The Moonshadow Reports

George Backhus and Merima Jaferi are sailing around the world aboard Moonshadow, a Deerfoot 2-62. We asked George for a few details about Moonshadow and her cruising itinerary:

"A lot of yachties comment on how she looks almost new and are taken aback when we tell them she's nearly twenty years old now. Funny how over time a 'radical' design can become mainstream. In the 13 years I've owned her (or she's owned me!), we've logged more than 70,000 miles (nearly half of that was single- or double-handed). The original plan was a five-to-eight-year circumnavigation, but we have, as they say, been caught in the drift and just had too much fun. While we've updated much of the electronics, some of the gear and machinery, and most of the decor over the years, she's still in very much in her original configuration, which we find works very well for what we are doing."

As of 2007, they have past the halfway point of the circumnavigation, which started in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida in 1994. (Merima joined Moonshadow in Australia.) After several years each in Mexico, the South Pacific, New Zealand, Australia, and Southeast Asia, they've now crossed the Indian Ocean. Plans are to cruise the Med for the next few summers - Cypress, Greece and Turkey this summer, then Croatia, Italy and Spain the next. After leaving the Med, they plan to head across the Atlantic in the ARC Rally, which will close the loop on their circumnavigation.