Sailing adventures of Captain Kirk, Heidi, Tosh & Tikka...

Captain Kirk

Navi-girl Heidi

Tosh By-Gosh

Tikka Pepita

Messing about in boats has been part of Kirk's life since he was a little kid, growing up on Lake Washington in Seattle. After a short land-based stint as an officer in the US Air Force and a 2-year bicycle tour of Europe, he's been racing and cruising sailboats for more than 50 years. Kirk is a USCG licensed Captain with numerous deliveries on the west coast of the US from Alaska to Mexico, and Florida, and the Caribbean. He's also a Deepak Chopra-certified Meditation teacher.

Heidi is grateful to have been exposed to sailing as a young girl with family on the Chesapeake and in the Caribbean. However, she didn't really "learn" to sail until college where she joined the UW Yacht Club at the University on Washington. Once she started racing she was hooked! Heidi is a certified Holistic Health Coach & Blogger at HappyWellLifestyle.com, a Reiki practitioner, and author of Food, Mood, & Gratitude Journal.

My name is Tosh with a capital T, which stands for Trouble, cuz that is me! But I mean no harm, my heart's full of joy and all the world is a toy! Cuz I love everyone and gettin' into everything. And you can tell I'm a gato-del-mar cuz I love to fetch o-rings, and zip-ties! Mom calls me "Tosh-Love" cuz my heart's so BIG, and Dad calls me "Mr. Monster" cuz I'm a large Bengal-Siamese who loves to talk. Plus I have lots of spots and great big feet. Oh, and I love to chase Tikka when she eggs me on too.

Tikka Rodriguez Pepita Margarita is a big name for a little girl like me. I'm super shy if I don't know you well, but I'm very nice and sweet and will soon warm up. Mom says I'm half rabbit cuz my fur is sooooo soft. And dad is the only one who can pick me up without a squawk. My favorite thing to do is chase my dragonfly toy and leap so high I touch the sky. I also love peering over the edge of the boat at the fish in the water. But one time I fell in and used up one of my lives!

The Rest of Our Story...

Heidi & Kirk met racing on an old 44' IOR boat thirty years ago. Kirk raced Vic-Maui on that boat in 1990, and Heidi flew over to meet him and the crew, wishing she'd done the race. We both had the wanderlust to get a boat and go cruising. And through a series of synchronicities, our lovely Passport 40, Due West, soon became ours, and we got married aboard.

To give Heidi some ocean passage experience, we decided to race Due West to Hawaii in the 1996 Vic-Maui Race, along with 6 friends as crew. We had a great time, being the "boat that had the most fun", and got nicknamed "Due East" as we had the easternmost track down the coast. This was Heidi's first ocean crossing and she loved being at sea!

We moved aboard Due West as full-time liveaboards in 2002 and she has been our only home since then. Over the years we've raced and cruised our home and OPBs (Other People's Boats!) around the Pacific Northwest, California, and Mexico. We also love the Caribbean and have chartered many times in Grenadines and the BVIs.

Our crazy-fun furbies, Tosh & Tikka, came into our lives as little kittens from Whidbey Island shortly before we cast off our dock lines from Seattle in August 2015. And the four of us have been cruising full-time since. Our racing friends call us "The Cruisers", and our cruising friends call us "The Racers." We consider ourselves "Performance Cruisers," liking to sail a well-trimmed boat. And we look forward to racing opportunities in other countries as we continue our adventures, particularly Antigua Race Week whenever we get to the Caribbean side of the world. Tosh & Tikka are the BEST boat-cats we could have asked for.

Thanks for reading and following our adventures!

Captain Kirk, Heidi, Tosh, & Tikka