The Work Begins

Well, it has been two weeks now since I brought Cassandra home. The topsides were scrubbed down to remove the black mildew that covered the hull. Pinesol and water worked pretty well, and also did an amazing job of revitalizing the teak. I think everything might still need to be washed down with some chlorine to get the last of the grunge off. I removed the old seacock and thru-hul assembly with minor difficulty. The plywood backing plate was mush and so it needs to be replaced.
Very little of the deck hardware had a proper backing plate and so every fastener has leaked and may have started core-rot. I have oiled the teak to preserve it for a little while and will be installing a new seacock as soon as I have the money to buy it. I'm also waiting on the money for epoxy to begin re-bedding deck hardware and encapsulate the plywood backing plates I need to make.
If a boat-dollar is about $500 US, I think it will take 1 or 2 boat dollars to get Cassandra on the water, and that's without removing the old saildrive. It will cost even more to get everything to the condition where I would like it to be, but much of that can wait until I have the money. Progress will be slow until I get some more spending power.In that vein, I am selling my RC airplane on Craigslist to help generate some funds. I would post new pictures, but very little has changed since the boat was cleaned.
One last thought before I forget, I used Scotch's delicate surfaces masking tape to cover the various holes in Cassandra that leaked when it rained. So far it has held up quite well and has a 60 day clean removal guarantee; even when exposed to UV.
Anyways, next summer will be very different and quite fun and I'm taking one step closer to it every day I can work on Cassandra.

The Big Day

Rejoice everyone for today has been a day of much progress! Today was the day that

Cassandra (technically still either Ken-Do or Coral Vette until I hold a denaming ceremony) came home.
The day began at 05:30. After a quick breakfast and picking up my cohort for the epicness that was today we were off, Dad leading the way in his Bonneville, Bonnie, and my friend Brian and I followed with the pickup, Clyde, towing my newly modified trailer.
The ride down was pleasant and uneventful. I plugged Clyde's radio back in so we could have tuneage for the trip. We arrived the house where Cassandra was being stored 15 minutes before the move was supposed to happen, but the truck was already there and working to maneuver itself into position. There is very little as impressive as watching two men effortlessly pluck a 4000lb boat from the field where it has been sitting for almost a year. The only thing more impressive was that they were able to do so with less than 2 feet of clearance on one side and not hit anything. You really have to have been there to get the full effect of it.
So, once the boat was out of the field and on it's way we took Bonnie and Clyde up to the Village Shores Marina in Hammondsport. Now, say what you want about Hammondsport, but I cannot over-emphasize how friendly and generous the people at Village shores were.
The two gentlemen who run the place were quite friendly, and patient as we adjusted the trailer for the boat. Although it took a few attempts to get everything where it needed to be, we soon had Cassandra situated. However, the hitch on the truck was too low to the ground once the boat was on the trailer. So, the marina owner called around until he found a suitable hitch extension, which he loaned to us to get the trailer home. He also was kind enough to loan a strap to hold the boat onto the trailer, since the one I brought was not long enough to reach.
I have to go back down to the marina later this week to dismantle the cradle for transport and to return the hitch and strap to the marina.
Leaving the marina was probably the most interesting part of the whole trip. You see, the marina is located at the bottom of a rather steep driveway that is only a couple feet wider than my trailer is. To get out I had to back the trailer part way down the launching ramp so I had enough room to turn around. Then I had to mucle my way back up the driveway onto the main road. I was a little nervous at times, but Clyde managed it in low gear. For the drive back I stayed under 50 mph the whole way and downshifted while I was stopping. Clyde handled it like a champ.
Once the boat was backed into the driveway Brian and I began pumping out the bilge to remove the rainwater from the big thunderstorms that had rolled through a few days prior. We managed to beat another wave of rain that chased us all the way back to B'ville. Then it was time to start scrubbing the muck of ages off Cassandra's once white hull and deck. That work will most likely continue for a day or two and involve much bleach and water. Then the real work will begin.

New pictures will be on Flickr in the next day or so. I forgot to bring my camera along for the road trip, but Dad took some photos with his phone, and snapped a couple shots of us cleaning the deck, so look for those soon.

Huzzah, It's a boat!!!

