About Us
Morning Star is the sailboat in the picture to the left. She is an Orion 27 Mark II made by Pacific Seacraft. We bought her new in July, 1987. She is not big, but she is a well built boat that can cruise anywhere.
Here are some pictures of her when she was new.
Her specs are as follows:
- LOA 30' 11"
- LOD 27' 4"
- LWL 22' 2"
- Beam 9' 3"
- Draft 4' 0"
- Displacement 10,000 pounds
- Ballast 3,800 pounds
- Sail Area Cutter 508 sq. ft.
- Headroom 6' 2"
- Mast Clearance 40' 11"
She was designed by Henry Mohrschladt one of the original owners of Pacific Seacraft. Morning Star was made in Santa Ana, California and was put in the water for the first time in Newport Beach, California at the end of June of 1987.
Our names are Dick, Dawn, and Nicole. We lived aboard Morning Star for six years. In that time, we made two trips from San Diego to the west coast of Mexico. On the first trip, Nicole was only three years old. On the second, she was in Grades 1 and 2. We are now in the Puget Sound area and will be here exploring the Pacific Northwest. We are not currently living aboard. Nicole is going to school so we do our cruising in the summer.
The year is now 2008 and Nicole has graduated from high school and has started college. Before we left on our second cruise, a friend of ours, that was a teacher, got really upset that we were going to home-school Nicole. She could not believe that we would do that to her. Well, now that she has graduated, I will tell you how she did and you can decide for yourself if it hurt her.
Nicole went to a high school that has International Baccalaureate (IB www.ibo.org) classes. If you are not familiar with IB classes, I can say they are as hard as any classes available anywhere. In her senior year she went to state with the girls cross county team. She was second flute in the All State wind ensemble and went to State Solo Ensemble. In addition to her high school diploma she also got an IB diploma (she was full IB, no regular classes). Her GPA was 3.93.
Copyright © 2003 - 2010 Dick Schaffer. All rights reserved.