Category Archives: Sailboats

Sugar and Spice…. Not So Nice? Oh, the Political Incorrectness!

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Just saying… In the Gender Studies department around here, I am feeling more and more like a ‘girl’. To be fair, sometimes I enjoy being a girl. I liked being pregnant, I like that my husband is all manly and stuff, and has skills any girl would envy. Lately I’ve kind of enjoyed clothes and expensive boots (sorry, Tate). Why, just today I engaged in the time-honored girl activity of retail therapy. Keeping the economy alive, folks, just keeping it alive. We’ve come a long way since the 1960’s when I was a child and fervently wished I had been born a boy so I could have both adventures and upper body strength. Yes, we’ve come far, but not far enough!

I admit it. This is what I like best. It requires nothing of me except to know how to set up the hammock.

What gives? Well, I’ll tell you! Mike and Andrew are going to have an adventure next week. And not just any old ‘father/son’ adventure like throwing a ball, which they never, ever did, by the way. It will be a sailing adventure on Danger Kitten, Andrew’s Ericson 25. They are moving Danger Kitten down from Bellingham Bay to Tacoma for the winter.  And I hate them for it just a little bit. Okay, maybe hate is too strong a word, but I’m having a little gender jealousy moment at the very least and I deserve to have some foot-stomping to go with it. If Andrew had two dads, we’d both be going!

“But Melissa”, you say. “You love sailing! Might one inquire why you aren’t going on this grand adventure that is happening right before Armageddon? Surely this would be the best thing you could do during the end times!”  And to that I would say, “Exactly!”  Except for this: The Universe works in mysterious ways and one of those ways was to create men to be able to stay warm without the application of a constant, uninterrupted outside heat source. I may be generalizing here, which I do on occasion when talking gender roles, but I think I will be forgiven for saying that women complain about being cold more than men do. And it’s bloody cold AND wet out there with worse to come.

Here’s the forecast for the weekend of the 14th of December, when they will be traveling:

“… bitterly cold air mass developing in the Yukon, some ‘surface waves’ will skirt over the top and down along the BC coast for more cold rain. One of these waves may arriving by Fri Dec 14. The weekend of Dec 15 looks to mirror this coming weekend: chilly, showery, snow below the passes.”

This forecast does not focus on wind. So it will either be windy and cold and wet, or calm and cold and wet. You see the trend?

Sailors, there is no glory or enjoyment to be found in sailing a small boat with no dodger and no heat in conditions that are likely to bring on pneumonia. As a mother and a girl, I was dead worried about Andrew making that trip either alone or with some inexperienced friend. We get some high winds in the winter around here, and his boat isn’t exactly set up for that yet. I began to fret.  I began to be sleepless worrying about it. I began buying him things.

Oh, they’ve done this before. This was about 8 years ago, aboard the Saucy Sue, our Catalina 27. Do they look like they are having fun? Am I taking the photo from inside the cabin? You bet I am. It’s a wonder Andrew grew up to enjoy sailing with memories like this.

In a brilliant display that gave me hope, the Universe heard my worry and when I went on Ebay to see if I could find some used sailing bibs for Andrew, I immediately found, at the very top of the page,  a ‘buy it now’ deal on brand new, with tags, Gill sailing bibs just like Mikes, in the right size for ……badaboom… $85. With shipping. Score! Here is a video of Andrew testing them out: (Kids do some interesting things in a college dorm.)

While I was busy worrying and soothing myself by spending money, Mike and Andrew were busy colluding without informing me. I had probably two or three days of girl-worrying without knowing they had decided Mike would be going with Andrew on the trip. You see what happens when a father has a son like this? They talk to each other but not to the girl. Apparently this is some kind of Law of Male Behavior as this pattern is repeated in households and college dorms all over the world. Yes, yes, (insert hand flapping here) of course I’m grateful my son has such a great dad. Move on.

Mike and Andrew being manly men together while I hold the boat on course. Barkley Sound, BC. Damn I want to go back up there.

When I waxed disappointed that I didn’t get to go, too, Mike replied that he could take the cold better than I could. That might be true, but I don’t have to like it and I reserve the right to pout about it. The truth is that because of my girl-metabolism, which, by the way, I’m not seeing the point of since I don’t exactly have to conserve energy to grow children anymore, I would be lowly and miserable on that trip. Cold and rain is a sure recipe for disaster for me. I only hope it won’t be for them.

Don’t let anyone say I don’t at least try to pull my own weight. Also, this was before we invested in decent inflatable life preservers. I can attest to the fact that the big ones are warmer. Yes, I was completely miserable. And yet I did it. Why? Why?

So now all I get to do to participate in this little outing is the usual wife/mother/girl stuff like making sure they have plenty of nourishing food on board and plenty of things to keep them warm, like a box of hand warmers from Costco. It’s not that they are not capable of thinking ahead to what they will need for any contingency….. HAHAHAHAH! Who am I kidding?

Then I wait for 3 or so days at home while they are out having boy fun and bonding time and seeing whales, no doubt. Stupid boys and their stupid boy clubs. Rats. Maybe I will go have a spa day or something. Or buy shoes. I’m sure you’ll get to read all about it when Mike brags blogs about the grand adventure.

