Not leaving yet...but

Eight o'clock in the evening...

Sitting in my recliner...

Sipping on a Rum & Coke...

Keyboard on my lap, tapping through Yacht world to...wait, no need to do that anymore! Offer, counter offer, and counter-counter offer, done and dusted, offer accepted. The Retirement Project is no longer a plan, it is a 1982, 42' Tartan currently known as "Encore". (Which pretty much settles the mono v mult-hull debate. Winner? Classic plastic at a reasonable price.)

It seems a bit mystical that roughly 1,269 days ago (the date of the first entry on this blog) we started thinking about 1980s mono-hulls. Then we worked our way through newer boats and catamarans, trying to balance sailing v living v price. More than 3 years worth of diligence and we ended up right back where we started. So if I can offer any advice to those thinking of walking this same path, don't be afraid to go with your first instinct. Also, if you are seriously 5 years out with a pretty good income, look at the buy-a-boat, put-it-in-charter, sail away in 5 years option. I'm sure I'm going to loves me some 42' Tartan...but a 5 year old ex-charter boat can't possibly be any more beat than a 30 year old any kind of boat. (Having bought Nomad and spending the last 3 years working pretty constantly on her, I'm going to make the claim of having some idea of what I'm talking about.) If we wanted to wait 5 years, we would look at it. But I don't think I can keep Deb on the land that long.

So that's it, the trigger has been pulled. A lot of work remains, and we'll be land lubbers for a while yet. If you are near Carlyle, IL anytime in the next year or so, stop by and admire our ridiculously large boat for such a small lake. You can even laugh a bit if you like because, by damn, I think we're going to make it.

Pictures as requested

But I'll let Tim do the pros and cons list.  These pictures are from when it was in the water last year.  Since it's currently under shrink wrap and sitting in 2 feet of snow, our pictures from today wouldn't be very viewable.

Very seaworthy companionway

Nice cockpit, good Lewmar winches

Salon area.  Two settees, and a pilot berth over the port setee.

Pilot berth over the port settee

Bookshelves and lockers over the starboard settee

U-shaped galley.  Three burner stove, oven, spice rack, folding counter extension, salt water foot pump.

Nav Station

Aft cabin starboard berth, hanging locker, and small seat

Main double berth on the port side

V-berth

Head.  Has a separate shower with a seat just out of this picture to the left.

And now just a few of our own pictures from today:

 They cleaned a path to the boat just for us!

I think we might need some 2-way radios to anchor this boat or some really good hand signals!

 I'm ready for the night watch...

What did I get myself into???

Pros:

1. Affordable

2. Big enough to ocean cruise but small enough to (barely) fit on our lake till we do that

3. Lots of room for grandkids

4. Really well-built, sturdy boat

5. Not too far away

6. Shoal draft for both Carlyle Lake and the Caribbean

7. Fits most of our criterion - modified fin keel, skeg rudder, high bridgedeck to the companionway, lots of handholds, good toerail, cutter rig, U-shape galley, separate shower.

Cons

1. Only has one hull

2. Winter weather is preventing an adequate survey and/or sea trial

3. Only has one hull

Still learning things at boat shows...

Arghhh...Catamaran...monohull...catamaran...monohull...

Every time I get off of a monohull after an open water sail I think to myself, "Make mine a double!" But a couple of weeks and months go by, the dutch-roll ride and incessant rocking on the hook memories fade, while romping through the Gulf Stream memories remain.  Then an indoor, monohull show comes along and the little kid in me patters through the isles yelling "Look at all the pretty boats!"  Hull shapes and deep keels whisper assurances that they will put a bow into the wind and honk their way state side from the islands like a proper sailboat should.  Innovative use of interior space is everywhere, galleys with all the fixings right where the Chef would reach, heads with stand-up shower space, living areas where the living would be large, storage everywhere, (and no big deal if you load them up a bit.)  Each cockpit suggests a place secure in a seaway or perfect for lounging off a quiet white beech, sundowner in hand.  And each seems better than the last.  Go below on any boat longer than 40' and the thought comes unbidden, "Yep, this will work, let's write someone a check."  Then get on the next 40 foot plus boat and think the exact same thing.  Just about the time what little sense and self control remains is happily abandoned an adult (usually Deb) taps me gently on the shoulder and points at the fine print.  These things are all carrying price tags well north of a quarter million dollars!  Any check with my signature for one of them would bounce higher than the masts.  (Well, this is an inside show so there are no masts.  But you get the idea.)

Then there was a Tartan 4400, with a price tag twice that quarter million.  Who gets smitten by this one?  You guessed it, my adult supervision.  Now she knows we can't afford even half a new Tartan.  This however, is not a deterrent so much as a challenge.  Within hours of getting back to the hotel she finds an older Tartan that looks nearly as good as new, has a recent survey posted on line, with an asking price that is about twice what I paid for the Z, is located here in Chicago, and is for sale by one of the brokers who has a booth at the show.

