Tag Archives: Preparing to cruise

Splashdown 2014, and Some Other Important Commentary

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Just over 43,000 pounds. That’s how much she weighs dry and unloaded. I just shook my head and thought, ‘Man. I was really hoping for about 10,000 pounds less. This is one heavy boat.’ Even though I knew that SailboatData.com, which says our boat weighs 30,000 pounds, was probably wrong, I didn’t think they would be THAT far off. She is a big girl. Mike went so far as to refer to her as ‘fat’ but I corrected him firmly and said she simply has big bones. Like many a diva, our boat is an Amazon. A blue Amazon. And today we took her for her first spin with us at the helm.

Going down, back to the water.

This day has kept us both awake at night for weeks now. As Mike began to see the light at the end of the long tunnel of work known as ‘repowering’ we both began imagining all the worst kinds of things that could happen when we finally found ourselves on the water in Andromeda. Would we need to deploy the anchor in order to keep the current from whisking us off to sea? (I blame Mike for this dark fantasy.) Would we careen into the fishing boat Sophia as we tried to dock this behemoth of a boat? (This was my own worst nightmare.) Would we crash into the dock ourselves and hurt Andromeda and possibly people standing by watching, mouths agape? Certainly we knew how to handle our Cal 34, Moonrise, but she was a completely different animal. I just wanted this day to be over.

With a 1:00 splash time, we were at the boat and ready. I had asked the gods for a dry spell and, indeed, the clouds had parted to reveal blue skies. I had said my prayers for protection and assistance as I always do and as the engine on the travel lift started up I heard the high pitched screech of eagles overhead. Two adult eagles were flying in tandem just over the boat, talking back and forth to each other, flying close together. Eagles are my special totem and they never cease to thrill me. When I see eagles after a prayer, I consider that my sign that things will be fine. Soon there were six eagles circling high over Andromeda. Excellent! I began to feel at peace and stop worrying. My stomach began to unclench.  While there was a brisk breeze, it was not an unusual breeze for Astoria. Things would be good.

As the travel lift approached, Steve, the lift operator, approached us and asked if we’d like to trade positions with another boat that was going back in the water. We wanted to be able to hang at the dock generally getting the feel of the boat and maybe do a few touch and go’s before returning to the marina. If we didn’t trade positions, we’d need to move out of the way more quickly to make room for the next boat. We chose to trade, and went to the Portway Tavern for lunch.

Our son, Andrew, is a sailor and, obviously, an iphone owner. He came with us to help should any of our dark fantasies come to fruition.

If you go to Astoria and like hamburgers, you cannot go wrong with the Portway Tavern, which hails itself as the longest continuously ‘serving’ tavern west of the Mississippi. Perhaps it is. I know they used to serve more than drinks because there used to be a brothel upstairs. Now they serve delicious food (their fish and chips is something to write home about, too) and you get a side serving of poltergeist activity to spice up your meal. That’s right. According to the cook, there are several resident ghosts who make their presence known by playing little tricks like putting the bread on the floor overnight, or sliding a chair across a room unannounced. When we were there one made its presence known by toppling a bottle of liquor off the bottom shelf behind the bar, onto the floor. Just one bottle, mind you, and it didn’t break. No harm done, but the look on the cook’s face was priceless. We then we got to hear the ghost stories. Makes for a very interesting lunch. There are also several dozen women’s bras hanging from the ceiling. So food, entertainment,  and atmosphere. You can hardly shake a stick at that.

During our time out for lunch the wind picked up smartly. Now we had tide and current going out, and wind coming in. Super. Steve said they were expecting 50 knot winds by nightfall. Probably should not have waited and had lunch. But with six eagles giving us the ‘go ahead’, who knew?

Andrew is first aboard.

The splash went well, the engine started strong and Mike and I were both, in a word, AMAZED at how well that engine pushed that boat through the water. She might be ‘big boned’ but she is nimble as can be and handles like a dream! Our gut feelings about this hull were right on. Regular readers will know this is our first time ever having this boat out on the water, much less being in control of her. We are just a pair of wild and crazy people who bought a boat without ever giving her a test spin because, well, she was the right boat for us. We were both just exclaiming over and over about how responsive she is and how great the three bladed prop is (I’ll never go back to a folding prop), how you can stop her so quickly, how graceful she is on the water… we kind of went on and on. We could feel her coming to life underneath our very feet. Here’s an embarrassing video or two, with plenty of talking over wind. Enjoy.”

