So Tuesday I went back out to White Rock to work on the boat again. This time, Bill and I spent the day grinding down various problems in the fiberglass of the deck and removing the nasty huge “lifting bridles” (huge 6″ chunks of steel sticking out of the deck for use lifting the boat up with a crane, almost completely useless since cranes have lifting straps, and a great place to stub your toe). I actually had a really nice time – the work is far easier than I expected, and even – dare I say it? – fun. The process goes something like this:
find a place on deck where the fiberglass is cracked or chipped, exposing the wood underneath. this usually constitutes a leak into the cabin, and will lead to rotting of the wood if left unchecked for too long.
grind down the area about an inch around the crack, all the way along. clean up all the dust.
paint the newly-ground section with epoxy, and lay down a roughly-sized strip of fiberglass matte. paint more epoxy over top of the matte, soaking it into the deck.
wait four or six hours for the epoxy to cure.
That’s where we’re at currently – we’ve fixed almost all the major problems on the deck, leaving just the rebedding of the traveler and some kind of issue with the main bow. The next steps are to add fairing compound, then sand it all down, and then paint the whole thing. Bill is teaching me as we go, and I am an eager student. I’m going back out on Tuesday, weather permitting, to do another four or six hours of work on her, and by then hopefully she’ll be tight as a drum and ready to be moved onto!
Next step: figuring out the toilet. It appears there’s a Y-valve that lets you select between flushing straight-into-the-ocean or into a holding tank, but there doesn’t appear to be a macerator pump. If that’s the case, the only way to empty the holding tank will be to use a pumpout service, which can get pricy pretty quick.
I spent all day Saturday on the boat, sailing around White Rock. It was eye-opening; a lot of the things that I’ve been taking for granted will need a re-think.
For instance, there was a lot more mildew than I remembered. Mostly this was because there was a lot more *water* than I remembered, due in part to the massive snowfalls of the past two months. I think a lot of the mildew will be easily taken care of with Tilex and some elbow grease, but it’s certainly changed my plans with regards to what can and what can’t immediately move aboard! I’ve packed all my sci-fi novels (well, “all” meaning “those that have survived the massive culling”) into a cardboard box, assuming that I would be moving the books aboard, unpacking them, and getting rid of the cardboard box. As it is, I’ll definitely want to keep the books in some kind of plastic tub for at least the first little while, while I track down and eradicate the leaks in the roof.
Frankly there was a lot more water than I expected – I know, that doesn’t seem like rocket science, but seriously – under one of the bunks there was a good two inches of water pooled up! That’s just not acceptable – at least the water is coming in from the roof, and not from the hull, but with Vancouver’s weather patterns I get to look forward to living in a state of perpetual damp for the next few months. Part of my original plan involved bringing my main synthesizer onto the boat, but now that I’ve seen the reality of the water situation, the synth’s soft nylon travel case seems woefully inadequate.
There’s certainly a lot of little fixes she needs – the fiberglass is cracked in quite a few places on the deck, and each place will need to be ground out and new fiberglass laid in and epoxied into place, then sanded and eventually painted. Bill, the current owner, assures me that the work is easy, just time consuming, and that she’ll be a beautiful vessel once the work is complete.
All that being said, sailing was glorious! She’s a huge boat, but she’s in no way unweildy – she’s fast and agile. I’d go so far as to call her downright nimble! We hit eight knots in just over twelve knots of wind; almost unheard of for a monohull, but no problem for my trimaran. The best part was leaving my coffee cup on the cabin roof while we hit eight knots, with no problem – a monohull would have been heeled over at four knots, spilling the coffee, but she stayed perfectly level the entire day. 😀
Tomorrow it’s back out to White Rock to spend another full day banging away at her; hopefully we’ll get some of the fiberglass repairs attended to, but I’ll be happy just to learn more about her systems and get her better ready to be my new home.
To date, I’ve only been posting when I have something big to say, instead of when I have some new little bit of news or insight. I’ve changed the format of the blog so that it is less “story” oriented – ie, removed the ‘teaser’ part and made the full blog post appear on the main page. Now I am adopting the mindset that there is no post too small; we’ll see if that makes a difference in my posting frequency.
I just got off the phone with Bill, the guy I’m buying the boat from. We’re tentatively scheduled to go out for a sail on Thursday afternoon. I currently have no tenants lined up to take my apartment, but I’ve just posted it to Craigslist, and have several bites already. March 1st is the deadline! Most of my life is now being packed into tupperware containers, ready for storage or stowage, depending.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain
So yeah – after hemming and hawing for a few months, I’ve finally decided to go for it. I’ve agreed to purchase the trimaran – I’ve even paid the down payment!
She’s a 39-foot ‘Searunner’ trimaran, built in 1984. She’s fast and stable, and with a lot of work could be brought up to the point where she could undergo serious ocean voyages – yes, she is enough boat to do the trip to Hawaii. The life changes needed to move onboard a sailboat will be harrowing, I’m sure.
My thinking is this: if I can rid myself of my piles of useless crap, perhaps turning much of it into cash in the process, I’ll be better off in the long run. A friend once told me “You can never truly own anything that you can’t carry on your back at a dead run.” – we’ll see, I guess.
tacking amidships
I’ve just returned from an epic ten-day road trip rock climbing in Nevada, and I leave again in three days for a trip to Seattle. My house is a shambles, and it’s only going to get worse as I sort everything into four piles: going on the boat, going on Craigslist, going to friends to store, or going in the garbage.
