Pensacola FL Sailing Blog - sailingnightwatch

She sails well if not fast. The boat motors the same way. She is very comfortable in a seaway, unless the seas are on your quarter. Then as most full keel boats, she likes to roll. Because of her flush deck she has a very open and roomy interior. There is a ridiculous amount of storage space in drawers, cabinets and under everything. Then there is the 15’ of closet space. More experienced cruisers say there is never enough storage space.Motoring in tight spaces you have to play with the strong movement to starboard in reverse. At slow speed with the wheel hard over to port, using the shifter and no throttle, you can turn her in her own length. Winage on the bow can be a problem and has to be figured in any slow maneuver. She will tack through 90 degrees without a problem. You can pinch her below 40 degrees, but you will start to slip a lot. She is heavy and carries a lot of momentum. This helps in maneuvering. She likes the wind. Below 2 knots even the big barn door rudder has a hard time overcoming the sail area. 10 knots is a good sail for sea sick landlubbers. 15 knots is good for a group sail. You might get 10 degrees of heal. 18 knots she is in her grove. 10-12 degrees of heal and she is at hull speed.

She only has a 35 foot waterline and with the clipper bow and the high wine glass stern, you do not gain a lot of waterline when healing. 20-25 knots she is getting overpowered. 20+ degrees of heal. My wife gets upset if we heal her home over 28 degrees. Yes we have healed over her comfort level. It does not improve boat speed, and is not worth the verbal abuse I would have to endure to maintain that degree of heal. Taking in on the genny reduces heal, and also speed. Good for the non-sailing friends. Reducing the main is better for maintaining speed. I have old sails and all sails are roller reefed. None of them have good shape and reefing really hinders their poor performance. The main and mizzen are roller reefed externally. This means there is significant sag in the leading edge of your sail. They used to make pieces that you could attach to your mast that overlapped the roller furling. I wonder if they work as advertised. I dream of in boom furling for both main and mizzen.

46 foot Durbeck ketch built 1978 LOD 46’9” LWL 35’8” BEAM 13’8”DRAFT 5’2” DISP 38,000# SA 1307 SQ FT BALLAST 12000# She was the company’s boat show boat for 1979. Alright, I exceeded the length by 1 foot, but I added a mast to split the rig and make it more manageable. We did get the center cockpit, island bed, separate shower and separate eating area. I had mentioned closets, she also has a stand up refrig, a pantry that would put many condos to shame and a utility room the same size as the pantry, a walk in engine room that give you access to the top and right side of the engine, all auxiliary equipment, and the back of the electrical panel and wiring and most plumbing. I work from my home, and with a 5’ x 22” chart table with more storage that most white collar workers have, I am happy. At this point she is a mess!

There once was an old knowledgably surveyor. Just what I needed. I asked him to go over the boat with a fine tooth comb. He did. 70 pages worth. He found and listed every little thing. Then he sent it to my insurance company, who he was fighting in court on another issue. They went nuts, on many levels. I went nuts on many levels. The 70 pages was what I asked for and was an excellent punch list for the boat, not for an insurance company. I am not talking about hiding things from the insurance company, but the list included loose screws, dirt under the births, broken head bowls, missing stove, cabinets full of 5 year old food and many other obvious items. This survey was to help me make a decision on buying the boat and the final price.The fact that the first surveyor did not reveal he was involved with a court case opposing the insurance company I was going to use did bother me. Using him, put me in a bad light with the insurance company. They wanted all 70 pages fixed before moving the boat. They finally did allow the boat to be moved to our home port. We did about 95% of the items, the other items were things, like the generator, that were removed from the boat or upgrades that replaced listed items.I did get a survey for the insurance company using a surveyor they recommended. He was good, knew the other surveyor, in fact the 3 of us talked about the best ways to tackle some of the items listed. In the end every body turned out happy.

A few weeks later we went to Stewart, FL to look at a boat that was in the yard. It had been a live aboard in the island. The outside of the gunnels had a frame pattern that you could expect a cannon to come jutting out at anytime. Each of these squares was painted a different pastel color like you find the housed painted in Bermuda. The broker said they would cover repainting the squares to the color of the hull. I did not realize my looks were such a tell.I spent a few minutes looking at the utilities on the boat and went into the saloon and set on the settee by a large table that was covered with a quilt. The wife was still in the galley when she said she was leaving before she got infected. I lifted up the edge of the quilt to look at the table and to my dismay was a mahogany table without a scratch on it. It was gorgeous. I would have bought the table.On the way home after a long period of silence my wife said get the broker on the phone right now and up our offer $10k. I did it. Right now. A few weeks later the broker called, he had been calling regularly and I told him that since they did not have the common courtesy to respond, I was with drawing my offer. Not what he wanted to here. 2 days later he call and said he was having them fax the contract signed sealed and all that and I could either throw it in the trash or he would forward the hard copy when he got it.In retrospect, we figured he thought that if he was ever going to get a commission out of that boat, we were his best and only bet. He earned it.

We found out that a corporation owned the boat when we told the broker we would make an offer. He mentioned that things might not go as fast as it would if we were dealing with an individual. Little did I know the gravity of those words. Think corporate attorneys. Non-sailing corporate attorneys. Non-sailing corporate attorneys that worked for a CEO who was on his deathbed. Corporate attorneys who could care less about this deal.After 4 weeks I told the broker that no decision was a decision and thanked him for his time. A couple weeks later, the broker calls to see if I would be still interested if he could put something together. I told him I had not bought a boat yet. In a few days he call and said we were going to get a counter offer. They did, they came down $1k. I told the broker that we would counter by going up $1k. We are still over $30k apart. We never received any paper work on this first go around. Did it really happen, or was the broker dreaming and wanted to keep me on the hook. A few weeks later the broker calls and says they would drop $10k. No paper, I did nothing.

A corporation that had virtually abandoned it 5 years earlier owned the boat. It had been broke into and everything of any value except 2 bilge pumps was gone. To get the boat ready to sell, the owner “rebuilt the engine.” That is a can of spray paint in these parts. After learning the history of the boat, they did rebuild the engine because it had turned to a lump of rust, inside and out. They also removed the carpeting and covered the plywood deck with a light colored contact paper. Brightened up the inside. They had also put a dehumidifier in the boat. The boat did not smell. That was a first and made a very favorable impression on the wife.After about an hour of inspecting the boat, we went up into the cockpit and told the broker we were making a low-ball offer dependent on the survey. We told him we wanted the offer accepted by the owner before the survey and adjustments would be mad pending the outcome of the survey. And so this phase started.

The boat was in Pass Christian, MS. When I called, the broker who answered the phone would not tell me anything about the boat. Said I need to speak to the owner of the brokerage. The owner asked all the right questions to determine if I was real or not. Then he told me I would be wasting a 3-hour car ride. That was it. No bait and switch, just, “thanks for calling.” If this was a salesman’s close, he had me.After driving there, we walked out on this old wooden pier, right past the boat. Knowing how big it was, we figured out which one it was. My wife looked at it and said it is going to be like a cave inside and was not even willing to climb on board. After one of those 10-second spats about the fact that we both took off work and drove 3 hours, she decided she would at least go on board.On boardWe had been doing this long enough that we had a plan of attack. We each had clipboards, paper, pens, rulers and one video camera and one 35mm. The broker takes us below and start doing his best impression of showing us a new Oyster. We follow him inside and split, I head for as far forward as I can get and my wife heads for the galley. With in 30 seconds the broker say “I guess you all know what your looking at” and left for the cockpit.