June 29, 2005--Elan Update Part 2: Bouncing back
by Scott and Wendy Bannerot

	Returning to Elan in Australia was a big relief for all three of us. Here Ryan and I get ready to do some work on the bottom.

Our last installment left us newly re-established at home in Florida, awaiting an answer on Australian residency, on Wendy's surgery and treatment, and to whether we could fire up the old charter business and other endeavors enough to make a financial comeback sufficient to extend the cruise...and trying to weather the mental side of being back down in the trenches after years of freedom on the high seas. I think the greatest good fortune is that our residence is in Tavernier, on Plantation Key in the Florida Keys; and that our business carries us deep in to the Everglades, to the reefs, and out into the deep blue beyond, all the way to the Bahamas. The fishing, diving, and exploring is better than ever. Sure, more people live here than did before, and more people pack in on holiday than before. Who can blame them? Still, most days I see only a few boats, the fishing is incredible, and the health of the ecosystem is superior to when I left it in 1993.

Like any refit, that of the 20-foot Seacraft cost twice as much as anticipated and took three times as long. I had good luck with sponsorship from Suzuki, Simrad, Moldcraft Products, and Capt. Hank Brown's Hookup Lures, and I had a lot of help from good friends in the industry. By March 2004 the charters were coming in, I leased a boat from my uncle to cover the last period of refitting my own boat, and then by May everything was in place. It was wonderful to be fishing with many old customers for the first time in nearly a decade, first out of Papa Joe's Marina and now out of my old stomping ground, Holiday Isle Marina in Islamorada, Florida Keys. In May of 2004 we got the electrifying news that Australia had granted us residency. We needed to return to activate it, and of course we planned to re-launch Elan and possibly get a little cruise in up to the southern Great Barrier Reef and Hervey Bay. Meanwhile Wendy's surgery went well, and thankfully her insurance company was excellent with coverage, and to make a long story short she was partially fixed. Ryan found a good school and played tee-ball, I helped coach the team, and he made lots of friends. He also found a new martial arts school to continue the training he'd had since age three in Australia. We could see our way clear financially to a three-month return to the boat in Australia, particularly with the business back up and running at home. Who knew what the future would bring; at least the voyage was alive in some form and we had a shot at establishing a new base in Australia.

I made the mistake of overcoating a between-antifouling barrier product before the xylene had a chance to fully evaporate, which my EP2000 by E Paint Company did not like at all. Luckily it came off easily with a pressure sprayer and we did it right the second time. As the saying goes, "We do it right because we do it twice".

Going back to eastern Australia was like going home...Ryan returned to his same school, immediately re-connected with his friends and teachers, resumed tae kwon do, and hit the surfing hard. Wendy thrived in the sunny, cool weather, and it was a joy to see Elan decked out in fresh EP2000, an innovative water-based bottom paint from E Paint Company ideal for metal hulls (see www.epaint.net). It was time for some serious soul-searching and a reality check. Wendy and I talked things over for hours during long walks on the beach and around the aft settee aboard Elan. Six months on and six months off was really too expensive, and impractical...house taxes and insurance for the Florida place were very high, and dry dockage back in Australia wasn't inexpensive. The cost of an empty house was prohibitive - I could run charters night and day while home, like the old days, never see Ryan, and probably pull it off, only to return to a sailboat that had been sitting dormant for six months and expect to launch and go sailing reliably for thousands of miles? Maybe one round, but this wasn't a sustainable scenario. Also, much of our income-generating ability had to do with a land base-office with all slide archives and references in one secure place, fishing boat, equipment, dock. Take that away, and we didn't have enough active income production to supplement our modest, and variable, investment income. The answer was simple: the sailboat needed to be at the land base, and we could then see our way clear to interludes abroad, then six months or so of income production out of the land base. But with the boat residing at the land base, we could during our working six months keep up with maintenance and get it out for short runs. This would be the best of both worlds for Ryan, for us, and for Elan.

	While in Australia we went camping with friends at famed Cania Gorge, and Rob Watt snapped this family photo.

