SUNFLOWER -
We were very excited to get an email from one of the previous owners of Sunflower. Alicia Bryant is the daughter of the second owners and spent from 8 -
She has kindly allowed us to include her email and photo on our web site.
Alicia wrote;
We are American but we bought her in New Zealand. My parents and I
left the United States to go cruising when I was 6 months old (in
1987) in a Rafiki 37' named Sunshine. We ended up in Pago Pago,
American Samoa where my dad worked for Starkist Tuna. After 3 years
Sunshine was wrecked in a hurricane and we sold her. My parents
worked there for another 3 years and saved up the money to buy
Sunflower in Auckland ( I was 8 at the time). We bought her from her
first owners and her original name was Shelansi ( I think that's
spelled right), a combo of the owner's 3 kids' names. My parents
didn't want a boat named after someone else's children so re-
Sunflower, following a trend from the first boat and because she was
yellow. She wasn't cruising ready at all so we spent 6 months in
Auckland and dad did a TON of work making sure she was ready to go
sailing around the world.
Once we left New Zealand we took off sailing around the world! Our
first stop and first long passage in her was to New Caledonia. We
spent a bit of time there and then crossed the Coral Sea to Australia.
While in the Coral Sea we ran into re-
what we call the Trip From Hell. As I'm sure you know, it's pretty
much a downwind leg from New Caledonia and we started getting very
strong following seas and winds not too long after we left New
Caledonia. After about 3 days our shaft pulled out of the coupling
and dad didn't manage to fix it because of the rough seas. But he
figured we could sail through a passage in the Great Barrier Reef and
then fix the engine in calmer waters. It was not too long after that
when we broached off of a wave during the middle of the night and
jybed the boom a couple times, breaking it (that's how the boom was
broken). At this point we had no main, no engine and had to go
through the GBR. We were on the HAM radio with some people in
Thursday Island and checked in with them daily so they could keep
track of us and notify the Coast Guard if there were any problems.
They also ordered a sleeve for the boom and it was repaired there in
Thursday Island. So there's the story of the broken boom!
I noticed in a letter you wrote to a cruising magazine that you kept
Sunflower in Panama for a while. Interestingly enough, some friends
of ours that are still cruising saw her there and went to see if
anyone was aboard but no one was home and they said it looked like she
had been sitting for a while. Small world!
For the rest of the trip... once we left Australia we went took her in
the Darwin Ambon race to Ambon, Indonesia. From there we went to
Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Sri Lanka (not particularly in that
order, I don't remember all the order) and then to the Maldives and
from there up the Red Sea. Oh on a side note, my brother met us in
Australia to help my parents sail her up the Red Sea, he spent a year
with us and left in Turkey. The Red Sea was a difficult upwind motor
basically, and a VERY different world alltogether. I can tell more
stories later if you wish. After the Red Sea we went to Israel,
Cypress, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Monaco, and France. In France we took
her mast down and traveled through the canals in Europe for a number
of months, going through all the countryside of France, Germany and
Holland. In Holland we put the mast back up and crossed over to
England and went from there to Spain and Portugal. We had a horrible
trip from Lisbon to Madiera but LOVED it in Madiera. From there we
went to the Canary Islands and did our Atlantic crossing from the
Canary Islands to Barbados. I believe that was a 28 day crossing.
Once in the Caribbean we went to most of the islands there ( I won't
name them all), Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Bahamas and then Florida. From
Florida we took her all the way up the East Coast up to Maine and then
back down, through the Panama Canal (I noticed you stopped in the San
Blas Islands, we did too!) and then to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico
and back up to San Francisco to finish our trip. We spent a total of
5 years traveling and I was 13 when we returned in 1999.
So you can see she's VERY well traveled by now! It would be quite
amazing to calculate how many miles she's traveled.
A little about where my family and I are now. I am working in the
shipping industry in Los Angeles (working for buying a boat of my own
and going cruising again when the time is right) and my parents are
semi-
fixed it up as a pocket cruiser. My parents are pretty much done with
long passages and decided they'd rather tow the boat wherever they
want. So their plans are to spend time on the boat in Mexico, the San
Juan Islands, the East Coast of the US, Florida and wherever else
their fancy takes them!
Sunflower arrives in San Francisco at the end of the Bryant's cruise in 1999.
Previous Owners