Category Archives: Sailboats

Oh, My Aching Back!

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Freshly 'seafinned' grab rails. Pretty! And smooth!

And hands,and neck! Know what I hate? I hate refinishing wood. Okay, I don’t REALLY hate it, but I’ve had just about enough of it for now, especially if I have to lean over and do it with my head in an upside down position. Let me get through this current bottle of ibuprofen before I tackle another such project. The brightwork on Moonrise, our Cal 34, was looking not-so-bright, if you get my drift. So for the last few days we’ve been working on that.

Know what else I hate? I hate Cetol. Yes, that is right. I am coming out of the closet and going on record to say that I really don’t like this stuff. I know it’s alleged to be the drug of choice for boat woodwork, but the problem I have with Cetol is that people generally just add layer upon layer, year after year, without sanding the old stuff off. Then it looks like crap and begins to peel. I mean why not just paint your beautiful teak with ugly brown paint? It will end up looking the same.  And that was the state of the teak back rests and handles on Moonrise’s exterior. They looked ugly, and she is such a pretty boat she deserves better. So we commenced to sanding. And sanding, and sanding.

Unfortunately for me, I’ve refinished a lot of wood in my life. So much so that I can get pretty detailed about how much sanding is required before one is ready to put on a new finish. It’s not enough, in my book, to sand through the top layer of stuff and then call it good. I want it all off. So the sanding takes a long time and the fingers get really stiff, the skin on the hands begins to resemble the sandpaper being used. After a while it’s hard to tell where the skin leaves off and the paper begins. Eventually we got most of it off, and while it’s not the perfection I had in my own mind, having envisioned wood that looked like new,  it’s ‘good enough’ even for me. Time to put on the new finish.

Frankly, I did not want to again put Cetol on the wood work on Moonrise because I hate the idea of having to do all that sanding again and I hate the way it looks when you don’t sand the old stuff off. Great minds think as one, even without talking about it sometimes, and Mike came home with a pint of Daly’s SeaFin Teak Oil. This product is very popular up here with the wooden boat crowd and I can see why! It’s just very easy to use and leaves a beautiful finish. To maintain it, you just wipe more on with a rag, or, if feeling extra frisky, with a sanding pad. It soaks into the wood and hardens, leaving a nice glowing finish that is skid proof and water proof and allegedly needs renewing only once a year.

Our treatment of choice for our teak rails and seat backs.

 

So Moonrise is looking mighty spiffy just now with her freshly ‘Seafinned’ wood. Only problem is that although we taped off the hand rails, some of the product still leaked underneath the tape and we cannot figure out how to remove it from the cabin top. Of course, Moonrise is a boat from the 1970’s, so her non-skid has blemishes and spots like most middle aged skin. Eventually these will probably fade with the rest of the battle scars. But we’d like to scrub them off if possible. Researching the interweb Mike found that acetone was supposed to be the treatment of choice. I’m out 13$ on that idea because it didn’t work one bit. I’m going to try mineral spirits next, as that’s what the stuff has in it and that’s what is recommended by the manufacturer for uncured spills. Ours are definitely cured, but it can’t hurt to try. If you have experience removing this kind of spot from your deck. please post a reply here. Otherwise I might have to accidentally spill Seafin Teak Oil all over the nonskid on Moonrise, giving her a nice mild ‘tan’, but making the spots effectively disappear. Think of it as self-tanning lotion for boats.

Our nephew, Reid, fishing for Salmon off cockpit of Moonrise. Later I had him fish off the other side so I could finish the teak backrest. The fish were not biting that day.

 

S/V Who Knows?

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The still nameless Ericson 25

Here’s the latest on Andrew’s boat. I know you’ve all been holding your breath for this update, right? Get some popcorn, because this post is mostly movie clips.

We sailed over to Gig Harbor last Friday to pick up the boat and the whole thing was just about perfect. The weather was warm and windy, which is all one can ask for around here on a summer evening.  I dropped Mike and Andrew off on the dock where the still nameless Ericson 25 was waiting, then stood by on Moonrise while they got everything ready for the maiden voyage. I was pleased to have been able to navigate Moonrise in unknown territory, around lots of expensive boats, and get Mike and Andrew off at the right slip without ‘incident’. Whew!

