December 29th, 2009, at roughly 2:00PM Pacific time, in Monterey Bay, California is when and where I made my first boat purchase. One of many big days in my life, this was simply a step in a direction I've been talking about for far too long, but with no action to back it up. Of course, being as anal and picky as I am, it really is no surprise that it took me this long to finally "pull the trigger" as my friend Greg put it, and commit myself to one particular vessel. For the past three years or so I've been looking at a variety of boats, mostly old, thick-hulled, full-keeled fiberglass boats ranging from 1959 to the mid 1980's. But it has been just in this last year that I've turned my sights towards metal boats, both aluminum and steel (the titanium, stainless, and uranium boats were just too expensive), and in that realm I feel far more comfortable. In the past 5+ years I've been working at American Safari Cruises, all of my experience has been on metal boats, and that has definitely been a factor in selecting a metal boat as my own. But prior to working at ASC I was a wee student in high school, taking community college courses at Everett CC to complete my HS diploma. However, since I spent much of my high school years at a private school, and just so happened to be a bit of a nerd, I had 90% of my required classes completed before I started my senior year. So I took the gracious State of Washington's Running Start $$$ and took 25 credits of welding/metalworking, spending an average of 30-40hrs per week running beads and playing o/a and plasma torches. It was there that I really grew to appreciate the many applications of metal working, and became comfortable with a medium of construction typically reserved for larger vessels.
Anywho, all of this leads up to the fact that I decided to buy a steel boat (aluminum is just too rare in this part of the world, and too expensive for the ones that are over here) and make her mine. The currently named "Happy Farmer" is a 1984 Bruce Roberts design steel solent-rigged cutter, double hard-chine with fin keel and full skeg-hung rudder (tiller steering). She came with an Aries windvane (with rebuild kit), New Profurl rollerfurling, 4 Lewmar self-tailing winches, linear-drive electric autopilot (it also has a cheep-o Simrad tillerpilot as well), a Garmin color chartplotter with depthsounder and external Miltech AIS system, a Dickenson propane cabin heater, a propane stove with oven, an 18hp 2-cylinder Saab diesel with variable-pitch prop (it is currently dead - head issues: I'll probably yank the whole system for a new, standard setup), a crappy head that needs replacement, a two-basin deep sink with fresh and salt water, and a bunch of other stuff. I don't really have any great interior photos right now, but the few I've posted above are from the haul out and survey I had done on the 29th. She has some work that needs to be done, and it's going to take some $$ to get her to my liking, but I believe it is a good base to start at, and I like it. It's a tank. I plan on building a hard dodger/pilothouse hybrid for it as the overhead is a bit low for my liking in the galley area (about 5'9"), adding hot/cold pressure water and shower, slap on a radar, and a fair number of smaller projects throughout it's rebuild.
Moving on...
Aimee and I just got back from a two-week roadtrip to California, rounding out the odometer at approx 3,250 miles driven. Christian started off the trip with me from Seattle and we did some camping and sailing on the way down to the Santa Barbara area.... Christian even managed to convince some boat folks on the dock in Sausalito that they needed us as crew for a day sail under the Golden Gate Bridge, and we managed to run around around 8:00pm on our way back in - a great little adventure all in all. Once we got to my Mom's place in Carpenteria, Christian met up with his family for a surfing trip, and Aimee flew in from Seattle and we began our part f the trip together. We did the San Diego Zoo (AWESOME!), Disney Land (also, AWESOME!), the Monterey Bay Aquarium (AWE....not really that mind blowing, but they do have big tanks), visited my Mom in Carpinteria, visited friends in Chula Vista and family in Carlsbad, hostel'ed it up in San Francisco for two days (had two wonderful nights out with my lady), and just yesterday we stopped in Portland to hang out with a friend - and now we're back home, and exhausted. We nearly killed each other a couple times, we both were sick for some portion of the trip, and the food wasn't always the best - but we survived, learned more about each other, and I bought a boat! Whee!
So January brings about a bunch of work: finishing my 4Runner, having Rafiki shipped up to Fisherman's terminal, scheduling my captain's license classes, taking Basic Safety Training (and other STCW crap if I have the time/money), buying my ticket down to Baja for early March, working on the WAV/WND, and perhaps making some time to play with the ol' photography stuff. Plus all the little things I'm forgetting.
So that is all for now: more to come when Rafiki arrives.
Cheers,
Danny
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