Boat Work Take II

...and two airplanes. (See below.) Deb forgot the two airplanes in the "35 years worth of things we have done." Those two airplanes taught me a very valuable lesson, boats are NOT the most expensive things to have around. After kids and airplanes, boats can rank no higher than #3.

Of course we don't have kids at home anymore, and the airplanes are long, long gone...so...

Nomad is still shedding parts like a dog shedding its winter coat. The bow pulpit and wood insert for the bowsprit came off this past weekend. The pulpit ended up stashed in the cockpit, (it doesn't fit in the Z). The bowsprit is sitting on the sawhorses in the shop awaiting its turn to go under the palm sander. Gotta get that done this week so the reinforced pulpit can go back on, which has to happen before the headliner can go back up, which has to happen before the V-berth and settee side panels can go back in. A Giant 3-D jigsaw puzzle, that's what Nomad is at the moment!





There is one item less on the "to-do-before-we-go-back-in-the-water" list, the rubrails have been pulled, the hull / deck seam inspected and repaired as required, and everything has been put back together with a nice coat of tire shine on the rubber rubrails. (Life is too short to sail an ugly boat!) All in all it took most of 3 days worth of effort to fix what needed to be fixed, clean what needed to be cleaned, seal what needed to be sealed, and put it all back together. And that was on a job I thought was going to be a "quick and easy" kind of thing. Goes to show what I know about boat work.



While I made endless trips up and down the ladder, Deb settled underneath the boat and started to work on the bottom. Hers was an ugly day full of dust, awkward positions, and overhead reaches. As usual she just kept at it and, by the time the day was over, Nomad had shed most of the scuz accumulated by sitting in the water for a couple of years.







It is an absolute joy to be back at the marina, which is slowly shedding the deep freeze slumber of the past few months and showing signs of life. Several boats are undergoing ministrations at the hands of owners and crews. People come and go, tools and parts are swapped and borrowed as needed, and the dredge is digging the bottom out of the marina. Soon, (but not soon enough) Nomad will be back in her slip and our normal, weekend address once again.

March 8, 1975

On this day 35 years ago I was a lot colder. It was blustery and gray and 36 degrees, not the 56 it was today. How do I remember this? Because 35 years ago today I was walking down the aisle in my "hippy" wedding dress, complete with fresh daisies in my hair. No one thought we would make it, and in fact, were quite vocal about announcing it, but alas 35 years and we are still at it.


It's been a grand adventure. 3 kids, 5 grandkids, 17 houses, more jobs than I can count (and I mean that literally - I tried and failed), one serious car accident, multitudinous pets, umpteen motorcycles, and one sailboat later we are still dreaming and planning and working hard to a goal. That is, after all, the secret to our success. We are best friends who would rather spend time with each other than anyone else, and we always have a dream. I can absolutely not think of another person I would rather share it with than this man who 35 years ago today looked at me and said "I do."

Happy Anniversary T-bo.

The Point

In sailing stories, blogs, books, magazine articles, or any other dictum of the Old Salt, The Point is an inevitable chapter of discussion.  Rounding a point in sailing usually involves weather, currents, wind, nasty underwater obstructions,weather,currents, and did I say weather?  New sailors approach these points with a mixture of excitement and some trepidation, checking and re-checking charts and instruments, eyes riveted to the water looking for the errant rock rising up out of the waves. Once round, though, a transition takes place, the moment of apprehension washing away with the water rushing by the hull and in its place is a burgeoning boost of self confidence, determination, pride, and the solid assurance of doing what one was meant to do. 

We're approaching that point, maybe even alongside it.  We've left the endless days of examining every type of boat that exists, through sailing magazines, boat shows and the ever-present yachtworld.com.  We've now settled on just a couple, maybe three, that fit most of the requirements we want the boat to meet.  More importantly, we've set a goal to have the house and the boat both ready to sell by the end of the year.  All sorts of projects are underway as a result, the bathroom grout is being dug out and replaced, the back door is being replaced, the kitchen floor is going to be re-tiled in a month or two, and as Tim has mentioned in his recent posts, Nomad is in a temporary state of disrepair as she gets a new headliner and some new side panels and a freshly overhauled prop and fresh bottom paint and new lifelines...

I'm standing on the bow of our adventure with my eyes peeled for anything that might pop up and put a halt to our journey, ready to steer around it.  I'm ready to round Point Dream.

Yeah! Boatwork!

Many a moon ago, when I was first starting out as an aircraft mechanic, I would walk up to some million dollar airplane, put a nice sharp drill bit against some piece of shiny aluminum skin, take a deep breath and punch a hole. Then I would smile at whoever my work partner was for that day and say, "Too late to back up now."

