Welcome to the Beatrix web site.  Beatrix is a Peterson Cutter, commonly known as a "Kelly-Peterson 44". She is hull #276 of the 44' center-cockpit medium displacement cruising cutters designed by Doug Peterson and built by Jack Kelly for fast passage making and comfortable safe cruising.  (Read about the KP44 at  www.kp44.org).  My name is Jeff Stander and I have been a live-aboard on Beatrix since 1998. This web site includes position reports, photos, logs and travels of Beatrix as a history and informational site for friends, family, and anyone else who may be interested.  

I have finally embarked on the grand voyage — sailing to the South Pacific with Australia as my destination and home.

Sailing from Seattle to Southern California in 2006 was the first step . Departure date was the 20th of September with Bob Hawk and Blair Fraser as crew. They are both owners/skippers of KP44s. The plan took us south down the 125° W longitude lilne, leaving from Cape Flattery and making landfall in San Francisco 6 days later. It was hard to leave the most perfect place in the world to work on a boat, but it was time to quit refitting and rebuilding and start sailing, although since cruising has been defined as "boat maintenance in exotic ports" I fully expect the projects to be ongoing -- I just won't be in walking distance from the West's biggest sailboat chandlery. But it was time to leave Seattle, turn the page, and start a new chapter...

2007 was spent in San Diego and occasionally Ensenada, MX, working up to finally leaving the USA and heading to the South Pacific. Final departure from San Diego was 10 January, 2008. We stopped at Baja Naval in Ensenada for fuel and to bid farewell to our wonderful friends Victor and Andre Satie aboard Easy Breeze. On Tuesday Jan 15, birthdate of my daughter Sarah, we departed at last from Ensenada to La Paz. Aboard are Kathy Perkins and Fiona Rhodes. Winds are light, seas are calm, and the crew and I are excited to be off.

For some photos of the journey to the South Pacifc so far, see the the following pages:

On May 1, 2008 we set sail for the Marquesas from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We arrived 24 days later in Atouna on the island of Hiva Oa. Distance travelled was nearly 3000 nautical miles over the ground, with a rhumb line distance of 2590 miles. Leaving in May, the ITCZ (doldrums) are very broad, but except for motoring from 7° N to the equator we had wonderful sailing. Our best VMG day was 175 miles!

While the sailing was brilliant I continue to have equipment failures and I am no longer surprised. I am developing a new philosophy of cruising which takes into account that the definition of cruising needs to be extended to "boat maintenance between exotic ports." The generator is not working again and we also have suffered total refrigeration failure and partial radar failure. I can't endorse them highly enough.

The HF radio modem was not working for a while so we received no emails (or weather data). It appears to be working again as long as I keep a toothpick jammed into the "on" switch. Meanwhile we have discovered we can do without the referigeration, which used an enormous amount of power, thus ameliorating the impact of the generator failure. I.e. the refrigeration and generator failures were paired disasters that kind of cancel each other out. A cold beer would be nice however.

I have discovered how important it is to have my amateur radio license, as I have been in close contact with family and friends via phone patches from incredibly friendly ham operators K5SIV (Bob from Austin), W7USR (Tom from Washington State) and KH6RC (Randy in Honolulu). The ham radio seafarer's net also updates our position reports when we are underway.

I have not been able to update the photos and website for some time now. However, we are now in Apia, capital of Samoa. We spent six weeks in Pago Pago, American Samoa, and had a good time except for a couple of weeks with dengue fever. In a few days we will proceed westward to Fiji, New Caledonia, and Bundaberg, Australia.

Jeff is currently webmaster and listserv owner/moderator for the Peterson Cutter Web site and Peterson Cutter Mailing List.  If you are interested in the Kelly Peterson 44, KP46, Formosa 46, or other flavors of the Doug Peterson Cutters, please visit the web site and join the eGroup.

Jeff Stander

What's on the site?

• Complete Table of Contents
• Voyages
• Beatrix Refit Project

What's new on the site?

• Articles (published and unpublished)

• Logs

• Onboard Movie Catalog

• Aft Cabin Rebuild

• Alaska Voyage
• Running Rigging Diagrams
• Cockpit Control Lines

 

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Last modified: January 11 2010 15:27

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