Maybe these would make me feel better. Hmmmm?

 

Another Cheap Trick – A Pretty Cool Boat Seat

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I can’t take any credit for this cool trick. When Mike and I went to Vancouver a couple of weeks ago to look at boats, we looked at a 1971 Nautor Swan 40. I’ve added a boat review for that boat here. While that didn’t turn out to be the boat for us, I noticed the owner of this boat had a very cleverly done seat on the foredeck, close to the mast. I tucked this idea away for future reference and to share with readers.

It even has matching canvas, which totally makes sense considering how nicely kept this boat is.

He showed me that the seat could be placed on any winch, as the connector was basically the same as a winch handle.  I can totally see how useful this trick is! Sometimes you just want to sit on deck in a proper seat rather than on the deck itself. And this can be removed and stored away when you don’t need it. Wish I could have thought of it myself, but thanks, Swan owner, for this excellent trick. I hope you sell your beautiful boat soon.

Seems straight forward enough, which is how all the best ideas seem to work.

Falling in Love

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Mike and I went to Vancouver, British Columbia this weekend and while we were there we fell in love. At least we think it’s love. It could be lust. My dad always said there was a big difference, and sometimes it’s hard to tell what the difference is. It’s bad enough when you fall in love with another person. When you fall in love with a boat, it’s even more complicated!

There is an old, trite saying about how if you love someone, you have to let them go free and if they return to you then the love is real, and if they don’t, then you’ve saved yourself a ton of trouble. I’d like to make that case for boats as well as people.

We went to Vancouver to visit our newly married niece and her newly minted husband and since we can’t afford to be traipsing off to Vancouver all the time, paying for hotels, etc, we thought we’d look at a few boats while we were there. Our broker, Lee, set us up to look at a Swan 40, a Spencer 1330, and a Westerly Conway. (Reviews to follow)

Newlyweds. Their love seems like the real deal to me. Micah is a very talented musician and programmer whose professional goal is to put music to videos, video games, etc. He has his degree along with his talent, so if you know someone who knows someone in the Vancouver area, give me a shout. I like to help young people get off to a start in the career of their dreams.

Why are we looking at boats when Moonrise is still for sale, you might be asking yourself. And you would be wise to ask. Except that we are well and truly into the nasty rainy season here and going sailing is not much fun right now. We have to do something to keep the dream alive or it will die a watery death during the rainy season. If we look at boats, we not only keep the dream active in our lives, we also continue to educate ourselves about what we really want and need, and work toward making a final decision about whether we really want to sell Moonrise.

And that’s where the ‘let it go free’ concept comes in. We found a boat that made our hearts go pitty pat quite a lot. You know that feeling you get when you first spot the object of your affection from across the room, and your heart swells just a bit and dizziness overtakes you… that’s the feeling I’m talking about only this object is a boat, and we already own a boat. Technically, we own two boats if you count Danger Kitten, Andrew’s boat.  So you can see the quandary we find ourselves in.

The boat is the Westerly Conway. Long time readers may recall we also looked at a Westerly Sealord last spring, and we also liked that boat. We’ve reviewed that one, and also reviewed a Westerly Cirrus that we looked at for our son over the summer. The common thread is that we loved all three of those boats and wanted to own each one. I think we may have found our builder, if not our boat.

The Westerly Conway, which made our hearts beat a little faster.

The Westerly Sealord, S/V Spellbound. I love the name. I loved the boat.

So we are throwing this issue out to the Universe to solve the problem for us. Do we make an offer? Do we consider the Westerly Sealord again? I would love to have that boat. It’s perfect in just about every single way: layout, size, amenities. But the price is not right for us, especially right now. And it needs quite a bit of work and is just that much bigger than the Conway. The Conway, at 36 feet, is only slightly longer than Moonrise. It has good accommodations and is ready to sail. The really big compromise on that boat is the galley, which would have to be completely redesigned. Either one would take us where we want to go, but the Sealord would be more comfortable to live on, no two ways about it.

Is it love or is it lust? I maintain that because we’ve liked every Westerly we’ve seen, it’s love. So if it’s love, we have to let it go free and see if it works out; we have to do our part but not try to control the process. We have to realize that if it’s right for us, the boat, whichever one, will be ours and Moonrise will find a new owner who will love her and sail her, as she is built to sail, not sit at the dock. If this does not work out, we will continue looking at Westerlys. Perhaps not exclusively, but definitely.  Sometimes life is a little bit like a movie. You do your part by buying the ticket and taking a seat, and then you watch to see what happens next. I think that’s called making a leap of faith.

So, everyone who believes in fairies, or anything else good, clap your hands now and send all that believing our way!

After seeing the Conway, we stopped to watch this acrobatic fire juggler perform. He was pretty funny, and also very, very strong. We tried walking around the cool shops in the area, but we couldn’t focus so we got in the car and drove home, wishing we could stop in Blaine to see the Westerly Sealord on the way home.