We are Bob and Marie Austin. We would hope to do at least one more passage in our lives, but health and age may catch up with us. Our past adventures have included California to Panama to Maine to Florida, across the N. Atlantic and spend several years in the Med. To the Baltic and then down the coast to Maderia, the Canaries, 7 months in the Caribbean and back to S. California. We have been to Mexico a number of times,have been up and down the West Coast a number of times. Spent three years cruising Alaska, then back thru Central American and Panama to Florida where we now live. We have made several trips to Hawaii, and sailed in the South Pacific between the islands and along the coasts of New Zealand and Australia. Total off shore experience around 180,000 miles. This has been in both ocean racing sailboats and motorsailors. The pilot house motor sailor has a lot in common with the pure passagemaker. For example in the 41,000 mile trip to Europe and back, we racked up 4000 engine hours--or at six knots around 24000 miles of the trip (3/5) under power. I happen to believe in a relitatively narrow beam, ballasted trawler for passagemaking. I also favor a separate wing engine.--if you don't have sails fpr back up for passagemaking. I was fortunate to have been aboard Passagemaker twice--and that got me thinking about more about passages under power. If I was too choose a boat today it would be the Nordhavn 46, or 62--the 62 if I was taking crew. (from the response of my friends I was bidding on the 56 foot Hartman Palmer a week ago, I might have to say that I would require the 62 just to accomidate the folks who were passagemaking sailors and would like to take a power boat on a trip from Florida to California--I had three couples all ready to do. I think that perhaps my greatest contributions in this forum will be in systems developement, route planning and logistics. We are also firm advocates of "do it now". If you have the health and wealth to do an adventure--do it while you can. So often as one ages health issues develope, parents become old and require attention or life just passes you by. Regards to all--and I am off by airplane to California in the AM to share the holidays with my children and grandchildren. Would rather go by boat--but it takes a bit longer--like 30 days vs 5 hours in the airplane. Bob Austin Pensacola Fl (a whole bunch of small boats--but no passagemaker)