The Boulder Marina's "No Boat" party was last night. It was a lot of fun to see the gang and catch up on the winter's doings. Some had made it to the BVI for a little warm weather sailing. Some had made it to the SVI. A lucky one or two made both. But even those lucky enough to make a sailing trip this off season agreed that this has been a long, cold, endless winter.

Ah but this morning; sunshine and the promise of slightly warmer temps had Deb and I eager for a trip to the lake. My plan was a kind of low key approach to the work list, putter around a bit, maybe pull a part or two, get a feel for the best way to get the work done and the boat back in the water. Work smarter, not harder.



Instead Deb and I fell onto little Nomad like a couple of deranged salvage operators. Tool bags were opened, the ladder was set in place, and the next thing you know parts were flying in all directions. I pulled the prop, an easy job but my big wrench was down in the dock box. Then I started pulling the rubber rub rail off the stern. It came off pretty easy as well but underneath? Ugh, spider city. And after pulling the chaffing strip, (otherwise known as duct tape) I found a few places where the hull / deck seam had opened up a bit. Clean and reseal but...oh yeah, the sealer is down in the dock box. This time I grabbed anything that looked even remotely helpful, cleaning stuff, polishing stuff, scotchbrite...



With the stern rub rail taking a lot longer than I thought I decided to leave the port and starboard sides for another day. There was clearly not enough sunlight left in the sky to take them on. Instead I moved the ladder to the bow to start pulling life lines in preperation for removing the bow pulpit.

Meanwhile Deb had disappeared into the interior. She spent the day down there and, when she emerged Nomad's interior was, well, not Nomad's interior any longer.



Trim strips were down, the headliner was laying out in the parking lot, wasps nests and other creepies had been evicted from behind the V-birth side panels, the panels over the settees where lying on the deck, leaks had been discovered under the bow pulpit and aft port side stanchion, and (this was a bit of a shock) we discovered that Nomad was built without a single backing plate on the pulpits or stanchions. (No wonder the thing felt soft everythime I went forward to change a headsail!)



I was glad to find the chain plates sporting big, sookey metal backing plates. I thought I had hit the outside of the boat pretty hard but Deb had seriously rearranged the inside of our little boat.







Too late to back up now...

Wanderings vs wonderings

My normal airplane ride is in the shop. Whenever I start to chaff at how much work Nomad takes, I just remember the airplane. It will be down for about 3 weeks to undergo a major airframe inspection. Barely 36 hours in and I have already authorized about $100,000 in additional repairs. I'm glad it is OPM (Other People's Money)! Anyway, even with my ride parked I am off to Nebraska tonight on a contract trip. Home tomorrow if I don't freeze to death first. (It will be something like 8 degrees for the low where I am headed. Ouch.) This weekend is the "No Boat" party with friends from the marina, we hope to spend Sunday working on Nomad, and next week is wanderings around from home to the maintenance shop to the office to my home airport, round and round...and with good hope that bigger and bigger parts of more and more weekends will be spent on the boat.

With all of these wanderings Deb and I have started to do some wondering as well. Wondering what the trip on the Fourth will be like. Wondering if a 38 foot boat will turn out to be long enough to actually live on. Wondering if we can get tear ourselves away from the boat enough this summer to get some of the needed work done on the house, (I didn't do too good on house projects this winter)...

...and wondering if we could be on the water by the summer of 2011?

It's just a thought, a curiosity if you will. It isn't a statement of intent, not a goal, nothing I'll feel bad about if we don't do. But I wonder?

A bit of a boat

Another winter weekend though we are starting to edge above freezing for the daytime highs. A little more snow is due to pass by but, given the beating the east coast has been taking, it seems kind of weenie to complain. In addition to the weather Deb had a bunch of things to do today, so heading to the boat wasn't really an option. Among the things she needed to do was getting a new cell phone. I don't think she really wanted a new cell phone but her's was ready to upgrade, mine wasn't, and I needed a new one.

Why did I need a new one, you ask?

Well, somehow, somewhere, at some point in my travels yesterday, I went one way and my cell phone went someplace else. That "someplace else" is a complete mystery. I had it, then I didn't. Retracing my steps to where I had it last proved fruitless. So I made the loop again just to make sure I was wasting my time. At least on the boat, when I lose something, I can be pretty sure it is at the bottom of the lake and so stop looking for it. In any case I have caught back up to the 21st century by having my service switched over to Deb's old phone.

I wasn't near the boat today, but there are a few bits of the boat near to me. And so I decided it was time to pretend the season is near. Out in the shop I cranked up my little heater, loaded up the palm sander with a fresh round of 60 grit, and went after Nomad's cockpit teak grids. To give you some idea of how rough they had gotten I ground though nearly 5 hours of 60 grit. It didn't need to be that much, they are only floor boards after all. But that is one of my favorite parts of jobs like this. I can grind away to my heart's content, making dust until the grids are smooooooooth like glass, or bailing out at any point and just finishing the job. (My grandfather taught me a long time ago, getting it perfect is always the enemy of getting it done.)