There is little chance we will buy this exact boat.  But it has sparked some ideas about different approaches to getting to a boat, and maybe getting to a boat sooner.  You never know what you might learn at a boat show.

The folks at Superior Yacht Sales, Cindy and Dick Kalow were kind enough to show us the Jeanneau Sun Oddyssey 409, a fantastic yacht, and some ideas of how to get hold of one. 

The 409 galley

Tim sitting in the saloon of the Tartan 4400.  All I can say about this boat is W-O-W

Tartan 4400 aft cabin

The Catalina 375

Long Island vs. The Bahama Islands

Shipmate Otto, who endured the Long Island Trip with us, asked how the Bahama trip compared. So I'll take a stab at leaning the two trips against each other to see what stands out.

First I want to be fair to the Pearson if I can. It wasn't the fault of Osprey that she leaked like a screen door and many of her systems needed serious TLC. Also, the lack of an auto-pilot was a huge detriment over a long sail. Helm watch on Quetzal was easily handled. One could get something warm to drink, sit comfortably, take some time to gaze at the stars and the horizon, chat with whoever else was in the cockpit. Standing at the helm of Osprey was constant work and often long hours of intense concentration.

Quetzal was being sailed by her owner / master. There was nothing about that boat John K. didn't know. He could talk a crew of amateurs through setting a whisker pole in bouncing seas or pulling onto a completely unfamiliar dock in stiff winds and running tides, all the while sounding like he was giving instructions on how to start a toaster. Osprey, on the other hand, was somewhat unfamiliar to John H. and had, (in my opinion) a completely inadequate set of sails and sail controls for what we were doing. Also, (just in my opinion) we didn't do the boat any favors by filling the bow tank with almost 1/2 ton of water we didn't need. I suspect that alone accounted for about 50% of the snot that got beat out of us. The upshot is a huge part of the difference in the trips was that we went to the Bahama's on John K's boat with John K. We went around Long Island with Instructor / Captain John H. on a training boat.

To be honest, on any big scale the boats aren't really that different. The Pearson is 35' long, just about 75% of the Kaufman 47. At 13,000 lbs the Pearson displaces about 62% as much as the Kaufman. Neither boat is particularly large for an ocean going vessel and, moored side by side in a marina full of boats, they wouldn't look that different to a land-lubber's eye. I have to say I feel the Kaufman is much more user friendly when out of sight of land than is the Pearson. Still, both are "classic plastic" monohulls of less than 50 feet, a couple of decades old, designed and built by people and companies with good reputations. They are much more the same than different.

Both trips suffered a bit from being run on a schedule, and thus were not quite the same as living aboard. We shoved poor little Osprey around Long Island with little regard to waves, wind or crew fatigue. The 24 hours to Block Island took 36 and we were all pretty much knackered after a night of 10' following seas. It never really got any easier. Pushing hard we still ended up a day late and had to leave at 0300 on that last day to make Tom's River at a reasonable hour. No cruising couple I have ever heard of would trash themselves like that on purpose. (Deb and I have no intention of being any different.)

Quetzal didn't struggle quite as hard. Still, we crossed the Gulf Stream twice during a week while, (we have since discovered) hundreds of cruisers waited in FL for better weather to head east. We left West End for a questionable run to Lucaya, couldn't get into the harbor, and sailed back to the West End. On the one hand it was exactly what I would expect to do on a trip where Deb and I shelled out some serious denaro to sail. On the other hand a cruising couple wouldn't bash through 6 - 8 foot seas just to spend 8 hours away from a dock they were going to pay for anyway. Not when the alternative was spending a day sitting on the beach in the Bahamas. On the next try we made it to Great Stirrup Cay long after sunset, setting the hook after making a night run into the bay using the Chart Plotter to miss the rocks. (I would have loved that but missed the fun; holed up below fighting off my normal "3rd-day-out" bout of sea sickness.) During the process we managed a fright by almost getting too friendly with a cruise ship tender who wasn't showing a lot of light. At daybreak the hook started to drag and we bailed out having barely seen the sun rise on Stirrup Cay. Again, perfect for getting experience but something any of our cruising friends would have avoided with a little planning and patience.

In the end the trips seem more like book ends. We managed to get cold and wet on both. We learned a lot about sailing on both. (I even managed to feed the fish on both.) Sailing down the East river through the heart of NYC is about as opposite a thing to tossing a hook in Hoffman Cay as one can imagine. Yet each was fantastic and I intend to do them again as many times as I can manage. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine that a trip around Long Island and a subsequent run from FL to the Bahamas will, one day, just be two ends of a year's worth of traveling aboard Nomad II.

An admission...