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Here’s the one Mike did. It’s equally wonderful. I know you want to see them both.

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I had taken up my usual position at the helm as I used to do on Moonrise when we docked. I was always the ‘driver’, so I just assumed I would be the ‘driver’ this time, too. But then I thought maybe Mike would want to dock her for the first time, as he has worked his butt off on that engine and really deserved it. Also that way if he crashed into the dock it wouldn’t be my fault. Who am I kidding?  Although the current threatened to push us into the marina faster than we felt comfortable, with the powerful engine and reverse thrust, Mike handled her like a pro and came up alongside the dock like he’d been docking her all his life. Andrew stepped off and tied off the middle cleat and she was secured. The rest was easy. And it was done! She was back in the water, we’d had our first small adventure, and now we cannot wait to take her out and play in a quiet location so we can learn the anchoring system and practice handling her. A day that darkened the quiet recesses of our minds for weeks turned out to be just grand after all.

Finally a chance at the helm.

And before I go, I want to give a shout out of thanks to my friend Behan Fravel Gifford, co-captain of S/V Totem and long time blogger. I’d also like to thank my friend Cidnie Carroll, author of the blog Our Life with Ceol Mor. They are “co-captains” (admins) of a wonderful group of women on Facebook called Women Who Sail. Here’s why I’m thanking them:

Our daughter, Claire, is traveling in Europe and the U.K. and a couple of days ago while in Amsterdam she was robbed while she slept in a hostel. Her iphone, passport, credit cards and money were under her pillow. The thief approached her in the wee hours of the morning, slid his slimy hand under her sleeping head, and took everything. He was probably a very experienced fellow. The police seem disinclined to follow up too much.

Although our daughter was not physically harmed, thanks be to God, it is more than a little bit unsettling to be a young woman in a foreign country without any form of identification, and with no one you know. She knew how to take care of business since she is an experienced traveler and an adult, and she had copies of all her documents. But I really wanted someone to take her under their wing; someone from her own country, someone with a small connection to home, even if a thin one. At 4:30 in the morning, after hanging up the phone with Claire, my first thought was to post this issue to the WWS Facebook group. I wrote a rather rambly post asking if there was anyone in the Amsterdam area who would be willing to give Claire a hand. Cidnie saw the post and immediately made it a ‘sticky’, ensuring that the post stayed at the top of the page so everyone would see it. She also posted it to her Facebook page.

I finally fell back to sleep and while I was sleeping the women in other time zones were putting the word out. There were so many responses of support and help that it would be hard to name everyone individually, but I’d like to thank each person who posted and let them know that their support meant a lot to me.

One of the many offers of help for Claire came from Behan and her cousin, Kate, who is a graduate student in Amsterdam. We three connected via Facebook messenger, and I forwarded Kate’s contact information to Claire. I understand they were to meet and have coffee today and I am eternally grateful for that.

It is a new experience for me to be a member of a group that simply jumps into action when one of its members needs help. This is a true community of women, and Behan and Cidnie are both admins, a sometimes thankless and always difficult job.  Thank you so much, Behan and Cidnie, for your generous spirits and for being leaders in the cruising community. Thank you also for understanding that being a mother does not stop when your children turn 18, or even 28.  Your own children are young, and yet you ‘get’ it.  And thank you, Women Who Sail, for being an awesome group of women. I will fly my burgee with pride.

Home for now.

Home for now.

 

Introducing S/V Andromeda!

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I feel like we’ve just given birth, such has been the waiting, watching and anticipating and anxiety-ridden stress of the last two weeks. And the eating! Lord, can you say ‘stress eating’? But the gestation period, which took about the same amount of time as gestating an elephant, is over. The new ‘baby’, a big blue girl named Andromeda, is finally here. Or, rather, she is in Astoria, Oregon. There are some loose ends to tie up with the financing and paperwork, but that is going smoothly after a day of difficulty when we feared the contractions had stopped, causing a day of major ‘freak out’ and frantic Facebook posting. Unless something catastrophic happens now, things should be pretty straight forward from now on, and we can soon call her our own. And because we have a backup plan in case the bank does a 180 on us, it’s just going to happen.

S/V Andromeda. Love. That. Color!

