Frank & Patty Fabian // Catamaran Charters
On the Wind Sailing
Andy Schell
4.8 • 593 Ratings
🗓️ 25 November 2014
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
#74. Frank & Patty Fabian are the philosophical opposites of last week's guests, Ted & Claudia Reshetiloff. But their story is no less inspiring. Where Ted & Claudia packed up their working lives, yanked their young kids out of school and set off for new lives in the Caribbean, Frank & Patty took a more deliberate route. Learning the ropes for 17 years on their Catalina 30, they taught themselves ocean sailing, worked hard and saved harder, and finally bought a Leopard 48 catamaran - for cash - to set off with the Caribbean 1500 rally and realize a nearly lifelong dream.
Newly retired, the Fabian's told me their story from the luxurious cabin of Sunsplash. And you can sail with them! Visit sailsunsplash.com to book a crewed charter with Frank & Patty in the Virgin Islands (I didn't even know they were running a business on the boat until halfway through this conversation!). As an aside, they offer some very simple yet GREAT financial advice within for those looking to follow in their footsteps, young or old.
Want to go ocean sailing with Andy? Sign up for an offshore passage at 59-north.com/events.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is Anna Vinners, live from Sweden. Welcome back to the 59 North Sailing podcast with your host, Andy Schell. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:09.5 | Greetings, greetings. Welcome back to the 59 North Sailing podcast. I'm your host, Andy Schell. This is episode number 73. |
| 0:17.1 | This episode is again sponsored by Collegro Marine. Thanks for those guys for coming back and sponsoring this |
| 0:22.6 | episode of the show. I've been good friends with John Franta, like I keep saying, since 2009. They do |
| 0:27.6 | Coligo Ducks, synthetic standing rigging, soft pad eyes, interesting vang systems, blocks that don't |
| 0:36.8 | actually spin, so there's no moving parts. |
| 0:39.1 | Really cool hardware that John has gotten patented. He came from an engineering background |
| 0:43.0 | and is a trimaran sailor in the Sea of Cortez, actually. And is out in California now? |
| 0:49.7 | Has a shop out there. It's exploding. He's off in Europe right now for the Mets Conference, |
| 0:53.9 | hoping to win a couple innovation awards over there. But check out his stuff for the ocean cruising sailor out there. The one thing you need to have on board is the Caligo Ducks synthetic shroud replacement kit. Basically is a piece of Caligo Ducks already spliced at one end. Instructions on how to splice the other end if you'd lose a shroud offshore. |
| 1:11.6 | Really good to have a couple hundred bucks. |
| 1:13.7 | We sell them on the website or you can get it straight from caligomarine.com. |
| 1:17.3 | So thanks to John and company for sponsoring this episode of the podcast. |
| 1:21.8 | This is another one from the Caribbean 1500. |
| 1:26.1 | I went down on board the Catamaran Sunsplash, which is a |
| 1:28.9 | leopard 48 yesterday. I'm recording this in Tortola. We haven't left yet. So I went down there yesterday |
| 1:34.1 | and talked to Frank and Patty Fabian of Sunsplash. These guys are kind of the zero to hero story as |
| 1:41.5 | well. They've had this dream of going cruising for a really long time |
| 1:45.2 | and kind of put it in action all the way back in the year 2000. They'd owned a Catalita 30 |
| 1:50.8 | and learned how to sail, were taking courses, did a round Del Marlborough cruise on their own to get |
| 1:56.4 | some offshore experience and then saved up their money. Frank worked for the FBI. We get into some |
| 2:01.8 | financial stuff. They did something which was really smart. As they continued their career and |
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