Monthly Archives: December 2011

Boat Lust and Teeth Gnashing

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I fear I have an addiction. No, I’m not into drinking or doing mind-altering drugs. But I continue to engage in an activity that, by its very nature, is probably not good for me and makes me feel weepy and frantic at times. It’s like one minute I’m on a magic carpet and the next minute I’m in a tumbling free fall until I come smack down to earth. Still, I continue, knowing this will happen again and again. I feel somewhat powerless in the face of this behavior. I don’t exactly ‘hide’ this behavior from my husband or friends, not exactly, but other signs of addiction are mounting. I spend more and more time engaging in the behavior. I neglect other parts of my life in order to give myself wholly to this endeavor. It owns me, heart and soul.  I speak, of course, of looking at boats on Yachtworld.com.

Okay, so I'm doing it again. What's your point?

I can spend literally hours at a time cruising the Yachtworld pages. I have a running list of boats I like, most of which are not even listed anymore. I compare the boats available in the Great Lakes region to the ones available on the East coast, to those in California, to those in my own Pacific Northwest (where I will have to pay about 9% sales tax on a boat! Damn! That’s going to cut into the budget seriously!).  I consider the wisdom of buying a boat in Mexico or Canada.

But, hey, I’m doing research! I mean, I do learn a lot about what I like and don’t like about each boat. I guess you could say that all of this looking is helping us narrow down what’s important to us. But mostly it makes me feel like whining.

In spite of myself I’ve experienced price creep in my longings. I started out keeping my searches to a reasonable price of 50,000$. Yes, that IS a lot of money. But not for a sailboat. It’s not going to buy you much of a sailboat. So I upped it to 75,000$.  That buys a bit more. That will buy a boat that is workable for our little plan, but will still need substantial upgrading if I want to feel safe and prepared at sea, which I do.

Like all good addictions, that wasn’t enough. Soon I had to increase the price to $100,000. I hear all the gasps of pain from you readers, especially those of you who are not owned by boats. It’s a crazy amount of money. But this will basically be our HOUSE for a number of years if all goes as planned. Does it still sound like too much? Yeah. That’s what I thought, too. So I started looking at boats between 100,000 and 200,000$. Did you catch that complete disconnect there?  Dear God there are some beautiful floating houses out there. Now I’m REALLY flying out of my league. Way, way out.

Not even close to my price range.

The day is coming when the shopping needs to end and a decision needs to be made. I think we are getting closer to making that decision to buy a different boat, my addiction not withstanding. The money we’re spending on a boat now needs to be spent on a boat that will take us to Mexico and beyond in the future. This is only logical, people. It must have been that logic that caused me to fall completely in love with an Oyster39 center cockpit for sale up in Sydney BC. I had looked at the boat on line couple of times before and thought it looked very nice, not to mention that Oyster yachts have a fine reputation as blue water cruisers. And the price was right, too. Unbelievable.

So here is where the teeth gnashing comes in. I contacted the broker, only to be told that an offer had been written on the boat THE DAY BEFORE! Oh my dear GOD in Heaven!! Teeth gnashing doesn’t even begin to cover it. There was wailing and carrying on and tearing of hair, at least inside my head. There were visions of me prostrate on the ground, praying to whatever little gods are in charge of boat-buying to save that boat for us. I believe wheedling and deal-making may have been involved. There began to be actual praying that the sale would fall through for whatever poor soul is buying our boat. How unworthy of me! I had to pull myself up short. And believe me when I say it was HARD! I still have my moments. Sniff.

So I fear I have willingly bought a ticket for the worst kind of roller coaster. Last time I rode a roller coaster I had vertigo for a week. I had trouble telling where the ground was. I’d wake up in the night and clutch the bed, thinking I was falling.  Let’s hope this experience is not more of the same. I’d like to keep my sanity intact. Meanwhile, Mike is holding onto his wallet for dear life.

I tell you, this is important research!

A Tour of Moonrise, Part 4

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Our final tour of Moonrise includes the fore and aft parts of the cabin: the v berth and the quarter berths.

This photo shows the wooden grates I installed to level the floor and provide extra storage in the head.

In the photo, you are looking toward the front of the boat. This berth is as wide as a king size bed at the head and narrows down to about a twin size at the foot. As beds go, this one is really comfy. We replaced the foam with high density foam and then put a memory foam mattress topper on top. Once in the bed, we don’t want to get out because it is so very comfortable. (The memory foam topper is not shown in the photo. We also have the filler piece that creates one large mattress that goes all the way across.)

The master cabin has a cabinet for clothing storage, which is to the right in the photo. This cabinet holds a ton of clothes. That cabinet used to be a hanging locker, but it was a terrible waste of space. So I added shelves. I may not have commented about this before, but non-boaters need to understand there is nothing simple about adding shelves in a boat. The back of the cabinet follows the hull of the boat. The hull is curved. Think about it for a minute. I was happy when this project was complete!

This cabinet was a difficult but satisfying project. It’s much deeper than it looks. I can stick my entire arm in there.