Out in the passage, they raised the sails for the first time on the little Ericson. You’ll notice the main looks a little wonky. No worries, that’s been adjusted since this video was taken. It looks loads better now. Notice the Viking on the main sail! This is pretty cool because Andrew is a student at Western Washington University, home of the Vikings!

We arranged to have a slip in our marina for a couple of months while we figure out where the boat will be stored when Andrew is in Bellingham at school. The Gods were smiling on this whole situation because as a new boat owner Andrew has a lot to learn and we’d like to be the ones to teach him. A temporary slip was found on the dock behind Moonrise. Turns out to be the exact slip we had for Moonrise when we first moved into that marina a few years back. Andrew’s boat is almost directly behind Moonrise, giving him access to everything we have on our boat, and putting us right there if he needs help. Excellent!

Remember those videos you took of your kids when they were babies? Or that your parents took of you, if you happen to be Tate and Dani, or Vlad and Atilla. You know the ones: Watch while little snookums picks his nose!, Watch while little snookums takes his first steps and whacks himself on the table corner. Watch little snookums sleeping.  Okay. Well watch while big snookums takes his own boat out of the slip alone for the first time. (Now he just backs the boat out of the slip, but he was not sure about it the first time. I love how they toddle first, then they run!) I’m filming from Moonrise. Bear with us. We’re being parents here.  There are a lot more video clips where this came from. At least we’ve progressed from watching him sleep and if this video is not more interesting than watching paint dry, it’s at least mercifully short.

As an aside, I sometimes wonder about the number of photos we take of our kids. These statistics tell the tale: number of photos we have of Moonrise under sail after owning her for 4 years: 2, both taken in the last 3 months.   Number of photos of Andrew’s still nameless boat, under sail, after owning her for less than 1 week: 234,490. Hmmm.

The proverbial sunset sail.

It’s been several days of sailing together, teaching Andrew how to anchor out, and watching while he learns to single-hand the boat. We notice he is falling in love with this boat and it makes our collective hearts swell with pride. This part of our cunning plan is working.

Here’s another stunning video of us stealing Andrew’s wind, talking smack about how much faster our boat is than his boat:

 

In yet another indication that this was the right boat for Andrew, today a dinghy pretty much fell out of the sky and into my lap. I awoke this morning and the first thought that popped into my mind was that Andrew was planning to sail up to Seattle to see his sister and he doesn’t yet have a dinghy. Pulling Puddler, our dinghy, would take about a knot off his speed, at least. Plus, we like to have Puddler available ourselves. I wanted a dinghy in decent shape and I didn’t want to spend more than about 50$ for it. So I opened Craigslist over coffee. And there it was, posted less than 1 hour before, probably right as I was waking up. By noon we were putting it into the back of Andrew’s car, and it fit perfectly.

So, aside from some odds and ends, he’s pretty much set in terms of learning how to sail his boat and use it to travel to exotic locations such as Seattle and Bellingham. He’s lining up crew so he won’t be alone at first, which relieves our minds. And what about Mike and me? We’ve been sailing a lot, too. Here’s a quick clip of our sail down to Penrose State Park for the 4th of July. We are not real fans of that holiday and like to get away from the noise and crowds. We were the only boat on our side of the park. Perfect. And we had winds gusting to 25 knots on the way down. More perfect.

And while we were there, we had a little adventure. Or rather, Mike had a little adventure and I watched him. Then I had to buy him a present.

The view from the top of the mast is stunning. Plus, I hold Mike’s life in my hands. Not really. He’s actually very safe:

And now, relax to the soothing visuals of fireworks over Commencement Bay. It’ s much more soothing to watch the video than it was being there with hundreds of boats, some unlit and small, all over the bay. What a circus. I can’t wait for the 4th to be on a weekend again, so we can come home the following day and miss the zoo in the bay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Boat By Any Other Name

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S/V ????

The taxes are paid, the boat is registered, and we have insurance for Andrew’s boat. All that remains is finding a local marina more convenient than the one in Gig Harbor where the boat is currently moored. And a name. Andrew is thinking about what to name this vessel since the she doesn’t have a name already.