I know this is going to mark me as a nearly useless, utterly shallow excuse for a human being, so let's keep this just between us...but I was really hoping that the trip on a 47' monohull would prove such boats a real option for Deb and I. The main reason? (I mean it, just between us.) I think monohulls, most of them anyway, are prettier than Catamarans (most of them, anyway). We've looked at a couple of older Catamarans as possibilities, right size, right price, right equipment, but (and I will not share any actual model names, beauty being in the eye of the owner, as it were) just plain ugly. Of course there are a few butt ugly monohulls out there as well, but they seem a distinct minority in the monohull world. Catamarans, on the other hand, well...what does one do with a vessel whose primary dimensions are those of a tennis court?

I realize I have been watching the sailing world in general, and the Catamaran world in particular, for just a few years. But has anyone else noticed that these things seem to be getting kind of excessive across the middle? I can remember, when I first started learning about catamarans, that a 50% ratio, beam to LOA, was considered about the "maximum." Even a boat I happen to like, the 38' Fountaine Pajot Athena, has a beam of 21.5' while being only 38 foot long overall. (That's a tick more than 56%!) The 38 foot Leopard is about the same. Indeed, from any angle that emphasizes the beam even these boats (either of which I would take in a heartbeat) look more than a little "clunky." If I remember the last two America's Cup competitors were basically square. They were space age, fragile, and fast as hell...but does anyone think they were pretty? That thing with the wing was just plain weird, and this from an airplane driver who normally loves high tech toys.

I know that "ugly" is supposed to be completely subjective. But I also suspect it isn't. We often disagree about beauty, but we rarely disagree about ugly. When we see it, we know it. When it comes to machines though, there is another consideration. Ugly is, usually, as ugly does. I have "helmed" my share. I'm even type rated in some of them. The Embraer EMB-110P1 was one. Ugly indeed, with a face only a Mother could love and cold, slow, noisy and unpressurized. The jet I'm flying now (another type rating) is slow for a jet, has limited range with a load, and only a marginally better face. (The teal and pink paint job doesn't help). But at least it isn't as ugly as the Beech Premier.

Then there is the opposite of "ugly is as ugly does." There are some truly bizarre looking machines out there, built to do "A THING." They do "THE THING" and often look like performance art in the process. Witness a Sky Crane lifting the impossible or a Supper Guppy swallowing same for a flight across an ocean.

A truism for boats as well as airplanes, when you are sitting in the cockpit you can't see the ugly. In fact sometimes ugly from outside is actually pretty from the other side. People who fly the Premier are pretty happy with the speed / fuel burn / range / comfort, it stomps the C-V (my ride) in each of those categories. That it looks like a guppy on stilts when sitting on the ramp doesn't bother the people paying the bills, the airplane seems to grow on them.

I suspect a Cat can be like that, built to do "A THING." Sitting a dark and stormy anchor watch while sipping coffee in the dry and warm, a 360 degree view out of the bridge deck, the boat gently rocking just a few degrees (like we did in FL)? Nothing ugly about that. Rocketing along at hull speed, (whatever that means in a Cat) regardless of the point of sail, without a heel, roll or yaw? No ugly there either. Room to spread out a little...okay, there was lots of room on Quetzal. Still, the aft porch or front tramps of a cat look like pretty nice places to spend some days. Built to do something special, that can over come odd looking lines and angles.

Catamarans have been around long enough now where, once in a while, one pops up whose price and looks don't spark a gag reflex. (Unlike monohulls, there seems a whole armada of Catamarans that are both obscenely expensive and seriously ugly to boot. How do they sell those things?) Anyway, I'm going to take my shallow self and start looking for a pretty Catamaran I can call home. And if, once I find her, we spot a gorgeous monohull flying all her canvas, rail dug in, spray flying and making a rainbow over a perfect bow and shear line...well, I hope she won't hold it against me if I sigh a little.

Can I have one please?

This morning we had the boat all ready to go right at 9:00 when our instructor arrived. The day dawned bright and sunny and we were up at 6:30 anxious to go. We were only going to get another 3 or 4 hours of sailing in before they were going to kick us off so the cleaning crew could ready the boat for the next visitors, and we wanted to make the best of it. Who knew that Florida actually really does have sunshine and blue sky?



We first had to maneuver the cat out of the slip which was a challenge this morning since they had parked a great big trawler right across our stern. The twin engines on the cat performed flawlessly and we side-stepped out of the slip with no more than a few feet on either end. (Try that in a monohull). We headed out into the bay, put up the sails, and just tacked up the bay to the Deer Point 144 marker.