A day at the Beach

Well, avid readers, my trailer is still at the shop. The parts were fabricated, but not yet back from the galvanizers in Utica yet. So the move get's postponed again. I do not yet have an idea of when I will actually get this boat home. I'm back to wondering if I should just motor it up the canal and pull it out on a trailer when I get it home. But that is not the point of today's post. Oh no, today's post is much more exciting and interesting.
This past Friday (the 19th) my siblings and I, and one friend, all took a day trip up to Lake Ontario. We started off they day with an 0900 departure. The weather was cool, but scheduled to warm up, and a light to moderate drizzle of rain was falling intermittently. Our first stop of the day was a trip to Oswego Harbor to view the Nina and the Pinta replica ships that were docked there for the latter part of the week.
The Nina and Pinta are accurate reproductions of two of the ships Columbus took on his voyage to the New World. The ships themselves were OK. Not much to see. I'm still upset we weren't allowed below; that's where all the cool stuff is anyways. Still they were just wooden planked ships, two decks (three if your count the raised quarterdeck)pretty open and surprisingly small. I find it very hard to believe that someone thought it smart to go to sea in such vessels. Then again, I am contemplating sailing Cassandra to God only knows where and she's a third the size of these ships. Needless to say, my sister and her friend were less than thrilled about the whole thing.
Our second stop, where we planned to spend the rest of the day, was Southwick Beach State Park. Located on the sandy Eastern shore of Lake Ontario Southwick Beach is usually a busy place for families and individuals to enjoy the lake. Such was not the case when we arrived. The wind was blowing somewhere around 6 knots and the water looked a little ominous. The beach was still wet from the rain storms we'd had that morning and the wasn't another vehicle or person to be seen. It was a little spooky walking down a deserted beach. It felt like, well, like we were doing something wrong just being there. I managed to get over that feeling though, and by the end of the day there were about four other cars in the parking lot.
Now, it has been a dream of my to get my PD Racer Adra out onto some real water. I was sort of expecting to do Oneida lake first, but the chance presented itself so I threw Adra into the truck and took her along for the day. Pulling a 110 pound boat across a sandy beach by myself was tiring, to say the least. I managed to sail around for 15 minutes or so before my GPS died, but I didn't feel like trying to fight back out across the sand bar and surf that characterizes the east coast of Lake Ontario, so I kept going. The wind was from the Northwest so I tacked my way up the shoreline to a spot where we rented a summer cottage when I was younger. I would have gone longer, but some darker clouds were skirting the shore in the east and I decided it was better to play things safe and head in until they either did something, or cleared up. I got back just in time to help cook lunch, hot dogs. After lunch the weather had cleared significantly and after popping some new AA's into my GPS I headed back out. I logged over 5 miles in three hours that day and I don't think I could have been happier, unless maybe I could have just kept going instead of turning around and heading back to the beach at the end of the day.
Adra took the larger waves pretty well. The only sign of any fatigue was at the mast step where some excessive wear was becoming a problem. I'll add a mast wedge at the partner to see what that does for it.
All in all, it was a good day. I was getting a bit tired by the end and had a hard time keeping my eyes open, partly because of the sun and partly because I had gotten up at 0800 that morning. Dragging the boat back up the beach was even worse since the sand had dried out since that morning. The "up" part of the equation didn't help much either. I slept well that night and am still a little sore from dragging the boat through the sand. Now if I can just get Cassandra home I can work on that "and just keep going" part. :D

Looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Pictures and commentary on Flickr.

It has been quite some time since October 31 when I won my O'day 25 on eBay. Today I finally saw it in person.
After a short series of postponed meetings I was finally able to contact the boat's owner and arrange a meeting for noon today. My brother and I left the house at 9 in our van, burdened with a tarp, rope, buckets and a variety of other tools I thought would be needed to close the boat up properly for the remainder of the winter. We arrived at the boat's location about half an hour too soon, but once we knew how to find the place we decided to do a little exploring. So we drove around the roads in the area for a little while, and then returned to the boat at noon. Kenny, the fellow I was meeting, showed up about the same time we did, and got right to business showing me around the boat. The first thing I noticed when walking up to the boat were the areas the stanchions mounted. The lifeline stanchions had been removed, but the holes had some fiberglass epoxied on over the top, so no water was getting in. Still, it's something I'll have to fix. The next thing I noticed was that the hatch boards weren't boards! There were two pieces of smoked plexi-glass to fit in the hatchway instead. I suppose that would let some light in, but to be watertight they'll need modification or replacement. Ken showed me a couple other issues that needed to be addressed. The sink seacock was frozen open, the centerboard pin needs replacing, and the fitting should all be re-bedded. The whole boat needs a good cleaning, but the fittings and deck hardware all look to be in good shape. The bottom should be scraped clean and repainted, and there are a few sections of the topsides that need glass work. Real simple stuff like filling old holes from gauges and fairing in some previous repair work.
All in all I think I got myself a pretty good deal on a boat. I don't know if I would risk buying sight unseen again though.
The trailer is still a sticking point, but I now know how the boat got where it is (on top of a hill, 25 miles from the nearest lake). Apparently a marina in Hammondsport has a hydraulic boat hauling trailer that they used. I'll have to call them and get an estimate. Right now we're thinking about putting the boat in Seneca Lake in the spring and sailing it up the Erie Canal to somewhere a little more accessible for repairs to be done. If I have to I could probably keep the boat in the water somewhere until I can find a trailer. Hopefully that won't be a problem though.
Here's to adventure! I have a boat.

