat in Yachtworld
while cruising in Ecuador and the Galapagos on our previous boat and
luckily it remained on the market for the four months it took for us
to work through the sale on our 64' steel brigantine 'One World' in
Panama. We left Central America at the end of August to fly up to see
the boat in North Carolina and within two weeks were the new owners of
W 42 hull #1!
By early October we had the boat in Florida to begin a whirlwind refit
so that we can take her back down to Panama where we left most of our
personal possessions and we plan to continue our cruising adventures
back in the Pacific aboard her this coming season.
I have owned two Westsail 32s in the past... the first was hull #699
which we purchased partially completed and built/refit for a several
year cruise in the early nineties. The second I ultimately gave to one
of my children.
Our 'new' boat is now named 'Small World' because we have learned
through all of our sailing adventures over the last 30 years that
everywhere you go, and with many of the new people we meet, it seems
that there is a connection to others that we know... and also because
we do truly live on a very small planet where cooperation, compassion
and conscientiousness are all part of what may help make this small
world a better place.
In my working days as a yacht broker in Florida, Maryland and then the
Caribbean, I was lucky enough to introduce close to a hundred people
to Westsail sailboats and was honored to assisted many of those people
in achieving their cruising dreams.
We look forward to seeing more Westsailors out there and are happy to
see that the Westsail Owner's Association is still going strong!
Todd Duff and Gayle Suhich
