I bought my first boat, a 1967 Bristol 32, s/v Intrepid while I was in the US Navy, stationed in Okinawa from 2004 – 2006. We sailed that wonderful, beautiful little boat all around the Ryukyu islands of southern Japan and when I got out of the Navy to become a teacher, I ended up staying in Okinawa as a civilian until 2013. That’s when I started to take sailing seriously, became an ASA sailing instructor, started an ASA sailing school with the USAF Kadena Marina and got my USCG Captain’s license (in 2006). s/v Intrepid was an awesome little boat that we converted to run with an electric auxiliary propulsion system and taught many people to sail to the Kerama islands with Aoki Yacht school in Osaka. I would’ve kept doing that forever but someone made me an offer I couldn’t refuse for s/v Intrepid and so I sold it to buy s/v Gemini to sail to Okinawa, but with a stop in Hawaii along the way. The rest is history.
We documented all the adventures of s/v Intrepid in Okinawa with a Blogspot blog, which amazingly is still up as a record of that period. Please check it out here if you want to see beautiful pictures of sailing in Okinawa and want to learn about how to convert a 32 foot sailboat from diesel to electric propulsion.