This is it!

Or rather, this is the beginning of it.
I think the good lord was smiling on me. I won the O'Day 25 with the $800 opening bid. No one else bid; it went off without a hitch.
Upon winning the auction, however, I received two suspicous emails. Long story short, they were scams. I'll cover the details in another post.
The emails were completely unconnected to the seller, and I am very happy with the way he handles his business.
This boat is almost exactly what I was looking for the whole time, even if I didn't know it. It's small, but fully furnished, can be trailered, was cheap but still in decent condition, and best of all, can be kept where it is until spring at no extra cost.
Now I just need to find a trailer and a way to load the boat onto it. After that... who knows? I just hope I'm as happy with this purchase when I see it as I am now.

I have a boat!

Could this be it?

Well, I'm bidding on an O'Day 25 on EBay right now... It's not the most ideal boat, but it has most of the features I originally wanted, and the swing keel makes it easily trailer-able, so I'm more likely to use it than a full keel boat I probably couldn't afford to keep in the water anyways. So this might not be a cruising boat, or even the right boat, but I'm becoming less and less sure that there's such a thing as "the right boat". I just hope I can buy it for cheap enough that I can get it home, and for the very limited amount of money I have to work with. Ironically, I beleive the boat in my home neighborhood was an O'Day 25 now that I think about it.
I guess that's all the news for now.

A decision at last

Well, I've been doing a lot of research on boats lately, and I compiled a list of features I want. From there I narrowed the search down to two boats I liked. The Pearson 26, and the Grampian 26. Looking further in to these models I tried to compare them. The two boats seem to be pretty similar. I like the storage available in the P26 with some modifications, and it's less ungainly appearance, but there's one problem. I want whatever boat I buy to be hoisted onto a trailer and taken home at the end of the season. The P26 is over the legal width limit for NYS and the G26 is, supposedly, not. If I found either one for sale cheap I would probably buy it, but I'm leaning for the mobility of the Grampian. I don't know... I'd like to verify the measurements in person to double check. Anyways, those are basically the two boats I'm considering. We'll see what comes of it all.

Calling in the experts

Well, after what seemed like a long week back at U.A., I'm back at home doing boating things. Today is probably my last chance to get on the water, so I'm taking a friend out on Onondaga Lake in Adra. It looks a little calm today, but hopefully it will be nice on the lake. So, the guy my dad called last time I was home is pretty excited about me getting more into sailing. Yesterday he came over with an armload of books for me to read and then we sat down and talked sailing. I don't remember for sure, but I believe we talked for over two hours. I learned quite a bit I didn't know and have slightly revised my list of potential boats. Now I'm looking for something I could tow with the truck at the beginning and end of the season. That way I wouldn't have to pay winter storage fees. It might still have to be craned on and off the trailer; something I may or may not be able to afford. Still, I now have a slightly longer list of places to look, and I have someone who knows what they're talking about if I have questions. Things are coming along slowly but surely.

Comic

I was feeling reflective and mildly creative, so I made this comic.

Links

Liveaboard Simulator Amusing and true.
Life for Sail Blog of Impulse, the artists from Kentucky who sold everything and moved onto a Hunter 27.
Nick Jaffe's Site This is the guy who inspired me. He's doing a trip from England to Australia in a Contessa 26.
Cruising the Great Lakes and Bahamas This site chronicles the adventures of another guy who wanted to circumnavigate the Great Lakes. Unfortunately defunct now, but you can read a good bit of it with the Wayback Machine.

Photos

For more pictures see my flickr account.
Capt. Straw on Flickr.

Contacts

E-mail:

tench745@hotmail.com

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/brian.mcburney.54
(I'll upload photos here before my flickr account usually.)

Twitter: 

          seastepping

Skype:

brian.straw1
(I am not often on, but if I know you want to talk I'll make an effort to be on.)