It’s a formula for adventure: Three Lee County residents with little sailing experience, a Bayfield sailboat they bought on Craigslist for $5,000, limited provisions and a plan to spend eight months cruising the Bahamas and Caribbean.
Christian Colarusso, 25, John “JB” Barraco, 23, and Max Dornbush, 24, hope to set sail sometime this week from Port St. Lucie aboard the 29-foot Seeker. On Monday and Tuesday, they motored across the Okeechobee Waterway and will depart for the Bahamas after they’ve made some minor repairs on the boat.
Of the three, only Dornbush, whose previous occupations have included lifeguard, cook and painter, had any sailing experience before this summer.
“I went to sailing camp when I was younger, so I knew the basic principles of sailing,” he said. “But the truth of the matter is, when I first got on the boat, I hardly had any idea what I was doing. We’re all learning from the ground up.”
Barraco, a 2010 Florida Gulf Coast University graduate who’s taking a year off before going to law school, got the idea for the cruise earlier this year and found Seeker on Craigslist.
Before he and Colarusso bought the boat, they decided they should actually go sailing.