But even being around a piece of a boat can make for a good day. Out in the shop, working away, listening to some tunes and drinking a cold one (or two, gotta wash the dust out once in a while) is not a bad way to spend time. I don't know that I'll finish this job tomorrow, but this is an easy one. There is a lot more work to do but it will have to keep for a bit longer. The shop is just big enough for bits off the boat.

Winter chores

It is cold outside. Some snow fell last night, more is expected tomorrow night. It seemed a good weekend to stay warm and dry, maybe crank up the fireplace, hit Netflix for a movie, and just bum our way through yet another endless winter weekend.

So of course Deb and I headed for the Marina. It was cold at the Marina as well but we didn't really care. It was just good to be back at one of our favorite places.



Unfortunately, when I put Nomad up on the hard I didn't have the covers with me. Since then we have simply been inundated with travel, holidays and flu bugs. As a result the covers never got installed. And as one would expect, this is what we found.




So this is what we did next.




With her decks clear and drying in the winter sun Deb and I retreated to the clubhouse for lunch. After some warm food we walked the docks to get some items from our dock box and climbed back aboard. We installed the cabin cover and boom tent, cleaned out the cockpit scuppers, (packed full of ice and pine needles) retied a couple of lines, and added a little anti-freeze to the head and bilge. While closing up a large flock of King pelicans flew over the marina. They were pointed dead into the North wind and didn't appear to be making much progress. As we watched they sort of veered off to the east, apparently deciding they had gone as far as they needed this day and it was time to find a place to wait out yet another cold night.

By this time Deb and I were chilled to the bone so we headed back to the CWE. I think I'll dial up Netflix next, and there is still a little wood left for a fire. The pelicans had the right idea.

Stop the Train...

...I want to get on.

The Chicago boat show weekend was a complete success and the tone was set as soon as we entered the train station. What a civilized way to travel! No x-rays, no constant computer-voice announcements from our friends from the TSA, and they didn't ask for my shoes or take my 10 oz. of shampoo. We walked out to the train and climbed on. The aisles were wide enough to pass another person without getting intimate details. There was room between the seats even with the seat back in front of you reclined. Each seat had its own, easily reached, AC plug to run electronics, (maybe 1/4 of the travelers were working on a laptop or watching a movie) and no one cared if the tray was down for departure or arrival. There were no seat-belt announcements, there were no seat belts! If I can't be on a sailboat at least put me on a train.

Chicago (this year anyway) was a mono-hull show. A lone Island Packet Estero sat kind of "up front," but as much as I want to like that boat it just doesn't tickle me at all. I'm done looking at it. The J-boats aren't my thing, and a few other strays couldn't entice us back for more than one visit. We found ourselves circling though the 4 big displays of Beneteau, Jenneau, Hunter, and Catalina.

Catalina 445 cockpit

The Catalina 445 barely edged out the Hunter 49 as the "best in show" as far as Deb and I are concerned. Everything on the 445 seems to be done just right. I couldn't find any real faults with the Hunter so this was pretty close to a coin toss. But both those boat are at the "long" end of the scale of "hulls for two people."

Hunter 49

Right in the middle of that list sat the Jenneau 39i, Hunter 39, and Beneteau 40. Hunter barely lost out to Jenneau, this time the lack of a separate shower stall tipping the scale. It seems a minor thing, but who wants to wipe down the toilet after every shower? And (to my eye anyway) the high tech window shapes on the Hunter detracted from its looks. The Beneteau 40 lagged a few boat lengths back. Deb didn't care for the galley and the settees just didn't sit very well. (I'm still fond of the 43, but Beneteau insists on mounting the sinks along the port side. Deb wants to see them nearer the center line of the boat.) The Jenneau 39i hit every note true and its variable position nav station was unique. I would really like to look at the 42i, though all of these boats are serious $$.

Hunter 39 Salon

In the "too short but still really nice" category the Catalina 375 looked like a wonderful boat. The fold up table made the main salon area huge and user friendly. Truth to tell, Deb allowed as that living on a Catalina 375 would still be pretty good living. Catalina didn't bring their 40, but several people at the show spoke highly of that boat. We'll have to look one up sometime.

Hunter 39 Galley

Catalina 375 Galley

Tim standing in Hunter 49 galley

Things we liked? I am really fond of the Hunter arch, and Deb constantly gave the Hunters the edge in the galley department. I thought the Catalina 445 port side "work room" was a really good idea, and both of us have grown fond of twin helm cockpits. And as usual, I walked about from this boat show thinking I could call nearly any of these boats "home" without much problem (or prompting) at all.