I hope it’s not asking too much, actually. I’d really, really like to get away without having to pay for self-storage somewhere, but I’m not entirely sure that’ll be possible. The thinking goes like this: if a storage locker is $200/month, and my couch takes up 1/10th of the available space in that locker, then my couch costs me $240/year to keep. Everything I read on ‘live-aboard’ forums says that people returning to their storage lockers after two or three years away take a look at the stuff they’ve stored and are flabbergasted at the amount of junk they somehow thought they’d need! I don’t want to be that person, but I also don’t want to find out in six months that I no longer want to live on a boat, only to discover that I don’t have any stuff anymore…
Fortunately, most of the really great stuff that I have accumulated over the years is very much useful to friends and family – speaker systems, stereos, synthesizers etc will all go to willing “storage” homes, for use by folks who’ll appreciate them.
a lovely afternoon cruise
It’s amazing how much utter junk I have been finding though – going on a suggestion from another friend, I’ve made a change to my clothes sorting algorithm. Previously, I’d look into my closet and pick out a few items that I no longer wanted or needed; in the new method, I’ve removed everything from my closet, laid it all out on the bed, and picked out only things that I knew I wanted to keep. Applying this technique to my closet and dresser, I’ve taken four garbage bags full of clothes to the Salvation Army so far!
Another big one, from a suggestion on the Cruiser’s Forum, was books. I know, it almost sounds like sacrilege, but the theory is sound: pick any book from your bookshelf and consider it. Will you read it again in the next year? Is it a valuable reference? Does the book itself have inherent physical value (antique, sentimental, etc)? If the answer to all three questions is no, then the book is a trophy, a decoration, nothing more. There is no room on a boat for trophies! That being said, when cruising the coastal waters, there’s an entire economy of traded paperbacks…
A really tough one for me, however, is art. I have a decent collection of paintings and sculpture that I’ve collected over the years – none of it has any inherent value, but dammit, I like it. This is tough. Where do I store it?
Lastly, my computers – there is no faster-depreciating asset than a desktop PC. My machines are stable and fast, but they’re powerful machines and they operate on AC electricity, which can be pretty scarce on a boat. What to do? Sell them for a tiny fraction of what I paid? Store them?
Anyhow. No great adventure can come without a lot of discomfort, so that’s apparently what I must do. Expect to see a lot more posts on this forum as I make the transition between basement-dweller to coastal skipper!
Seriously, it’s turning out that my “22h/week” job actually means sitting in front of my computer 40-50 hours a week, but only actually working on “work” for twenty or so hours. It certainly doesn’t help that the crazy winter weather has started – well, winter in Vancouver, that is, which means it has begun to rain and won’t let up until – oh, May or so.
Well – let’s just do an update, then. Still working for the media company, still mostly doing crazy celebrity gossip server admin stuff. Still living in the basement. Currently in negotiations to purchase a large sailboat…
Yeah, that’s right. I won’t give *too* many details, just in case I might jinx the whole thing, but here’s what I will tell you:
She’s big. Really big. Like, sleeps six people comfortably, but could potentially carry a lot more.
She’s in pretty rough shape. She’ll need a looooot of work before she looks as pretty as she can, but 90% of the work is scraping, sanding and painting.
My intention is to continue to negotiate the sale, to see if I can get the price down to something semi-reasonable. If everything works out, hopefully by the end of the year I’ll be moving out of my basement and onto a sailboat!
The downside is that there are a lot of hurdles – for instance, while she’s got a stove and a toilet, she doesn’t have a shower or a refrigerator. The shower can be retrofitted without too much work – there’s space for one – but the fridge is a bigger problem. Fridges consume a *lot* of electricity, which, on a boat, is a big deal. She does have an icebox though, and really, refrigerators on sailboats are kind of a new invention anyway, they’ve only really been possible for the past ten years or so. Using an icebox will be a shift in thinking, but one that I won’t really have to worry about for at least the next few months – I can keep things nice and cool just by putting them in a cooler outdoors.
Speaking of which, one might question the wisdom of moving onto a sailboat right at the start of winter. Well, rightly so – boats aren’t exactly known for their insular capacity. One might even consider them downright cold – but wait! This *particular* vessel was used as a live-aboard in Alaska for the past few years! She’s got dual diesel furnaces, fore and aft, and she’s been insulated against the bitter cold of the Alaskan winter. Actually though, I think I’ll probably have to rip out all the insulation and repaint her, but I’m quite looking forward to the work.
I’ve been taking a CYA (Canadian Yachting Association) Coastal Navigation class from the same guys that held the CYA Basic Cruising course I took over the summer. It’s been excellent, I highly recommend it – if you want details, feel free to email me and I’ll fill you in. The course is teaching me all about using charts and compasses and navigating the waters of the Georgia Straight – one thing the teacher said that I found particularly interesting was that the Straight (and surrounding waters) contain practically every kind of cruising waters that you’re likely to encounter anywhere in the world – if you learn to cruise here in British Columbia, you can pretty much cruise anywhere.
Anyhow – batteries are running low, and I suspect so is my welcome. I’m typing this in ‘Re-Entry’, a wicked little espresso place on Main Street. Time to pack up and go back out into the pouring rain…
