My participation with this board (and the one prior at Cruising world before their format change) started many many years ago. I had many hours of reading writing and learning new things that allowed me over the past 25 years to fulfill my own sailing dreams and assist a few other sailors (namely my crew) fulfill theirs.

I have retired three years ago at 58 to sail full time on my yacht – SY Aliza, and since then I had sailed her to the med in 2014, sailed the med for a year and came back across to the Caribbean last December. In the last sail from Israel I had about 40 expense sharing crew member sailing with me since July first 2015.

My post here has three reasons:
1) As I paid my annual visit home (New Jersy USA) and decided to visit the board the first thing I saw was the note for the passing of Jon. Jon was one of the special people I had the privilege to meet as result of my board reading. He always respected the fact my father and I built Aliza and sailed her around the world, and I was inspired by his seamanship and his dedication to doing what he loved. (I thought he was indeed fulfilling his dreams from a rather early age). Jon’s sudden departure had sent me another message that life is short and we really need to focus on doing something that makes us happy and try to fulfill our long-term dreams before we are unable to do so.
2) About the same time of Jon’s passing I so a few notes from board members about slowly giving up on the type of sailing they did in the past in order to choose a safer less physically demanding activity.
3) As I retired early and on a limited $$ saved, I am able to continue sailing only when I have crew that is assisting me in the sailing activities and contributing to the expenses of safely maintaining a 22 year old steel 54’ sailing yacht. (My NYC to Lisbon crossing had a crew of a 72, 68, 61, 58 and 57 YO sailors. My Gibraltar to Caribbean had a crew of 68, 62, 55, 54 and a 24 YO sailors.)

I hope that at least a few of you who have given up on crossing ocean or blue water sailing will Google “Sailing Yacht Aliza”, visit my website or my FaceBook page, and be inspired to join the Aliza crew for an adventure on her current sail from St Lucia to NYC over the next 3 month. This current sail could be used also as a “get to know SY Aliza” as a testing ground for a much more ambitious adventure. I plan a longer timeline sail next year (2017) as I set sail from NYC to do the “Pacific Milk-Run” (for that long term sail I am looking for two experienced sailors who will each get their own cabin on Aliza and commit to a long term sail of a year or even more. I plan a 3-5 year sail from NYC to NZ, Australia, Japan, Alaska and back to California. If you ever dreamed about this kind of sailing then talk with me this summer as I will be in NJ to prep Aliza for this longer term sailing adventure.)

In order to make contact with me please use my e-mail: EfraimSchwartz@AOL.COM
I am available on WhatsApp (A smartphone app) at +12019837891
I am on SKYPE as Efraim Schwartz in New Jersey
Finally we can use FaceBook Messenger for communication.