Scammers, Classifieds and Crew List Rides to Nuku Hiva

Jan Passion, owner of the Seawind 1000 Hokahey, reached out to us because he is one of many classified advertisers who rightly suspected a scam when a prospective buyer offered a cashier’s check for his boat partnership sight unseen. Unfortunately, this is a story we’ve heard many times before from advertisers in our classifieds and essentially all classifieds. Another friend of ours recently recounted the same scam when trying to sell his mom’s car on Craigslist.

The good news is Jan wisely avoided the scam and let us know so we can once again warn readers of the nefarious characters scanning the internet searching for victims. Even better we learned Jan is getting ready to sail to Nuku Hiva in April. The conversation continued because, besides having an ad in our Classy Classifieds, Jan also has his name on our Crew List to go cruising anywhere. He was contacted by a gentleman, Stuart Jackson of the X-49 Joia, looking for crew since Joia is joining over 30 boats leaving this spring in the Pacific Puddle Jump.

The entire Joia crew was down in Oxnard for a weekend warm-up, and familiarization before their planned departure in April. The full crew includes owner Stuart Jackson, Jan Passion, Madeleine Lithvall, Connor Mullins and Yosh Hahn. Yosh Hahn is another crew member who found her way to Joia through the Latitude 38 Crew List. She discovered cruising by sailboat in 2018 after being a guest aboard a kitesurfing catamaran in Micronesia. There she discovered hitchhiking by boat, added her name to the Latitude 38 crew list, and attended crew list parties, and she has now sailed 15,000 miles including the recent Baja Ha-Ha. She also did the Transpac last summer aboard Good Trouble with our recent Good Jibes podcast guest Marie Rogers.

Getting to know your crew before you get far offshore is always a good idea. It’s important to meet on the boat, and also to have some social time to get to know each other. Joia gathered crew from the Crew List and is checking all the boxes for the spring adventure.

It was great to discover all of this from a concerned call about a scam in our classifieds. Connecting boat owners with a prospective buyer or prospective crew is something Latitude 38 has done since 1977. It’s unfortunate to have the relentless presence of people trying to scam the system but also rewarding to see the positive connections made through both the Classifieds and the Crew List.

Thanks to Jan for allowing us to remind folks to stay alert but also put yourself out there. If you do, you might soon find yourself racing on the Bay or sailing to Nuku Hiva.