No problem then to simply take 18 months sometime soon and complete the circumnavigation, return Elan to the same seawall behind our house in Florida where it all started, and operate just like we did before - late spring and early summer in the Bahamas and Caribbean, home by July to hunker down for hurricane season, run charters and writing work the whole time we're back at the land base to make ends meet. But what about this marvelous opportunity in Australia? And the fact that the local canal system and places near the mouth of the Mooloola River would be an incredible Indo-Pacific land base on the doorstep of so much we hadn't yet seen? A perfect option, except for one thing: like Florida, these places had experienced a dizzying price run-up, with heavy market pressure applied by migrants from the cooler areas of the country, just like at home. No way to afford it...wait a second, we said...the key words might be just like at home. We'd paid off our small, modest home prior to departure, and now the thing was worth six times what we'd paid for it. What about pulling some equity from it without selling it? With residency, we could contemplate purchasing a house in Australia.

To make a long story short, a perfect property came up for sale due to a divorce situation for what was a reasonable price for the area...a small, older home, quite livable, and more importantly, with an excellent floating dock suitable for Elan. We hurriedly organized financing based on the Florida house equity and went for it, with the view of sorting it all out later upon our return home. A close friend agreed to house and boat sit for us at the Australian property, we parked Elan at the new place, and headed back to Florida to fight the new financial fire. We figured we could bail out of one property or the other if the heat got too hot to stay in the kitchen. In the mean time, our Pacific Island dreams were still alive.

We hit the ground running in late 2004 back in Tavernier...with charters, writing commissions, some work on a new book deal, and twisting in the breeze on the issue of loan payments. Over and over again we looked at schemes for selling pieces of house equity, always going round and round and coming back to the same issue: the appreciation rate of the real estate exceeds all of our other investment opportunities, so we could not easily afford to buy back the shares once sold. And here's where good fortune smiled on us once again.

I was out on a fishing charter with a very close, old friend who happens to be the principal in a major investment firm that specializes in buying and re-structuring corporations, among other things. I've known him for 20 years, and he has been kind enough to advise me all of this time. He's not in the business of advising, I'm just fortunate to be his friend. My confidence in him exceeds that of any other source. He is very humble about it all, though I've learned to simply do exactly as he says. The portion of our savings I invested according to his advice 12 years ago has radically outperformed anything else we've done.

He asked how things were going, since I'd been keeping him informed about our dealings. I told him I'd re-financed on a low rate, 30-year fixed mortgage, yet I was still stuck on creating sufficient cash flow to float the sailing dream and hang on to both the Australia and Florida options, six months of labor annually notwithstanding. He asked me to review the numbers for him, then pierced me with his sharp gaze. Slowly, as if speaking to a child, he said, "Are you asking for my advice?" to which I replied, "Yes, I am."

"OK then, here's what you do." He proceeded to clue us in on some investments we couldn't have found otherwise. Then with a twinkle of an eye, a smile, and a pat on the back he was in his car and heading off to a lofty office in Manhattan.

Ryan is happy with his first-ever Australian bass, caught at Cania Gorge in Queensland, Australia.

We had spent months of struggle, yet even with the best and most innovative ideas we could come up with, we were still lost in the maze, unable to bridge that last gap in the equation. Then, with a wave of his financial genius wand, we're off and running free, and furthermore we've learned something new.

Shortly thereafter more good fortune came our way in the form of exciting job offers to do charter work for a mothership operation in the Coral Sea and for another outfitter later in the year operating locally out of Mooloolaba, and to write a regular column for an Australian fishing magazine. We are working on another book-writing arrangement, and we hope to finally get back out to the Pacific Islands aboard Elan during the 2006 sailing season. We are currently scheduled to rejoin the boat in July 2005, do the Australian charter work through most of the first half of 2006, and with luck set sail for New Caledonia and points east in May or June 2006. We have another surgical procedure to get through for Wendy, and finances will remain uncomfortably exciting for the foreseeable future. The simple desire to extend the Pacific sailing years sure got complicated, but we're galloping along with the wind in our ears and smiles on our faces, focused on the far horizon. For us it's a far more comfortable and familiar feeling than retreating to our former lives of routine and hard labor.