Our instructor relaxed in the cockpit and let the two of us do all the sailing and tacking by ourselves as if we were on the boat alone. At the end of the morning he pronounced us ready to sail the cat by ourselves. It was a gorgeous morning with puffy clouds and deep blue water and warm breezes. It was the perfect end to the perfect week for us. There were moments of frustration during the week, but in the end it was perfectly designed to accomplish what we intended to accomplish - to learn if we could live full time on a catamaran. The answer? In the end we decided that we could easily toss our kids the key to the house and say "Seeya". There was just not a thing more we needed to be happy than what we had on the boat at that moment, and that was a bit of an epiphany.

Some more miscellaneous thoughts from the week: Full-time liveaboards are undoubtedly the most interesting people on the face of the planet. If you ever make it to the Keys and you see a dive salvage operation on a ketch sailboat of indeterminate origin run by Captain Fish (the man) and Captain Jack (the dog), say hello for us.



Night watches are going to be one of my favorite times.

I can't imagine doing this with anyone besides my best friend :)







Laying on the trampoline hanging over the edge:

Boat Show...post (2)

The nitty gritty on the boats. The Cats in order from top to bottom: The Antares 44i sits at the top of the heap, the tip of the mountain, the peak of perfection; and is completely out of reach unless mounds of money fall from the sky and land in my back yard. (Money that is actually worth something that is.) To give some idea of how much this thing costs I heard that the one at the show is owned by the dude who runs Haliburton; or maybe it was Blackwater? Anyway we are talking serious throw weight.

 

The Leopard / 40 or 46 are my personal favorites. There is nothing about these boats I would change except, a) finding a way to put a washer/dryer on the 40, and b) having one registered in my name.

 

Admiral 38; a close run on the Leopard. I really liked the cathedral ceilings in the hulls that make for a wonderfully open feel to being "down stairs." The main complaint is the finish of the fiberglass inside the boat which is not up to the standards of the Leopard. As a result the boat has a "hollow" sound to it when one is inside and the hulls look a bit industrial.

 

Lagoon 380. Nice, really nice. Not much to change on this one either but the inside finish is just shy of the Leopard while costing a bit more. It also has vertical windows in the salon which are a good idea for a whole host of reasons; room, not focusing the sun, good visibility, etc. But I think they are a bit ugly. The Admiral looks like a sea-going space ship; the Lagoon like a floating apartment.

 

Foutaine Pajot Mahe 36. This was a boat at the top of my "going in" list. But for a variety of small reasons it just didn't tug at the heartstrings like the Leopard or Admiral. Still a nice boat and if anyone wants to buy me one for Christmas I promise not to be disappointed. Seawind 1160. This was another boat I really expected to like. But when we first boarded her I was vastly underwhelmed and just walked off the thing. The next day we got on her again and (for reasons I don't really understand) I liked it much better the second time around. This is a boat that needs to grow on you a little. Still, I don't think it would be much of a colder weather boat without some work.

 

Monohulls; All of the Mono's that I liked are Center Cockpit boats. They are a bit more troublesome to get aboard since the helm station itself is in a kind of tub located about a third of the way forward from the stern. The interiors of all the mono's were glowing wood and well thought out floor plans. (Cats, being much more sensitive to weight, have a lot of white fiberglass.) Passport. This thing was just flat beautiful inside and out. If I had a choice between this one and an Admiral Cat it would be a hard, hard decision to make.

 

Island Packet 465. All around very nice boat with a long, blue-water pedigree. It also had a really, really nice master cabin aft. Its big sister, the 485, includes an office that any smart CEO would want to call her own. If you promise not to tell anyone I think the Island Packet is probably the most reasonable, biggest bang for the buck, option that we saw. I would not be surprised at all if we landed on one of these a few years from now. (She also has lines very similar to those of little Nomad.)

 

Since Deb and I have never actually sailed on a big catamaran the list is a bit premature. (Of course not having done anything like this didn't stop us from jumping in with both feet when it comes to sailboats. I offer as evidence to our willingness to try about anything a 27 foot Com-Pac currently floating in our slip.) The next step of the plan is to spend a few days learning to sail a Cat and taking a coastal cruising course at the same time. There are several 5 day classes offered along the East Coast and we are hoping to take advantage of one of them sometime next spring. On first brush another consideration is that all of the Cats seem slanted to "warm weather, island hopping" kind of sailing. The Mono's looked a bit more purposeful, like they could take on the Northern climes or Southern Sea and have a fair chance of giving their owners a good time and a cozy place to live. Probably an illusion but something I need to square away in my own thinking. I can easily imagine that Deb and I will not be just warm weather kinds of people, and may look for some sailing where you might find a little snow on the deck once in a while. For now though, we are going to enjoy the changing season right here on our lake in IL. The next few weekends are "on the boat" weekends. (Well, I might have one contract trip on a Sunday.) I want to put some serious time in on Nomad and just enjoy having the boat and being on the lake. The leaves are starting to change around here and with any luck we will find some wind to play with this month.