The Adventures of S/V Amante

NOTE - THIS IS UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!

This website was on the Internet between about 2002 and 2016. In 2016 the Capt decided to pull the plug and let it sink. We sold the boat in 2016 and have no idea if it still has that name or if it's even still out there somewhere, sailing away. We were moving on and travelling around via our own airplane, a Mooney 201. But, one day the Admiral started lobbying the Capt to refloat the old sailing semi-blog, if for no other reason than to prove to neighbors that we really did sail around the world. It seems like a dream, all those years afloat. We still have a boat (Admiral's orders) but now it's 18' long and pulls a tube for grandkids, sailing on a big inland lake. But we don't mind. 12 years is long enough to spend worrying about the weather every day.

Anyway, this site will take awhile to work out the bugs and broken links. The Capt will stay at it or be swinging from a yardarm.

Our World Tour

What's New ( 9 June 2021 )

We have found many problems with pictures on the site, mostly with many being sideways. For some reason they don't look that way in Frontpage, our ancient authoring system. So, the capt+webmaster is manually rotating all the afflicted pics. This will take time, but we can't stand to look at our site with its messed-up visual content. We will try to spend as much as an hour a day repairing things until it all looks good. We apologize for this disaster.

News Flash! The crew now has e-mail addresses!! You will find them by clicking here . We seem to get a lot of hits but don't know if they are from bots or other cyberentities. So, if you are a carbon-based life form and wish to say hi, please do so at the addresses in the link. We may not answer immediately until we start to see actual incoming messages. Thanks!

This is a maintenance release, as will no doubt be several more. This includes pages starting in SE Asia and moving westwards to Greece. We've mostly been fixing text errors, enlarging the text and oftentimes the pics. This website was started in about 2003 using Frontpage 2000, then a spiffy HTML editor. Most monitors in those days were maybe 1024x768 whereas this is being edited on a PC with 3 monitors, each HD, i.e. 1920x1080. It does make the pics, aften about 640x480, look small. The Admiral ordered an upgrade and the Capt responded with "Aye aye!" (read: "Yes dear"). We'll try to add more material covering China, then return to Cambodia. We had some disc crashes in bad places, e.g. Sudan and may be missing lots of pics, though we tried hard to find any backups that survived.

This is a view out the back of our new home we call 'Treetops'. We ain't saying where it is located, but it's close to the water. We're happy here, don't miss living in a boat. As Graham Nash once wrote (circa 1970) 'Our house is a very very very fine house , with two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard...Now everything is easy 'cause of you! Living and traveling on Amante was a grand exciting and sometimes tumultuous ride, but we like our current sedentary lifestyle.

No we still haven't filled in Cambodia or China. But now that we are luxuriating in a stationary abode, we will get to those far away places once again, via photo's and reminiscence. We'll get there or the Capn will join the Polar Bear Club, not an org he has ever coveted.

This site was originally intended to answer the perennial question from friends and loved ones, "So, what have you been doing lately?" (they ask anyway). It sort of just grew from a few simple pictures of what for many are "faraway places" to a major pile o' files, which we are now trying to organize into a more useful and attractive travel narrative. It also helps us to remember just where in the hell we've been.

Dear Reader,

"Amante" is Spanish and can mean sweetheart or mistress. The mistress in this case is mature but experienced in sea-worldly ways, a 1977 Morgan Out Island 51. Like most mature mistresses, she is a high-maintenance and sometimes demanding broad.

The crew is experienced but thankfully not very mature. The intrepid Captain is John Williams, a semi-retired geophysicist: The Admiral is Vera Williams, who now applies her nursing skills full time to the Captain, who really needs help, badly.

Contact Us. But please be patient as we we're not always on-line. We do appreciate people just saying "hi", but please don't expect a reply unless you specifically request one.

Here we see the Captain, showing his age; the helpful Admiral/Nurse; and the Mom, who keeps the crew supplied

Update: My wonderful mom passed away at the end of August; she was almost 93

Amante started its voyage from Corpus Christi in December, 2002. It was a disaster. After getting 100nm offshore she limped back to Corpus needing lots of repair. In the second attempt she barely made it to Key West, but she did make it. The rest is ongoing history.

We hope this website appeals to a diverse audience. It was intended initially for friends & family, most of whom think port is a kind of wine and knot is just what you tie. It is hoped that it will also prove useful to our sailing friends who may plan to visit a lot of these spots in the future and would like to know stuff like whether you can buy fuel in the Galapagos (yes, and it's cheap), whether you can stay 3 months in French Polynesia (yes, and it's not!), etc. The style has drifted, we'll keep working on it.

While writing copy for this we did a lot of google searches for proper names, and in the process found that everybody's sea dog has a sailing web site. Many are more polished than this humble effort and we advise those interested to seek more info, given the many keywords you will find herein.

If you got this far and haven't seen anything, start at the beginning.