Rikki-tikki-tavi is a sailboat, tri-hulled and 41-feet 10-inches long from the tip of his curious nose to the tip of his bottle-brushy tail. He is named after Rudyard Kipling’s valiant mongoose of “Jungle Books; Volume One” fame. He is a most distinctive trimaran and lives true to his mongoose family temperament.

Rikki-tikki-tavi first touched his toes to water in the Sacramento River on May 10, 2004, after fifteen years of patient construction. Later that year, he followed the river’s flow to San Francisco Bay, where he finally received his wings to fly. As it was his destiny to take his intrepid crew, Clark and Nina, on many great adventures, Rikki-tikki and his sidekick Darzee left for ports north in May 2005. He is currently exploring the waters of the Pacific Northwest, specifically British Columbia.

Rikki-tikki-tavi’s motto, and that of all the mongoose family, is “Run and find out.” That is precisely what we are doing.

• Darzee, our trusty Porta-Bote dinghy, is named after the tailor-bird who tattled on Nagaina in Kipling’s children’s story. Darzee is the purveyor of our travel journals.