Just Her Statistics

1975 47 foot Olympic Adventure ketch, major refit in 1987

Designer: Ted Brewer

Builder: Olympic Marine, Greece

In the recent past when I was scouring Yachtworld on an almost-daily basis, I came across the listing for this boat and was immediately smitten by the turquoise color of her hull and by name of the boat, which was listed as ‘Aquarius’ (This was the wrong name because, FYI, lots of Yachtworld listings are just copy/paste jobs of previous listings for the same vessel. Grrr.). I liked that name and our boat, Moonrise, has the astrological symbol for ‘Aquarius’ on either side of the moon on her hull, something I thought was a nice synchronicity. Alas, in those days we did not think we were in the position to buy, and she was out of our price range, anyhow. We could look, but we could not touch. Still, her layout and sail plan were perfect so I bookmarked her page and checked back occasionally to see if the price had been lowered. Very soon there was a ‘sale pending’ on the listing. So I just moved on.

Months passed and we languished in our attempts to sell Moonrise. Discouraged, we pretty much stopped looking at boats. We were convinced we had to sell Moonrise first.  Personally, I was pretty tired of the whole thing; tired of being on the roller coaster, and actually tired of looking at boats that we couldn’t buy. If you have been reading our blog for awhile, you’ll know that we considered just taking our Cal 34 to Mexico and calling it good. We didn’t want to do that, we really did not.  But I was coming to terms with it because it seemed like the only way. We were not looking outside the box, to coin a phrase.

After our surveyor climbed the mast, Mike couldn’t wait to try out the mast steps. Yes, he is tied off for safety.

Then, two weeks ago, Andromeda’s owner, John,  saw our ad and emailed me that he had a boat he thought might work for us. Would we be interested? I looked at the photos and realized it was the same boat that had been listed as S/V Aquarius; the very one that had been sold before. The sale had fallen through when the engine was found to have water in the oil. John had removed the listing from the brokerage and was selling it himself. He said this would be a good opportunity for us to get the boat at a lower price because he was going to have to pull the engine. When, exactly, do owners actually say that? We agreed and made an appointment to go see it the following weekend.

All four of us piled into the car to make the trip to Astoria. I felt amazingly calm because I was at the point where I knew it would either be the right boat or it wouldn’t and besides, we couldn’t afford moorage for another boat so we were probably wasting our time.  Mike was fully prepared to dislike the boat, for it to be too big, for it to feel ungainly. But even as our thoughts kept coming up with reasons why it was silly to even look at this boat, it was already uncanny how things were coming together. Moorage in Astoria is cheaper than dirt. We could afford to pay for an entire year of moorage at a time, making that payment a non-issue and giving us more time to sell Moonrise if necessary. Moonrise is fully paid for, so other than moorage, we won’t have any expenses for her for awhile. Our ‘in the box’ thinking began to unravel.

You can turn this table over and put a cushion in the middle to have a berth-type settee. We love the little table! So useful. Owl not included.

When we first saw Andromeda, I was so relieved that she actually looked just like her photographs. She is the same color of turquoise blue and I love it! We stepped on board and went over every inch of the deck and cockpit. I put off going below until I had a good feel for what was up top. Able to see the bow from a seated position at the wheel? Check! Cockpit fully nap-able? Check! Great winches, excellent sails with easy reefing systems? Check! Windlass that works? Check! Then I went below and checked out the interior. My decision was made.

Meanwhile Mike was doing his own tour of the boat and having fascinating conversations with boat owner, John.  It took almost no time at all for us to be of one mind that this was definitely our boat and we would simply find a way for it to work. Andrew and Claire both gave it the ‘thumbs up’ and all of us really liked the owner of the boat, John. He’s just a great, honorable guy, an avid sailor, and has taken really good care of this boat. We hope to remain friends with him. Bonus!

We love the views from the marina in Astoria.

So what is it about this boat that made us decide right away to buy it? Only this: it pretty much has every single thing we said we wanted, with only a minor exception or two; easily remedied. Let’s make this easy. Here’s a partial equipment list.

