Maria Dunlop
Skipper
Maria has a varied background having driven trucks for Securicor, worked on a fishing trawler in Australia and also worked as a Midwife and Theatre Nurse for the NHS. These last skills should prove useful on the boat….not that Adam is expecting a baby but any other medical emergency and he will be in safe hands.
Maria is very comfortable on, in or under the water. She is a very good swimmer, very experienced diver and now a qualified skipper. Maria performs most of the boat handling but leaves a lot of the sailing at sea to Adam, her co-skipper.
Sharing the duties of skipper, Adam has also learnt how to sail since first starting in early 2009.
Adams keen love for travelling and trying new things has progressed to fishing and has spent many a day trying to catch grey mullet in Ipswich Marina – no success there. So with Maria only catching the scavengers of the sea (crabs) when sailing locally, they may both starve on long passages.
Adam is very good at managing people and spent most of his career in senior IT management positions . His wife Maria sees herself as the boss so not sure he will using those skills anymore.
Finally, Adam is a fun loving guy who sees the best in everyone and likes to be known as Adz, DJ Adz when he is in the party mood :). Many people who have spent some time with Maria and Adz (Mariadz) have been “Mariadzed” at some point. It generally involves a very severe hangover the next day……
Bonnie Dunlop
Able crewcat
Bonnie learnt to sail from an early age and very quickly realised that it was best to leave the heavy work to more experienced crew members and to save her energy by sleeping a lot.
Bonnie is also a very capable rodent catcher although her standard catch and release policy Is not being encouraged now she lives permanently on the boat.
Clyde “Clydie” Dunlop
Able crewcat
Clyde is also a cat that prefers not to be in the way when the heavy work is being done. However he does like to watch. He is the more active cat and is usually to be found either shouting at somebody or doing something he shouldn’t.
Whilst not the best catcher of rodents, Clyde’s disposal policy is second to none ensuring no return for the rodent and a requirement for less cat food.
S/Y Mariadz
Moody 54
And here is the old girl herself (note to self – check alignment and that this text isn’t adjacent to the picture of Maria!).
Mariadz is a 2001 Moody 54 that was a Boat show example for her first three years. She then went through a very complicated set of ownership. She unfortunately had a fire in the galley before being (poorly) repaired. She was bought in 2010 by Celia and Andrew Sharpe and called Alice. She then went across the Atlantic before her adventures were curtailed late in 2011.
By 2013, she was back in the UK and not in great shape with a lot of the gear that you would have expected for a long voyage missing. Again she was feeling sorry for herself….and Maria is a softy….and the rest is history!
Mariadz 