NOTE: the main blog for Syzygy is located at www.syzygysailing.com. This blog is an auxiliary site, to be used as a maintenance record to document the refit.
A ship is not a slave. You must take her easy in a seaway, you must never forget that you owe her the fullest share of your thoughts, of your skill, of your self love. If you remember that obligation naturally, and without effort, as if it were an instinctive feeling of your inner life, she will sail, stay, run for as long as she is able, or like a seabird going to rest upon the angry waves, she will lay out the heaviest gale that ever made you doubt living long enough to see another sunrise.
-Joseph Conrad
We (Jonny Waldman, Jon Haradon, Matt Holmes) bought a Valiant 40, Syzygy, and intend to sail around the world starting in the summer of 2009. The boat needs work, which we intend to do by ourselves whenever possible. The purpose of this blog is to keep a record of the work that we do on the boat, so that others may learn from our mistakes, and so that whoever buys the boat after us will see and understand the improvements we made.
UPDATE 5/25/2011:
My wife and I (matt & karen) departed February 2010 from San Francisco Bay and over the next 9 months sailed down the coast and across the pacific. Jon joined us in the Tuamotus, and the three of us continued on to Brisbane, Australia, arriving November 2010. At that point my wife and I departed, returning back to the U.S., and Jon continued north up the coast of Australia with a friend. At the time of writing this he is still out there. For details on the trip, visit www.syzygysailing.com.