Across the boat from this cabinet is a smaller cabinet and the storage space for the holding tank. The small cabinet holds Mike’s drill, and our liquor.

Another thing I like about the master cabin is the shelf that runs along each side of the berth. We use them like bedside tables at home. I can keep my water bottle, my book,  all those little things I might want in the night right there. All the comforts of home pretty much. Plus the gentle rocking of a boat at anchor. Each side of the berth has its own reading light.

In the aft part of the boat are the two quarter berths.  One of the projects I’ve done on the boat is to create storage for our sailing boots, hats, and gloves in the starboard side area. This has worked to make it easy to get to these things right before you go up on deck.

Quarter berth with storage.

This was another project that challenged my ‘carpentry’ skills. But it turned out well and you can see it in the photo above. I used a bull-nosed piece of oak.  I planned this area to make preparing to go up to the cockpit during foul weather easier. I also wanted a place to hang our jackets, sunglasses, etc, right by the hatch. With the seat right there, we have a place to sit down to put on said hats, gloves, and sailing boots, and the berth is still fine for sleeping.

On the port side of the boat is another quarter berth where we store all of our tools, the radio, and other electronic devices. We have hooks for hanging life jackets close to the hatch, and a shelf for phones, chargers, and other small electronics. Our son uses the port side berth when he is aboard. He is just about 6 feet tall and he has plenty of room.

The berth to port has places for the electronics, storage for tools and parts, and it is also a comfortable berth when needed.

If you have a Cal 34, we’d love to see photos of your boat.

 

 

 

Ho Ho……Holy Crap!

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Tis the season, as they say. Sleighbells ring, jingle bells, deck the halls, Santa Claus, and all of that stuff. And the long, dark nights of the year. I’m excited because soon the winter solstice will be upon us and we can celebrate the return of the sun. I’m slighly pagan at this time of year, in spite of my traditional Christian upbringing.

The downside to all this festivity is the decorating. Yes, I certainly DO enjoy beautiful holiday decor, and I enjoy all the pretty lights this time of year. I even smile at the pitiful rooftop santas. But it’s hard to bring a smile to my lips as I’m faced with the sheer number of boxes of Christmas crap that are stored in my attic. I took down 15 boxes of Christmas stuff, collected over the 30 or so years of marriage and two children who loved crafts. I felt like the beast of burden who carried Mary, heavy with child, as I carried each heavy box down the attic stairs and deposited it on the family room floor. At least the donkey could deposit Mary and then rest. At least Mary had Jesus to look forward to after her labors. All I had at the end of my labor was a big mess. And a determination to get rid of half of this stuff.

“Are you getting rid of all your cute little Christmas Village houses?” my neighbor asked. “I don’t know.”, I said. I say this when I am afraid to commit myself to dumping things that I can still visualize being ‘cute’ when set up a certain way. But the ancient and frightening stuffed vintage Santa? Out! The victorian house cookie jar? Gone. I’ve never used a cookie jar in my life. Cookies don’t last long enough in my house to warrant a jar. Any cookie that is going to last that long has to be stuffed into the back of the freezer in a ziploc bag.  Also gone is an entire box of ornaments that I’ve always kept because I bought them when the kids were small, along with a box of ornaments I used when Andrew was too little to be trusted close to a tree with breakable ornaments. I haven’t used them in years, but I always felt like I had to keep them. I’ve decided that rule is silly.

Instead I’ve created a small box for each child to store the precious things they made over the years. Claire’s box will have her little stuffed santa, and the pinecone wise men and wizards. Andrew’s box will have his little clay candle holder, his styrofoam heart with smelly potpourri glued to the outside, and his salt dough dinosaurs in fancy colors.

Those boxes will also contain all of the ornaments I’ve bought the kids over the years so that they would have a box to take with them when they have their own homes. We’ve had a tradition in our family that on Christmas eve each child receives an ornament and a new pair of pajamas. We allowed them to open these two gifts by way of bribing them to sleep late on Christmas morning. Now that they are 19 and 26, I feel sure I can forgo the buying of more ornaments that will mean more to me than to them. I might still consider pajamas, though.

Among the things I’m keeping is my collection of miniature ornaments. I always look forward to these each year. They are made by Hallmark, and I used to buy them every year. I think I can find a place on a sailboat for these little ornaments so that we can have an actual Christmas tree, no matter where we are in the world. I didn’t even consider getting rid of any of them.

The results of my labors are such that I will have maybe 3 or 4 boxes of actual ornaments to go into the attic at the end of the season. Half of my Victorian village made the cut, so I get to have my cake and eat it, too, on that subject. If it’s too much of a pain to set them up and pack them away this year, then they’ll go after the holidays. In all, a fairly rewarding purge, and almost painless.

Update on the furniture situation: thank God for sisters! Between my two sisters, over the Thanksgiving weekend I parted with two chairs, a cabinet, a rug, a desk, a set of china, a silver tea service, and various other bits and pieces, enabling me to move even more stuff into the garage staging area. The great purge continues!