My name is Gary 'Fatty' Goodlander and I am currently circumnavigating on a 38 sloop named Wild Card. I have lived aboard various sailboats for 44 of my 52 years, 35 of them with my XYL Carolyn (NP2MU).

We raised our daughter Roma Orion aboard... until she went off to Brandies University.

I first got my ticket at 12 WN9NTY... and have been WB1CYE, VP5GGX and NP2MT at various times.

I'm a professional full time writer and author of Chasing the Horizon and various other books and publicatioons. I currently write a column for Cruising World and my feature stories regularly appear in SAIL and various other publications.

The weirdest, strangest thing I do is on radio... I've had a weekly radio show on WVWI Radio One on St. Thomas in the USVI for over 14 years now... I FedEx back the tapes or call-in the show... bizarre but true!

We're currently in Africa. Last year we spend in India and the Indian ocean... the year before that in SE Asia... and before that the Pacific.

If you want to know more about me, just go to google.com, click on 'web' and/or 'groups' and punch in 'Fatty Goodlander'.'

There's a bunch of stuff----including a nice story I wrote about how wonderful the hams of Indian were to me.

My mother, father and older sister are (or were) hams.

If you want to see where we currently are... just go to http://shiptrak.regex.ca (note no 'c') and punch in my callsign of W2FAT... and you will see where in the world we are... and can read any small comments we're recently made.

I have an ICOM M710 and power it by solar cells.

My boat is very modest... I only paid $3,000 for it, and my wife says, "You got ripped off, Fatty!" Maybe she's right... but I've sailed her 50,000 ocean miles recently... and think she's okay. (end)