My name is Francesco Silva, I was born in southern Tuscany, Italy in 1970. My parents used to cruise the Med back in the 60's so my first trip on a boat was at eight months old. Apparently I was quite content both in good and bad weather and never cried once. Later we kept sailing locally, me going through courses, while they ran a shop in the local harbor. I'd visit the harbor master every day in his office, he'd give me a candy and let me stare at the barometer, explaining how things worked and letting me stick around for a couple hours. I was hooked: you never know what harbor masters put in those candies. Meanwhile my parents bought a caravan and so we traveled through Tunisia, Algeria a bit of the Sahara etc., and we kept traveling pretty much through my whole youth.
I started working and traveling (on my own) at 14, then at the first chance I moved out of my small town to NYC, to pursue bigger dreams: I worked for fashion black and white printing studio, for an international news photo agency, but also as a cook, painter, babysitter, home renovator, antique restorer, translator, interpreter to make ends meet. NYC was an absolute blast (long long story), but somewhere I was getting that it wasn't really me for life. After five years then I wanted to move closer to my family and friends, so I quit NYC and went to work in Rome. I moved in with an old friend in the center and got work for a music video TV channel, and then in Italy's second largest photo agency (but it was never about me taking pictures, I know I'm not that good). After two years I could feel the "sea bug" coming back: luckily my neighbor had a little boat parked in his garden he didn't plan to use, and let me have it for nothing. Nothing in fact was left of it but the hull and the mast, and after two years of scrounging around boatyards I got her back in the water and got sailing again, dreaming and not quite believing I would be able and confident enough to shoot for the "BIG dream". But so I was, and after a couple summers I decided to go for it, and started crewing in the winters. That led me to a 1904 100' schooner in Costa 
Rica where I stayed six months, and then sailing in Baja, Mexico, going to Namibia to a boat that was supposed to go look for wrecks but went nowhere (meanwhile I got to hitch a ride on a commercial truck through South Africa, then ride a motorcycle and camp in the Namib desert, feed cheetahs and shoot a wounded springbok). In the meantime I worked at a charter company for two summers doing maintenance and deliveries, at an hotel, moved to Poland for a while, traveled to Tokyo for a fashion show, lived in Japan under entirely different circumstances, exported silks from India...you know, the usual. After this I got an offer form my old friend Tom of Karaka (old friend since we sailed together for six months on the Ranger -pictured on the right-) to go sail the Malacca strait and from there 1400 miles o Maldives and Chagos in the Indian Ocean. After six months, gone back home, I got another sailing gig but I worked hard and never saw a penny, which set me off in fury to go out there and get what I really wanted: a good budget (insert laughter here) boat to cruise on. The learning curve has been rough, since having no money I couldn't go off partying while the boat was made new in a boatyard...but while I renovated the boat one piece at a time, I managed to sail Keturah from New Zealand through a big chunk of the Pacific (Fiji-Vanuatu-Solomon Islands) then up to Micronesia, Palau, then Philippines and Malaysia, across the Indian Ocean and soon the Atlantic, for a total so far of well over 30000 miles. It's been a wonderful five years of cruising! And just can't wait to do a lot more...
Ciao
Rica where I stayed six months, and then sailing in Baja, Mexico, going to Namibia to a boat that was supposed to go look for wrecks but went nowhere (meanwhile I got to hitch a ride on a commercial truck through South Africa, then ride a motorcycle and camp in the Namib desert, feed cheetahs and shoot a wounded springbok). In the meantime I worked at a charter company for two summers doing maintenance and deliveries, at an hotel, moved to Poland for a while, traveled to Tokyo for a fashion show, lived in Japan under entirely different circumstances, exported silks from India...you know, the usual. After this I got an offer form my old friend Tom of Karaka (old friend since we sailed together for six months on the Ranger -pictured on the right-) to go sail the Malacca strait and from there 1400 miles o Maldives and Chagos in the Indian Ocean. After six months, gone back home, I got another sailing gig but I worked hard and never saw a penny, which set me off in fury to go out there and get what I really wanted: a good budget (insert laughter here) boat to cruise on. The learning curve has been rough, since having no money I couldn't go off partying while the boat was made new in a boatyard...but while I renovated the boat one piece at a time, I managed to sail Keturah from New Zealand through a big chunk of the Pacific (Fiji-Vanuatu-Solomon Islands) then up to Micronesia, Palau, then Philippines and Malaysia, across the Indian Ocean and soon the Atlantic, for a total so far of well over 30000 miles. It's been a wonderful five years of cruising! And just can't wait to do a lot more...Ciao
