Richard Heiniger - M/V ELIANA Tribute

Welcome aboard our beloved home on water! Yours truly underway, navigating the Inside Passage!

M/V "ELIANA"

Welcome aboard! This page is a tribute to our home at sea from 2009 - 2012. Debbie and I had retired the first time in 2006 and soon began construction of Eliana with the plan of commissioning her and circumnavigating the globe. We developed the skills as a husband/wife team to operate a US Coast Guard flagged 125 ton trans-ocean vessel. It gave us hundreds of priceless experiences. Unfortunately in 2012, I was called to rejoin the company which I had originally founded so our plans to complete a 15 year circumnavigation was cut short. Never the less, the experience we had building, commissioning and traveling aboard ELIANA was truly amazing. Today, she is under new ownership, but still plying the ocean's waters in search of new ports for her new owners.

This video and a few photographs give you just a small flavor of life aboard her. She was a condominium on the water, and with a 4,000 mile range, completely safe crossing any ocean. I kept a journal during those years. We still keep "Eliana's Journal" online for your review although no entries have been made since 2012.

Please read the story behind and watch "While Time Is Slowly Fleeting", and even visit the related blog post if you like. Then I've added a small photo album below that.

"While Time Is Slowly Fleeting"

Please enjoy this video as a sampling of life aboard ELIANA. I produced it during the 14 day passage from Ensenada, MX to Honolulu, Oahu, HI. As was customary on any passage over 48 hours, we added three additional crew. Sister Linda and close friends Peter and Paige, all of who assisted in the around-the-clock watch keeping during the voyage. We crossed 5 weather fronts during the trip, had seas as high as 35' at one point and celebrated Thanksgiving en route.

The beautiful music by "Anael" was very meaningful to us because it captured our sense that time seemed to stand still day after day, and then suddenly we arrived and it seemed then that it all went too quickly! The lyric "Know it's HIS way" seems so appropriate. It's a metaphor for life. All we have today are the memories. It all went by so quickly.

I would invite you to visit my #61 Blog Post of the this trip to Honolulu in which I write about the trip in more detail and I included the beautiful lyrics from "While Time Is Slowly Fleeting".

Please enjoy the few selected photos I put up below. You can click on any of them to enlarge.

- The Captain

Very near shore along Laguna Beach California.

Pilot House. This is home while underway, sometimes 24/7. We spent thousands of hours here.

At rest in Kwatsi Bay. The only access to the cabin is by water.

Victoria BC Inner Harbor. Provencial Parliament in the background.

Flybridge View while underway off the coast of Kauai.

Navigating the Inside Passage. "Explorer IV" ahead.

Port of Alaska. Ketchikan.

Eliana's Engine Room Main engine in the foreground. Wing Engine just behind. Three diesel generators produce electricity for the entire vessel. Two water makers produce 90 gallons RO water per hour from sea water.