Vito Dumas spent much of her early life in Buenos Aires plying the waters of the Rio de la Plata. I know very little about this period. The history for me begins in the early 1970’s when Pepe and Julio Ozan bought her to sail up through the Carribean, through the Panama Canal, and up to San Diego. Once there they sold her to Michael Logg who ended up doing some extensive planking and framing work there on Shelter Island. I purchased her in January of 1976 with good friend Michael Bair, and we proceeded to complete many of the needed repairs to the decks and cockpit while she was lying in a slip in the water.
After sailing up California coast to Point Conception and exploring the Channel Islands during the summer and fall, we returned to San Diego to prepare for a voyage to the South Seas. Leaving in March of 1977 we sailed down the coast of Baja rounding the Cape at San Lucas and made our way up to La Paz spending time at Isla Espiritu Santo. By early May we departed Cab San Lucas for the Marquesas where we spent three months cruising the various islands of the group. From there it was on to the Tuamotus and then the Societies. Running low on funds in the cruising kitty motivated heading northward to Hawaii in February of 1978. We then dropped anchor for the better part of a year as we both found jobs. By June of 1979 Michael and I had parted ways, and I had sailed Vito to Kauai in preparation for the voyage to Alaska with good friend Peter Robinson. Our 21 day passage to the coast just northward of Sitka was followed by a summer’s cruise through Southeast Alaska, British Columbia, Haida Guay, inside Vancover Island to eventually Port Townsend by mid October of that year.
Since that time there have been a multitude of repair and restoration projects interspersed with multiple cruises northward to Haida Guay and outside of Vancouver Island. These days I still enjoy visiting the San Juan Islands when “time on the boat” is the main antidote to time spend keeping Vito”s simple systems and finishes maintained….