SV ‘Dogfish’ — the Next Chapter, Part Two
Last month, Marga Pretorius from Oakland, aboard the Kelly-Peterson 44 Dogfish, caught readers up on what she had been up to since her last Changes in Latitudes story in 2022. A series of circumstances — most notably a fledgling career as a marine surveyor that had her traveling far and wide — ended up taking her away from the boat she had been cruising solo for the previous five years. She also returned to Colorado, where her family lived, eventually restoring an old cabin to rent out to supplement the cruising kitty. Then she took off for Europe to visit her sister and do a little exploring by bicycle. “In my pedaling, I had a lot of time to think about life and what was next,” she wrote. “I was ready to return to my beloved Dogfish.”
I returned from my European cycling vacation happy and healthy in body and mind. One thing my time away had cleared up was this: The point of the survey business to begin with had been to find a way to financially support my cruising dreams — not to become a workaholic and forget my original vision.
And I realized my time away from Dogfish had changed me. Even though I had not been sailing my own boat, I had been privileged to drop into cruising destinations around the world, and being physically in those places had made them real to me. Like maybe I could take Dogfish there. The world and its possibilities felt open to me as never before. So one last road trip. I loaded all my tools from my shed in Colorado into my car and drove them over the Rocky Mountains back to Mexico and to the dusty and buzzing Cabrales Boatyard. And there she was, waiting for me. My boat. Peering down her companionway, I found Dogfish pretty well as I’d left her, but with a thin coating of soft Peñasco sand on every surface, like powdered sugar on a crème de Paris.
I chiseled away at the sizable list of projects, aiming to make her ready for whatever adventures lay ahead. It was back to building mode for me, but instead of demolishing mountain cabin walls, I cut carefully into a main bulkhead.
See “SV ‘Dogfish’ — the Next Chapter, Part One” in the November issue of Latitude 38.