Things I didn't like? It is still winter, it will be nearly 10 weeks still until Nomad is back in the water, and I don't own any of the boats that we looked at in Chicago.

Catalina 375

Hunter 49 Centerline V-berth

Sunshine! Warm Temps! Boats!

Looking at boats in Ft. Lauderdale is not a bad way to spend a day; particularly when it is snowing in St. Louis. (Sorry Pretty Lady!) If you look at catamarans in Ft. Lauderdale keep in mind that The Catamaran Company owns 2-Hulls. I didn't really know that so I called 2-Hulls, got hooked up with Michael, and we agreed to meet at their company dock to look around.

Michael, as it turns out, is a busy man these days. It also turns out that he works for the Catamaran Company and not 2-Hulls. Or maybe he works for both? Anyway, talking to a "fish," (that would be me) who has been talking to a different broker from the same company for a couple of years, (that would be Brent) was not high up on Michail's list of things he needed to be doing this day. He took it well though, and showed me around a 2005 Lagoon 380 they have for sale. I learned a lot from Michael in a short time...

One 2005 Lagoon 380 = around $330,000. I think a stack of $100s just a bit over a foot high (about $297,000 worth) would be enough for them to let you take it home. (Or move aboard as the case may be.) Figure one borrowed about $150,000 of that stack at 6.5% interest and wanted to pay it off in 10 years, one would owe de-bank just a tick over $20,000 per year. (According to Michael don't even think of asking unless your credit score is 730 or better.)

So let's see. A job on the East Coast where I bring home maybe 66K / year. Less de-banks 20K leaves 46K to live on. Food and stuff, (rum) slip fee, odds and ends...35K a year? That's still 11K worth of fudge factor not including any "outside" (as in outside Uncle Sam's knowledge) income.

Other odds and ends. According to Michael (who has sailed them all) the older Leopard 38s are tanks, slow, heavy in the water and no match for the Lagoon 380. (I know, I know!) But the New Leopard 38? Apparently that is a cat of a different color. Lighter, fast on its feet and as good as any other 2 hulled boat of a similar LWL. And here's what I find interesting, the 2005 Lagoon selling price is withing a dock line's throw of that for a new Leopard 38. Things that make you go, "Mmmm."

All of this, of course, is just musing in the sunshine. It isn't like we are in any position to write such a check. (Even assuming my "back of the napkin" math isn't wildly optimistic.) Unless things change a bit (A big bit!) it seems unlikely we will ever be able to write such a check. But just imagine how much fun it would be to do just that.

Broker in tow, thinking he is wasting his time with this scruffy looking, middle aged wanna-be, but being professional about it anyway.

"That's a nice boat. I'll take it."

Now that would be a good day.

Plans are just...plans

The plan was to be posting from Nomad, even if it meant sitting on the hard and wrapped in layers to try and stay warm. Alas, I am warm and dry, sitting in the Central West end, my butt getting sore from sitting in this chair. Right now a "good" morning is defined as one where I don't feel any worse when I wake up than I did when I went to bed. This is proving to be one of the longest winters I can remember.

A good thing is that we have been kind of slow at work. I have been able to dog it a bit, not pushing too hard and maybe making a little ground on this thing. But next week is back at it, starting with a 3 day trip to FL. (Yeah! Sunshine! Warm Temps! Boats!) Come the weekend Deb and I head to Chicago for the boat show. We are going to take a train, stay within walking distance of the exhibition hall, and do our best to have some fun. (I think being around boats will cure us both!)

Feeling good or no it will be good to be back in motion. This enforced rest, (even to the point of being all day in a single room) would seem a non-issue for someone who wants to spend weeks on a single boat. Even the biggest boat we can imagine buying would not fill our back yard, the main cabin area much smaller than the living room I currently occupy.

Of course the living room doesn't move...

Real boats

I would love to write a post about the work being done on Nomad, or about how she is about to splash, or how we fared on our first night at anchor of the new season but... There has been no work completed yet, Nomad isn't about to splash, and the season seems a long, long...long way away.

Not that boats don't dominate our spare time. A common question around here is, "What is the boat of the day?" Meaning a boat one of us spotted on the web that fired up our imaginings of getting gone. Right now Deb is pretty fond of a Tayana 42 called "Wanderlust" that is being sold out of Norwalk, Connecticut (http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/10688). Me? I'm still clinging to my catamaran musings.

Next weekend, hopefully, we will get back to more than musings. With a little help from the weather and some hope of finally shaking the illness that has dogged both of us this winter, we plan to lay hands on Nomad once again. The weekend after that, a train ride to the Chicago Boat Show. It will be good to see real boats again, not just pictures on websites.

A Belated Christmas Present

I know it's totally ridiculous, but I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. After two years of procrastinating, I finally got around to applying for my passport and it arrived yesterday. Wooooo hoooooo! I guess we can leave now :)