Category Archives: Sailboats

Boat Maintenance Day

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Whoops!

Ahhh, the feeling of sore muscles and a stiff neck from a day of boat maintenance. That must mean that boating season is right around the corner. Since Moonrise is for sale, we are trying to keep her looking extra spiffy, and catch up on a few minor repairs we’ve been meaning to do. What is it about boats and houses that make people, like us, put off the small things until it’s time to sell? It’s not like we wouldn’t enjoy the benefits of having things like nice looking exterior teak.

So we had a list of things to accomplish, and if it weren’t for the fact that it is so gosh darn cold, we probably would have put them off and gone sailing. Perfect wind today, and not raining. But we decided to be responsible instead. We stayed tied to the dock. I just hate when that happens.

While Mike worked on his stuff inside the cabin, I was busy up top sanding the teak handholds, trim, and rails that hold the companionway hatch in place. Let me show you my favorite tool. If you own a boat and you don’t have one of these, you are missing out.

Handy electric multi tool.

This tool is similar to this one, sold by Fisheries Supply for over $200. We got ours at Harbor Freight for about 40$ and it’s been great. We used it to cut away the heavy fiberglass on the sole of the cabin when we took out the ungainly table, and it makes short work of a sanding job like I had today. Well, maybe not exactly ‘short’, but certainly short-er! I figure if we burn it out, we can buy almost three of them for the cost of the Fein one. No pun intended.

So I got the teak sanded, but I cannot put any kind of a finish on it in this cold, wet weather. Still, it looks a heck of a lot better without the flaking Cetol. Frankly I hate Cetol and cannot understand why it’s the finish of choice for so many sailors. I prefer oiled teak, or raw teak because I do not enjoy having to sand off layers of old finish when it starts to flake. I’m leaving the teak raw until it warms up, then I’m going to oil it.

And what was Mike working on? First, he was hoping to replace the curved teak piece on the bulkhead. I bought some pieces that might work when I was up at Fisheries Supply. Alas, they were all the wrong size, just enough off that it would have looked wierd. We stared at it together for awhile, quietly, studiously, but in the end Mike made measurements and we’ll try to find something that won’t have to be retrofitted.

He's only looking happy for the camera. There's nothing happy about having to go searching for another piece of wood.

You might be curious how that little piece of wood came off. That’s what happens when one is standing in the companionway and the boat hits a wave. You fall backward and your hind end hits that little curve of wood, breaking the wood off, and leaving a wonderfully colorful bruise on said rear. Apparently it was not attached correctly in the first place.

Mike did a little engine maintenance as well. He cleaned the raw water strainer and although he explained to me all the other things he did, all I remember is “anode”, something something, “pump”, etc.  My mind is like a steel sieve when he begins to talk engine talk.

 

 

 

 

Oh, Mexico! I Never Really Been But I Sure Want to Go!

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La Paz. Man, I sure want to go. And stay for a long time. Desert and ocean. Two great things that go great together.

And before anyone emails me about the grammar in that title, those are the actual words from the James Taylor song. And they describe my state of mind just perfectly! For many moons now Mike and I have been dreaming of the day we’d get to go down to the Baja peninsula in Mexico and soak in the local culture, food, water, and warmth. Those days are approaching!

Before people get too excited, we aren’t getting to go down on our boat. No, this is a ‘preliminary’ trip to celebrate or 30th wedding anniversary and look at some boats for sale down south. You can get a lot more for the money down there, we hear.  We’re going to skip Cabo San Lucas completely and go directly to La Paz, otherwise known as ‘La Pause’, in cruising circles because so many cruisers get there and decide to stay awhile. We’re very excited and I’m sure Mike is already anticipating trouble getting me back on the plane to come home. I’m anticipating the same from him, so we’re even. I might have to have my temper tantrum here, before we go, so as to save him some embarrassment.

In that wonderful, synchronistic way that the Universe has, we’ve just discovered some pretty cool bloggers who are living the dream on their boat down Mexico way. Stephan and Lulu Yoder are just far enough ahead of us in this wild plan to be our new role models. I read their blog with stars in my eyes and envy in my heart. They really have the right attitude: sleep when you want to, get up when you want to, go somewhere and stay as long as you feel like it, eat really good food. Basically, leave the whole ‘work ethic thing’ behind, and good riddance to bad rubbish, I say. And they’ve spent much time in La Paz, so they know some great places to stay and to eat. Plus, Mike and Stephan have some career stuff in common, and Lulu is a craftswoman! They are so much like us, they could BE us, except that they are living on their boat in Mexico and we aren’t. Rats. 🙁

We wanted to go down in March, our anniversary month, but, alas, life has worked it out so that we can’t really go that month. We’re shooting for April and hoping the spring break crowd will stay in Cabo. I’m REALLY hoping the whale sharks will hang around until we get there and I can go snorkeling with them. But I’m not holding my breath. I think March is the latest they stay. So look for some awesome posts and photos from Mexico someday soon. And you can pretend we’re sending them from our boat. I know we’ll be pretending the same.

