Another Big California Boat to Oz

As we’ve been reporting for several months now, Aussies have been coming to California to buy expensive sailboats. There is no mystery as to the reason why. Thanks to the weaker American dollar and the stronger Aussie dollar, sailors from the Land Down Under believe they can buy a boat in the States, take a couple of years to cruise her home, and, upon selling the boat, recoup all their money. Sweet deal. 

There were at least two examples of this in the recently completed Ha-Ha. They were Patrick Bloomer’s Farrier F44 Tiger, heading to Western Australia, and Jack and Leanne Hembrow’s Moody 54 Red Sky, heading to Brisbane, Australia.

While having breakfast the other morning at Sayulita, we bumped into former Profligate crew Lauren Goche of Santa Cruz, Portland, Sayulita, "and in the summer, commercial fishing boats that spend a month or more at a time 1,100 miles off the coast of Oregon," and learned that a Santa Cruz 52 has been added to the bound-for-Australia list. That boat is Brendan Busch’s La Honda-based Santa Cruz 52 Isis, a vet of the ’04 and ’07 Ha-Ha’s.

Goche knows Isis is headed to Australia because she of part of delivery skipper Robin Jeffer’s crew for the San Francisco to Costa Rica run, where Isis will be loaded onto a Dockwise ship for transport across the Pacific.