Center cockpit, with bottom sider cushions with covers
Hard dodger, with viewing window and windshield wipers
Full cockpit enclosure
Ketch rig with removable inner forestay
9.5 oz main and mizzen sails in excellent shape
Lofran electric windlass with remote
Muir stern anchor windlass with wash down
65 lb Bruce anchor w/300′ of high tensile 3/8″ chain
23 lb Fortress with 40′ chain and 250′ 1/2″ rode
Stainless steel swim grid with fixed swim ladder
Custom stainless heavy duty davits with self tailing winches
24 mile Furuno radar, older, but it works
Kenwood SSB radio and tuner with insulated back stay
New Raymarine below decks autopilot
Two solar panels with new charger/controller
Excellent non-skid on deck with intuitive hand holds
Stanchions are hip height and sturdy
Mast pulpits
Lazy jacks and sail covers on main and mizzen
Mast steps. Mike has already been up the mast.
Liferaft. This needs inspection and repacking. Don’t know if it’s good.

And then, you know how I feel about comfort below:

Amazing head room. The current owner is 6’4″ and he stands tall in the boat.
Plenty of opening ports and hatches, including one right above the galley.
Three staterooms. THREE! One triple, one double, one single.
Large marine fridge/freezer space. (We have to replace the unit on this.)
Fresh and salt water pumps
Hot water (14 gallons)
Diesel cabin heater
Two heads (Actually, I did not care about this, but I’ll take it.)
A full stand up shower (Again, who cares? But I’ll take it.)
An engine ROOM. That’s right! Mike is so happy it’s kind of pitiful.
A WORKSHOP! Right outside the engine room doors. OMG!
A comfortable salon
Good storage pretty much everywhere
Beauty!

Salon on S/V Andromeda

Is there work to be done? Of course! Much has already been done on this boat, but there are enough projects to keep us busy for awhile. The hull, deck, masts, and other expensive things are in sound condition. John has already removed the old engine (by himself!) and the engine room is ready to be cleaned, prepped and painted. Mike will be rewiring much of the boat because he’s kind of a wiring geek and a little persnickity that way. He wants it done to his standards. The boat had a serious refit in 1987, including that pretty blue color,  but that’s still long ago, so systems need to be updated.

There is months worth of work in this engine room, where all the systems come together.

And, of course, there will be a new engine. We’ve been putting money aside in the boat kitty and have been able to save enough to buy the engine. Right now we are researching the best deal on an engine because we need a signed ‘intent to purchase’ contract in order for our bank financing to work. We’ll hire someone down in Astoria to help us put it in, but Mike still has to choose his poison: Beta Marine or Yanmar? He’s researching the heck out of it.

I thought this table dropped down to make a big berth, but it doesn’t 🙁

Literally the only thing I was disappointed about in this boat has to do with the settee in the salon. I have a vision of a seating area that includes a deep settee and comfortable pillows. I want the equivalent of a comfy sofa in a boat we will live on. When we first saw the boat, I assumed the table dropped down and that you could create a large double berth in the main cabin, but such is not the case. This disappointed me, but I am going to work with it. I have some ideas about how I can keep this table, which is really beautiful and versatile, and create a wider settee with the comfortable pillows I envision. Oh, I will eventually have my cake and eat it, too. That’s way down on the list, however, about the time I replace cushions.

So, one giant leap forward with the plan. We are excited and also have moments of being overwhelmed with the thought of owning this kind of boat. She is just so very different from our little Cal 34; so much boat! But we absolutely love Astoria and are going to completely enjoy spending weekends down there at the mouth of the Columbia River. I foresee us doing everything we can to spend longer weekends down there. Change is in the air!

If you want to see more photos of the boat, go to the Picasa Album I made just for our readers.

We hope she will take us on many adventures! (It’s an older photo. Rear solar panels are gone, as is wind generator.)

Stoking the Fire

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This week I was talking to one of my friends where I work about our plans for sailing and how we still have a couple of years before we can really see the light at the end of the time tunnel. I was saying that it sometimes feels like I am adrift on a raft with no docklines, waiting for a current to catch me; like Kon Tiki without sharks. Probably I was complaining a little. Very likely. Like me, my friend thinks symbolically and she said that she felt like what I was feeling was a lack of “fire”, and that I needed to do more things to keep the fire under the plan stoked and burning. She asked if it were possible for me to do any new learning associated with this plan. Learning new things would keep the fire burning. I was happy to report that this was not only possible, it was in the works!

Mike and a classmate discuss a thorny navigation problem. To add or to subtract? That is the question…

For my recent birthday, Mike registered us both for a class in Dead Reckoning at the Wooden Boat Center in Seattle. I’ve wanted to learn how to chart a course and determine a compass heading by hand so that we wouldn’t have to rely on electronic navigation. We all know things break on a boat, especially electronics.  I wanted to learn how to use those cool parallel rulers and dividers so I could feel like a ‘real’ sailor.

