Finding the right Boat

Joan and I have been planning to go sailing for a while now. We took a two year cruise of the western and southern carribean with our young children 20 years ago on a 41' monohull.
Now that the children are out of the nest (so to speak), we are free to pursue the dream again. 

We have been re-building a Crowther Bucaneer 33 in our yard for a couple of years and planned to go sailing this summer. We have a house in the Tampa Bay area of Florida and we find the climate for working on boats surprisingly limiting. Too cold in winter, too hot and wet in summer, just right for a couple of months in the spring and fall. As these projects go, it is going well, but it is obvious that another season will pass before it is ready to go sailing.

If we were to be out cruising by hurricane season, we needed a new plan. We decided see if we could find another boat that we liked which wouldn't require nearly as much work, and put the current project on ice. Our little boat is sitting in the yard by the seawall and is problably much safer there than in the water with the lightning stick up teasing the gods.

We have been looking at boats for a few months now and have searched far and wide. We are pretty much sold on trimarans as they just make sense to us. Having sailed the Buc 5 or 6 times, I knew that I really like the stability and speed of trimarans, but a larger one would have more accomodations, and be more comfortable and safer at sea.

We looked at a couple of local project boats, but both were not nearly as complete as our current one. I had seen HotSauce on the internet, but not considered it because it is so far away and is an older boat.  Hot Sauce is a 44' long by 28' wide trimaran designed and built by a Vancouver racing sailboat builder as his idea of a cruiser/racer.

Wanderlust got the better of us and we decided to have an adventure and go give her a look-see. The age of the boat wasn't as scary to us after working on Troika, and we felt like we knew a good bit about the construction of this boat just from that experience. They are both foam composite hulls with plywood deck structures.

We booked flights to Seattle, rented a car and drove up to Vancouver to check her out. As usual, when we travel, the airlines always pretend that we won't get there at all and then want us to be thankful for getting in a couple of hours late. We got to Seattle in the wee hours of the morning, went to a hotel, slept a few hours, rented a car and drove up to Vancouver. It was cold and rainy when we got to the boat and we could not enjoy the first impression much, we were lagged, fagged and ready to be bagged. We looked at her a bit, but it was dark, cold, and rainy, so we decided to hope for better weather next day and try again. We went back to  the hotel and decided we had lost our minds, it was just like winter in  San Francisco and we had moved to a warmer climate to escape that.

Next day was sunny and cool, so we got a good look at HotSauce and went over it in great detail. Try as we did, we failed to come up with any major deficiencies. A couple of soft spots in the ply decks, but mostly we liked what we saw. Some of the systems were old, but all worked well and seemed serviceable.

The owner offered to take us for a sail and we decided, depending on the weather, to take him up on the offer. Saturday dawned cloudy and cool, with occasional sprinkles. We looked at the weather forcasts and decided it was now or never as wind was forcast to be 10-15 knots Sat. and < 5 on Sunday.

Called him up and agreed to meet at 2 for a trial run. As we got to the boat, the sky began to clear from the NW which meant a front was passing, so there should be wind. The owner had invited a sailing buddy along to help handle the boat, so we would be free to evaluate it. After a fairly long motor involving circling back to look for a distressed sailor we heard on the radio, we put a reef in the main, and rolled out the working genoa. We had been concerned about not knowing how the boat would handle windy conditions, but the wind fairy graced us with wind in the high 20s. While seeing 29 knots on the wind insrument, I was making 12 knots to windward close hauled with poorly trimmed sails and the dagger board only partly down. I worked the crew for a bit, but was afraid both were going to fall over board in the rough conditions and both were quite soaked in the 50 degree(f) water splashing over the amas and tramps. They were concerned that we would be very uneasy in that much wind, but having sailed 5 seasons in San Francisco, it was just another nice day in the "slot" for us. It turns out that they seldom get big winds in Vancouver and had not really prepared the boat for the conditions, meaning they had to go rescue the dinghy cover, replace deckplates, re-secure the dinghy on the tramps and other wet work while I sat high and dry in  the cockpit and drove the boat.
We were truly amazed how nicely it sailed in what would have been fairly brutal conditions in our old monohull, not a creak or groan anywhere from the boat and we just loved it.
The hardest part of the day was trying to appear pensive and somber about the boat on the trip back to the dock. We got to the dock and Joan and I discussed it a bit as we put the boat up. I was concerned that she might not have been comfortable on that big old boat, but when I asked for her opinion, she said make him an offer now. So we did.

Now for the hard part, waiting, I hate waiting.... We worked a deal out which includes the owner bringing the boat down to the brokers dock near Seattle, and us having a months mooring to get settled in. We have been running around like complete nuts trying to tie up all the loose ends and get ready to go get our new toy.

Most of the gear we procured for the other boat will work nicely with the new one.We bought a used station wagon and a trailer to haul all our stuff out there. The next few days will be installing a trailer hitch on the car, loading up our RIB dinghy, outboard, solar panels, electronics, refridgerator, kayaks, and anything else that may help us to look like the Beverly Hillbillies on our trip. We plan to visit some relatives and camp in the mountans and forest of the great northwest for about a week and a half and then take possession of the boat on may 25th.

At the moment, we plan to fit the boat out for a month, and then cruise that part of the world for the summer months. Perhaps down to San Francisco delta for the fall and then who knows?