Have you seen the Captain Ron movie?
The premise behind the 1992 classic — hiring a skipper and learning to sail — bears some similarity to our own situation.
Hiring a Skipper for Our First Sail Aboard Aphrodite
If you’ve been following this blog, you know that my husband has just finished sailing our newly purchased St Francis 50 from Fort Lauderdale to Bradenton with a skipper, sailor and friend, Dave Houston.
Dave is also a former St Francis 50 owner (O’Vive). He has far greater credentials than the hired skipper, and layabout, Captain Ron, played by Kurt Russell.
Dave has 40 years’ sailing experience, and has done two Pacific crossings, having sailed to Australia. He is also really a nice guy.
Prior to departure, Dave and his wife, Nathalie, went through our boat with a check list to ensure that it was ready to sail. They did this while they were waiting for my husband’s morning flight to arrive.
When Real Life Started to Feel Like Captain Ron
But, the boat was left in some disorganization when we took ownership. So, there was a stressful moment when Dave and my husband were about to dock the boat in Bradenton, and discovered that the boat hook pole was missing. They found the pole, just in time.
Because docking is something that I suspect stresses many a newbie sailor, I really enjoyed the docking manuevers scene from the Captain Ron movie. I love how the background music is totally out of step with the stress aboard the boat.
Learning to Sail Was Just Part of the Adventure
I believe my husband and I have actually had conversations that smack of the sparkling optimism of Martin Harvey, the straight-man and inexperienced boat owner, played by Martin Short. He tries to convince his wife that they will learn to sail, especially now that they actually own a sail boat. But, unlike the Harvey family, we are actually taking RYA theoretical and practical sailing training courses.
And, like the Harvey family, we have a boat that has some issues to sort out. For example, our Iridium phone has gone missing, the fridge door fell off en route to Bradenton, and the AC works, but only on the port side. With the fridge door, I suspect that it might have been removed by my husband, rather than just fell off. My husband likes things to work properly and he’d have had no tolerance for a fridge with idiosyncracies.
That said, SV Aphrodite is an absolutely beautiful boat and we are really looking forward to living aboard. I document the refits that we are planning to do in my previous post called, “Planning and budgeting for sail boat refits“.
Where are they now?
Hiring a skipper — actually two skippers — was a good decision for our family. We learned a lot and the experience was not nearly as zany as portrayed in the Captain Ron movie.
Dave Houston
Dave reappears in our family circumnavigation story when our son Paul crewed on Dave’s new Catana catamaran (also called O’Vive) from the Bahamas to Tahiti.
Mark Burton
The other skipper that helped get us started was Mark Burton. Mark is now sailing across the Pacific with his wife, having crossed the Panama canal in August 2026.
Rick Escher of the SV Aphrodite Crew
With Rick Escher as skipper of SV Aphrodite, our family has now sailed to more than 40 countries, and have spent the past decade at sea. See this link for our real-time location.
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