This weekend was the class and it was great!  Not only did I remember why I never, ever took math in college, but I learned that there is a word called ‘uncorrecting’. I am not making this up. This word is used when you want to determine your location on the chart because you are lost. Maybe it’s because you are lost that you have to use the word ‘uncorrecting’, which implies somehow that you’ve already corrected something and are now undoing it. I don’t know. I also learned that sometimes you correct by adding, and sometimes you correct by subtracting, and this varies with the positions of the planets and how far the fog goes and what kind of mood the gods are in on that day. Sometimes you will add the variations to the east and sometimes you will add the variations to the west.  Good luck determining that little thing.

Wooden dinghies at the Center for Wooden Boats.

Thank goodness I got through 8th grade, because learning how to determine which compass heading you want from a chart in front of you will include challenges such as adding, possibly subtracting (again, this varies at the god’s whim), multiplying, and, if you want to know how long it will take you to get somewhere, also dividing. And you thought you were wasting your time struggling with all those word problems back in the day! It also requires drawing straight lines and reading very tiny numbers. These things will be easier to organize in your mind if you remember that Dead Men Vote Twice, and that True Virgins Make Dull Company. It was a challenging class on so many levels.

In spite of everything, because the teacher was full of knowledge, patience and good humor, I finally got the hang of it and worked out my own way of remembering the completely counter- intuitive use of words like ‘correcting’ and the new ‘uncorrecting’ as they relate to magnetic variations over time, even though anything you do, whether adding or subtracting, is actually correcting the heading. Bah. Of course, all of this is kind of chopped liver if you don’t know how deviant your boat is, because if it’s really deviant you could end up in China. And we all know that would not bode well.

Who says you have to sail to exotic locations to buy produce from a boat?

In the end, I found my way and look forward to practicing in the real world. Seriously, if you are in the Seattle area and want to take an introduction to navigation, this is a good class that is reasonably priced. Teacher Katey Noonan was easy-going and knowledgeable and I felt at ease with her right away. Plus, she provides Starbucks coffee and cinnamon rolls. I made it all the way through the class without eating one, but they sure looked good. Damn that vacation eating all to heck and back.

After all of that intense learning, our brains were tired so we had a little lunch out in the sunshine by Lake Union and then walked the docks down by all the yacht brokers, looking at boats. This is not such a great time to look because the pickings are slim. We did see a Wauquiez 42 that looked pretty good and gave me a serious case of winch envy. We got to go aboard a Taswell, a big Beneteau center cockpit, and a Moody 42, all out of our price range. I could not get too interested in the boats that looked like floating condos. They just don’t feel right to me, somehow. I know they are probably comfortable, but I found myself wondering how anyone would ever access anything behind their plastic panels. Overall, it was hard to get too excited over them and they all pretty much looked the same.

I asked Mike if he saw anything that rung his bell. He said no. He replied that he might flirt or hold hands with a boat just now, but he wasn’t interested in getting serious. I think we’ve both learned our lesson on that one. Until Moonrise goes to a new owner, we are the quintessential ‘lookers’ and unwilling to risk getting attached again. The Beneteau center cockpit had some leopard skin print seats he thought were snazzy. I took a pass on those. However, the tiny bathtub was an easy sell unless I considered how I would get behind all that plastic if the need arose. Mike reminded me coolly that to own a boat such as that one implied the paying of others to worry about such things. Ah. That must be the answer. First… get a million dollars….

I do have a special weakness for a bathtub on a boat, even a small one. It’s one of the things I know I will miss about land life. I love my bath. Hey, if Lynn Pardey can have one, why can’t I?

But a day around boats is better than almost any other kind of day, and this was a day that definitely stoked the fire! And a ‘shout out’ for the Signature Yachts brokerage on Lake Union. Their docks and boats are open allowing potential buyers to look at them at their leisure. I absolutely love this! If we didn’t already have a broker, they would win our hearts just for this fact alone. Broker Tori Parrott is friendly, not at all pushy, and it’s obvious she has a lot of experience with sailboats and sailing. She left us to our own devices with the offer to open any boat we were interested in looking at, no questions asked about our position in terms of buying. Many thanks, Tori!