Introducing Isbjorn // Andy's Essay
On the Wind Sailing
Andy Schell
4.8 • 593 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2015
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
#92. Buying a bigger boat and using it to take people across oceans has long been a dream of mine. I can't pinpoint when exactly this happened, but it was probably in the mid-2000s when I was working on the schooner Woodwind in Annapolis. That was the first time I realized that it might be possible to have a career not in sailing, but as a sailor.
So at Christmastime I did a yachtworld.com search, just for fun. I typed in 'Swan', set the length to 40-50 feet, and capped the price at $150,000.00. Mia and I had been able to save a fair amount of money over the past couple of years, to the tune of about $35,000.00, and this was a number I thought we might be able to afford.
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This is the beginning of the story of how Mia and I came to own a 1972 Swan 48, hull no. 2, which we've named Isbjorn. I'll follow this up with regular podcast and blog updates on how the business is developing and how the refit is going, in real time, as we embark on the next stage of our sailing careers. Wish me luck! Read on for the transcribed audio below, or click the player above to hear it.
Want to go ocean sailing on our new Swan!? Sign up at 59-north.com!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is Anna Winners, live from Sweden. Welcome back to the 59 North Sailing Podcast with your host, Andy Schell. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:08.6 | Hello again, and welcome back to 59 degrees north, a podcast about sailing. I'm your host, Andy Schell, |
| 0:15.0 | and this is episode number 92, I think, and this is a very exciting one. This is the first time I've recorded in about three |
| 0:24.2 | or four weeks because I've been away and had those other ones set up to go. But this is the |
| 0:29.7 | official announcement. Mia and I, in case you haven't heard, have bought a 1972 Swan 48, which |
| 0:36.7 | we've named East Bjorn, |
| 0:38.3 | and we're going to be using it |
| 0:39.6 | to offer ocean sailing passages |
| 0:42.0 | to paying crew. |
| 0:43.8 | This is easily the most |
| 0:45.8 | exciting and simultaneously |
| 0:48.3 | scary thing I've ever done |
| 0:50.3 | in my career. |
| 0:52.1 | It's the culmination |
| 0:53.5 | of a dream I've had since I was, since I was very young |
| 0:56.7 | and just still have to pinch myself that it's actually happening. But anyway, what's going to |
| 1:03.5 | follow here is the story of how this all came together. So I won't say anything more about it. |
| 1:10.4 | You'll get to hear it now. And in fact, |
| 1:11.9 | I'm going to create a series of episodes chronicling the story of how the boat came together. |
| 1:18.2 | We'll do a couple episodes on the history of the boat. I'll speak to the broker that I worked with |
| 1:22.4 | and get his perspective on the deal. And I'm going to follow simultaneously the refit of the boat and the development |
| 1:29.1 | of the business, give you kind of an inside look of how that's going, because this is new to me, |
... |
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