I would SOOOO do this. If they are there, I'm going to be over the moon with excitement.

 

A Photo Tribute to Moonrise

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I’m beginning to feel terrified. We have all these plans, and they all hinge on the releasing of attachments to land based things for awhile so we can go and see the world. You see, our children are more well-traveled than we are, and we just cannot let that stand. We want to go to Mexico, and Central America, and down the coast of South America, even to Antarctica. We want to go to the South Pacific, to New Zealand, and to the Great Barrier Reef. We want to sail in Europe and around the British Isles. And being the kind of people we are, we want to go to those places on our own terms and stay away from the touristy crowds. We’ve already established that Moonrise isn’t going to be our world traveling boat.  So now, I’m getting terrified because we’ve put her up for sale. We’re about to be boatless, and we don’t know when, or for how long. Yikes! If you are not a sailor, it’s hard to help you understand just how bad that’s going to feel.

It's hard to get shots like this if you don't have a boat.

You cannot get to this awesome sea cave without a boat.

Being boatless means I won't be able to see things like this, which make life worthwhile. I don't want to go whale watching with 40 strangers in orange jumpsuits for 1 hour. I want to spend the whole day watching them from the deck of my boat.

Part of our preparation for the cunning plan has been purging the house of extraneous stuff and this has forced us to reckon with the idea of ‘sunk costs’. You know: the costs you’ll never recover,  like the fact that we bought something for 1500$ and then sold it for $500. That 1000$ difference is just gone. Poof! When Mike began to tally up all the time and money we’ve spent on Moonrise in the four years we’ve owned her, it became crystal clear that we were going to have to find a way to accept the energy we’ve sunk into her as just par for the course. It would have been great if we had known when we bought her that we would someday want to sail the world and needed a boat designed for blue water. But life has a way of being messier than that, and we wouldn’t have been ready to buy such a boat at that time.  So what do we have to show for those sunk costs?

Plenty. When we bought Moonrise we were still pretty novice sailors. Having Moonrise allowed us to gain skills in ways we would never have done on the Saucy Sue (our Catalina 27). Different boats are made for different things. We sailed in conditions we would have shied away from on the Sue, just because Moonrise made us feel safe and secure. We learned we could sail in 30 knots of wind and 10 foot waves, at night, to cross the Strait of Juan de Fuca. You would have had to hog tie me to the mast to get me to do that on a 27 foot Catalina. Then you would have had to clean up after me. Not pretty.

Mike, fueling up for his turn at the wheel during the night crossing.

Three reefs on the main, just a tiny jib up. Everyone harnessed to the boat, no one allowed on deck. We did three hour watches, two people in the cockpit, one below napping.

Andrew at the wheel during the night crossing, checking the compass heading. Don't ask about the scrub brush behind him.

We learned how to work as a crew together.

Mike and Andrew trim the sail. I'm at the wheel.

And we learned how to use our cruising spinnaker.

On days like this, I think Moonrise is the prettiest boat on the water.

While Saucy Sue was a great racer and day sailer, I would not have traveled extensively on the Sue. She just was not a comfortable boat.  Moonrise is the perfect coastal cruiser. We took extended trips on Moonrise, with her comfortable cabin and sleeping arrangements and complete galley. She encouraged us to venture further each year. We were soon learning to anchor in places the guidebooks didn’t talk about, until we finally braved the Pacific side of Vancouver Island and Barkley Sound.

Nothing but big Pacific ahead.

 

The foggy west coast of Vancouver Island.

One of those anchorages that is not in the guidebooks.

Sailing experience is not all we gained for those ‘sunk costs’. We also gained experience working on boats. Moonrise has a lot more to offer her new owners than she did us. We’ve learned how to ‘remodel’ the boat interior, and how to not be too mortified at the idea of cutting into fiberglass and wood. Mike, especially, has really cut his teeth on Moonrise when it comes to working on boat systems and improving them. We know, now, how to have a boat hauled out and how to sand and paint the bottom ourselves.

Moonrise's lovely bottom.

As hard as it is to look at the tally sheet of expenditures on this boat, how much would it have cost us to have someone teach us these things? How would that even be possible? No, I feel sure that this is money well spent in the end. Sure, we are selling the boat, but we are not selling our experiences, our learning. We get to keep those. And we have the memories of being on this boat together in places we would not have seen otherwise.  And those are priceless.