In Our "Spare" Time

 Over the month of October we didn't manage to get out at all and we certainly missed some of the best sailing of the entire season.  Bummer!  We have two excuses for not getting out but looking back, only the first carries any weight.

During our last excursion we spent three days on Broad Creek, the whole time at anchor.  I was disappointed to see how quickly our batteries were depleted but even more so to find that running the engine didn't charge them back up.  Houston we have a problem.

On La Vida Dulce we have two sets (banks) of batteries. The first bank, with one 100 a/hr AGM battery is reserved for the engine.  The second bank, with four 100a/hr AGM batteries, is for "the house", for things like lights and instruments and making coffee.  We have two 85w solar panels, a 400w wind turbine and a 110a alternator on the engine.  Normally all these combined are enough to keep things charged up.  Running the engine for a few hours while cruising to another anchorage should have been enough by itself but this last time it didn't seem to have any effect at all.  There's two obvious places to look first.  The batteries could be at the end of their life and need to be replaced.  They were new in 2007 so they should still have a few years in them and with the cost I'm not gonna rush it.  Let's look elsewhere first.  The second option is the alternator.

The following weekend I removed the alternator, thinking I could take it to a shop and have them check it.  While I was disconnecting the wires I found a general mess with loose studs and rust, most likely caused from the water leak on the heat exchanger (click here).  I took it into a local marina to have it serviced thinking even if it had to be rebuilt we'd be back in action for half the price.  This alternator is not your run-of-the-mill automobile alternator.  Of course not!  It's a special "marine" alternator made by Balmar.  That word "marine" means they can charge twice as much for it.  Cha-ching!  The shop told me the unit was a basket case, looked like it had been hit by lightning.  They could rebuild it but it would cost the same to get a new one and then I'd have a warranty.  It'll take a week to get the new one in.  OK, there goes one weekend of perfect sailing but we should have it in time to get out by next weekend.

I picked up the new alternator on Thursday evening and installed it Friday morning.  As I was putting it in I found that the dude who did the original installation did a Mickey Mouse job and the wiring harness was a rat's nest and the controller was mounted at the bottom of the door to the engine room.  To read the code on the controller I had to lay on my side on the floor.  What are people thinking when they do this kind of work?  Am I alone in questioning this?  Grrrr.  I decided to replace the wiring harness and move the controller to a better position.  Do I need to say "snowball"?  By the time I got it all installed and checked out it was Saturday evening and another beautiful sailing weekend had gone by.  On the upside I am now an expert on our 12 volt charging system.

OK, so that's one excuse for not getting out sailing and that's the good one.  The other excuse was that we started looking at boats for "sale", not "sail".  The word "snowball" doesn't even come close to covering this one.

When we went to the Boat Show this year we made the mistake of going aboard a Hylas 49.  The layout down below is just what we're looking for, would really suit us well.  The new Hylas 49's are ridiculously expensive but we found that the used ones, prior to 2005, are more within our price range.  So we called our friends/boat brokers, Jack and Sharon Malatich, to see if this was something we could really do.  They asked us what it was we liked about the Hylas and we gave them a list that was two pages long.  After going through it they suggested we take a look at some other boats too such as a Taswell, Moody and a few others.  OK.

The following Friday they came down to Herrington to take a look at our boat to get an idea what we could sell her for.  They also had arranged for us to check out some other makes of boats.  One of them was a Taswell 49 that was located right there at our marina.  I wasn't familiar with this boat but when we climbed out of the car we walked up to a boat that Cheri and I had been admiring just last week.  That's a good sign!  When we climbed aboard  (she was up on the hard) we found a boat that was very similar to the Hylas, maybe even better.  She had been sailed around the Atlantic and was set up for it, had all the safety gear, electronics, sails, everything we could want.  In the end we decided against her because she was built in 1996 and was showing her age through wear and tear down below.  A newer Taswell might just fit the bill though.

The next boat they took us to was a Moody, sitting on the hard up in Annapolis Harbor.  We pulled into the marina and parked next to this humongous boat.  Jack grabbed a ladder and put it up against this thing and we realized that we were looking at a Moody 54.  Yikes!  This thing is gigantic!  I checked with Jack and the price on this thing was in the same range as a used Hylas.  OK, let's take a look.  Once on deck it was all over for me.  This boat has recently been set up for sailing the Atlantic and cruising the Caribbean.  They just completed outfitting her with all new rigging and serviced everything.  Everything!  The boat is a 2001 but is basically brand new.  And she is truly beautiful.  We're looking at center cockpit boats because they have more room down below but I've always felt that the aft cockpit boats, such as our Island Packet, are much easier on the eye.  The center cockpit usually looks kinda dumpy to me.  Not this one.  The cabin sits low on the deck with easy access to the cockpit.  The lines on this thing are gorgeous.  Down below the layout provides an owners stateroom aft with a queen size bunk and tons of storage.  All the way forward is a guest cabin with another queen bunk and another guest cabin to starboard with two single bunks, over/under.  This second guest cabin is where we would set up an office for Cheri.  The salon has a nice table with "U" shaped settee to starboard and another settee to port.  The feeling here is comfortable, not too big (on the Island Packet 485 the salon is similar but it feels like a ballroom, too big).  The port side galley is "U" shaped with lotsa counter space done in Corian.  The fridge is front loading with a top loading freezer.  The nav station is starboard just aft of the salon.  Going aft from the nav station is a passageway to the rear stateroom.  In this passageway is a sea berth and storage to starboard and the engine room is to port.  The engine is a 110hp Yanmar diesel.  There's also a 11.5kw diesel generator in there.  Sweet.

 There are a few drawbacks to this boat.  I'd hafta install a diesel heater, maybe two.  I feel like I just finished doing that.  With the size of the engine room it wouldn't be as difficult as on the Island Packet though so I could get that done fairly quickly.  The other drawback is that the boat is set up for Euro power, 220v/50hz.  We'd need a converter to be able to hook up to shore power here in the States.  On the upside of that, almost the entire rest of the world is set up for 220v/50hz and pretty soon we plan to visit the rest of the world.  Perfect!

So, we decided this is the perfect boat for us, exactly what we need.  Cheri would have plenty of space for her sewing/quilting and office work.  The galley would get her back into cooking again.  Woohooo!  The sea berth by the engine room would make a great workbench and give me the space I need for projects around the boat.  I'd probably even have room for my hobbies; building cars and Japanese gardens.  OK, well maybe not.  We would have enough room to have guests stay aboard without having to rearrange the whole boat.  Plus, this boat has everything we'd need to do our circumnavigation, to go anywhere.  We wouldn't have to add anything (other than the heater).  I'm sold.  The perfect boat is out there and it's a center cockpit of all things.  Whodathunkit?

We both got really wound up about this and didn't even notice that another weekend of great sailing had passed us by.  We need to put on the brakes and give this some serious thought.  Money is the major issue here.  Retirement is just around the corner, less than three years away now.  We have to make intelligent decisions.  Is this really a good time to pawn Cheri's wedding ring?  We probably need to look into creative financing.  I'm thinking ski masks and automatic weapons.