Naming a boat is a weighty responsibility.  Our first boat, the Saucy Sue, was so named after a linefrom a Black Adder episode. Our family knows all the lines from all the episodes. We are complete Black Adder geeks. The name fit the boat, a diminutive Catalina 27 that was quick and responsive and seemed many times to have a mind of her own. She had’sauciness’ to spare. Mike named that boat as soon as we got her; another boat that had no name at the outset. It seemed like the name really described that boat’s personality,or at least what we projected onto her.

The Sue being extra saucy!

Then there is Moonrise. Our current Cal 34 has been called Moonrise for many years and I never wanted to change it. When I first learned that this was her name, I knew she was the boat for us. It does suit her. The word conjurs up images of peaceful nights, of romance, of the mutability of the feminine. We have always seen Moonrise as a graceful vessel, a little like a woman with southern charm. Images of the moon suit her. The moon also represents emotion, those energies that wax and wane like the moon. She has certainly touched our hearts, bringing both great joy and a feeling of freedom.

Moon rising over S/V Moonrise. How cool is that? We are anchored at Penrose State Park, all alone!

We wonder, sometimes, at the names we see on boats. Many people apparently like to use a double entendre to make some kind of a point in naming their vessel. Sometimes that will cause us to cringe collectively, almost reflexively rolling our eyes. We saw a boat named ‘Miss Isle’. Really? You think maybe she’s fast? Then there was ‘Vitamin Sea’. Okay. There’s a boat in our marina called ‘Our Third Love’. We don’t know what that means. We hope the owners know. Then there is the ubiquitous ‘Luna Sea’. ‘Lun a cy’. Get it? HAHAHAHA! Right. You get the point. I’m sure somewhere there is a book on boat names. Or probably an internet site. Because someone has to make this stuff up and it’s certainly not me.

We recently looked at a lovely Cal39 that is in the running as ‘the boat’ for us. The
boat’s name is ‘Saila V’. Now, ‘C’est la vie’ isn’t ncessarily a bad a name for a boat,
but really? Why couldn’t they have simply used the French expression? It’s not a ‘cutesy’ boat, it’s a lovely boat. Why have a cutesy name? What’s strange is that this expression is generally said with somewhat of a shrug. It’s a dismissive expression and gesture used in response to something negative. You could say ‘shit happens’ and it would mean almost the same thing. When we looked at the boat, I sort of shrugged and felt like ‘meh…’. And it’s a nice boat that is very well kept and has a layout exactly like the one we saw months ago that I’ve frequently wished we had bought! I should have been pretty excited about it. I wonder if the feeling tone of the name had infiltrated this boat. If we buy that boat, the name is going away fast. I’ll have to look at it again and see if it still leaves me with the same feeling.

Compare this with the name ‘Spellbound’, which is the name of the Westerly 39 we looked at up in Anacortes and is reviewed on the boat page. That boat grabbed me right away. I must have been under a spell of some kind because I still like that boat, even though it has many, many more faults than the recent Cal 39, and it is going to need some likely major repairs. Is the name speaking to me more than the actual boat? Maybe in the future I should remain ignorant of the vessel name when looking for the first time because it’s clear that logic plays little part in the feeling one gets about a boat.

So Andrew has run through a number of possibilities in naming his new boat. Right away I thought of ‘Sea Monkey’, a playful name with just a touch of a nod to Poseidon. Just a touch. He thought of ‘Saucy Sue’ because he has such fond memories of that boat and he learned to sail on her. Of course he’s also thought of ‘Mopey Teen’, and ‘Slack Bladder’ (another reference to Black Adder). Imagine hailing someone on the VHF, saying either of those names three times. He is ever the amusing lad. “Mopey Teen, Mopey Teen, Mopey Teen, this is your mother. Do you copy?.”

Andrew at the helm of Saucy Sue in his REAL mopey teen days.

He won’t know until he sails her what the name should be, but maybe you readers already have ideas. What would you name a boat like this little Ericson 25? These boats are described as fast, tender, pointing well, sailing like a boat much larger than they are. Sounds like they are little boats with big hearts. What would you name her?