Meet the Crew: Alex Navarrete

Last week when I sent out the link to the blog with my first hurried entry, I got a lot of e-mail responses from everyone encouraging me to update it often. I’ll be trying to get at least 2 updates a week posted as I get info from the guys via the Satellite phone. 

One friend suggested that I do a “Meet the Crew” post, since she didn’t know any of the crew members besides Alex, and I thought that was a great idea! Here goes, we’ll start with Alex just for fun.

 Alex Navarrete: Fearless Captain (seen here on Lake Lanier with Eric)

Alex and Eric

 Most of you already know Alex and know of his passion for sailing ever since he was a little boy pretending the balcony of his apartment overlooking the Mediterranean was a boat and could take him anywhere he wanted to go in the world.

circa 1974-ish

 He’s been preparing for this journey for a solid 5 years ever since we bought our Freedom 40 and named her “Nani”. Preparations included new sails, new electronics and just recently a new engine with infinite other trips to West Marine and catalog orders for spare parts and small upgrades to the boat in between.  (Susan Chretien’s favorite saying applies here: BOAT really stands for “break out another thousand”).  

Nani on Lake Lanier

Preparing the boat for the trip was just one piece of the puzzle though, he has been looking for the job in Europe that would allow us to move back across the pond for about 3 years. Moving home to Spain was first choice, but with the economic crisis at it’s worst, Alex shifted gears and started looking in the UK about a year ago, and got a job this year in January. That is when preparations really kicked into high gear. He negotiated time off during the optimal crossing season, gathered his crew and bought lots of SPAM for the trip. 

Alex, David and Alan

OK, not really, that was Bob who bought all the SPAM, we’ll meet him later. He'll be joining the crew for the second leg of the journey.

Fun fact about Alex: he is a self taught Digger y Doo player. He does the frustrated rhinoceros sound quite well. 

what can I say?

Tomorrow you’ll meet Alan Shed, Fearless First Mate.