2006 Let's Go Cruising - but we need a boat!

Part 2 – Finding the Boat – Summer 2006

Internet Access and Research – Just Google It!

I am amazed at all the Internet has to offer. The World Wide Web….. it really is connecting together all sorts of information. I think it was during our trip on the Erie that I first heard about the Great Circle Loop (take your pick there). After clicking around a bit I came across the website for Americas Great Loop Cruising Association and read a bit about the experience of Ron and Eva Stob who had written a book on their experience doing the loop. I joined the association and bought their book. And after reading a couple of newsletters, we decided to pick up the archived newsletters to help plan our voyage. It’s a lot of fun reading about the exploits of others who choose to do the Loop in a variety of different ways. The learning and planning process had begun.

When I was a kid growing up in Virginia I was inquisitive. A pretty standard response from my mother was to send me to the Encyclopedia Britannica set we had in the house so I could read about various topics. That resource has now been primarily replaced by the Internet and the time spent going upstairs to retrieve a volume of the encyclopedia seems long compared to a quick click on Google. What an amazing tool! I was now headed up two creeks at the same time, one leading to sources of knowledge on the care and feeding of boats, the other on cruising.

I think about this time that we knew we wanted to get a boat and try out this lifestyle. Our quest for a boat started with thinking about older ChrisCraft boats so I picked up a couple of books about them. About this same time, I encountered the website for David Pascoe, a longtime marine surveyor from Florida who seemed to have a variety of opinions on these mid-sized power boats. I read a number of articles on his website and was impressed enough to buy his book on surveying mid sized powerboats, even though I thought it to be a little expensive. I’m starting to learn that the word marine can be synonymous with money and learned the definition of a Boat/Boat Unit. Having owned a boat on Lake Michigan previously, I already knew it was a hole in the water where I put money!

David Pascoe’s book was fundamental to our knowledge of fiberglass powerboats and their complex systems. I read it cover-to-cover gaining enough knowledge to be dangerous. We started going to boat shows to look at both new and used boats. Our first show was the in-water show at Michigan City near Chicago. Pascoe’s bias helped us to bypass the “price boats” and look more at those boats he had demonstrated to be of higher quality. I believe that anyone who is going to buy a larger boat should read this book of Mr. Pascoe. We began to be boat detectives, looking for the telltale signs of problems on both new and used boats. Inspecting the hull to deck fastening system. Looking for signs of leaking and staining. Odors. Appearance of the engines. Flashlights in hand, peeking into all the corners of the hull, we began asking much more pertinant questions. Is the hull cored below the waterline? How is it constructed and using what materials? What fiberglass resins and hull-setup process is used? How much salt water use has it seen? Can I see the maintenance logs? What has been replaced and when? Why are you changing out the air conditioning units on this boat after just two years? Yes, we were dangerous.

I read the “Honey, Let’s get a boat” after the Pascoe book so it was interesting to see what can happen when you buy a boat with little previous experience. We now had our sights set on what we believed to be higher quality boats. The early list included Hatteras, Viking, Tiara, and Bertram. After some more time and a visit to the Newport Boat show, it grew to include Krogan and DeFevers. We also loved the Grand Banks, but the prices…… I also found a couple of old books on cruising including one from the 60’s on cruising Georgian Bay, a fun read.

We continued to click, read and learn both about boats and boating. On vacation, we read books on both. A number of different reference books on boats were purchased and read at. I’ve read Pascoe cover-to-cover now twice and referred to it often. I bought Sid Stapleton’s book on Powerboating over a year ago and am now finishing my second reading. Sid had a Grand Banks 49 which he commissioned new before cruising it all around the coasts of the US including Alaska. Again providing opinions on powerboats and their equipment, while leading toward the substance and quality needed for the marine environment.

By this time, you can see I’ve got a bibliography of books, magazines and website favorites to support my new habit. We’ve got to know the Krogen sales staff in Stuart, Florida and are planning on going to the Miami Boat Show in the winter. We spend hours reviewing the boats available on Yacht World, looking at a myriad of pictures and specifications. I’m making Excel spread sheets to keep track of the different boats and their specifications. We’re dealing with all those options and opinions…..

Old or new?, Fiberglass hull or other materials?, Gas or diesel?, Single or twin?, Bow thruster?, How big a generator?, Displacement or semi?, Freshwater or saltwater?, Aft cabin or mid cabin?, How many cabins?....how many guests to we want or expect?, What’s too many or too few hours on the engines?, Too much time in storage?, Galley up or galley down, Propane or electric stove, Dual helm?, Old electronics?, Anchor types? Windlass style? ….the list goes on and on. And opinions are like xxxxxxx, everyone has one! These can be amazingly complex boats to the novice, of which I was. Looking at a Hatteras electrical panel, or climbing down into the hold of a twin diesel engine room really intimidated me even though I think myself to be relatively intelligent when it comes to similar types of electrical or mechanical challenges.

While this search for a boat continued, we began to educate ourselves on cruising. We purchased some magazines and subsequently a subscription to Passagemaker. We reviewed the back issues for pertinent topics and ordered a stack of those. We are still going through them, taking a few different issues with us when we take a trip. We eagerly await the next issue in the mail. We can find many websites for cruisers, both part time and full time. I’ve booked a whole bunch of websites I have yet to explore.

I signed up for the ABC safety course sponsored by the US Coast Guard and we began to study their coursework on line. We signed up for a winter Coastal Navigation Course with the Coast Guard Auxiliary in Grand Haven and began attending their weekly meetings to learn about getting safely to where we wanted to go. Charts, not maps don’t you know! We read, studied and did our review problems during the week, looking forward to the next meeting. We learned about all sorts of boating things…..Navigation tools, Dead Reckoning, Piloting. Bearings, reciprocals, relative bearings, fixes, lines of position, relative position, running fixes, depth, distance. ATONS. Radio usage, mayday, securite. Great Circles! Radar, Loran, GPS, DGPS. Tides, current, set and drift. Cupola’s even! There is sure a lot to learn in this boating world.

Although our spring vacation cut into the end of the course and we missed the session on Radar and the final exam, we learned a lot and would be able to use this schooling later. I was able to take the ABC safety test and received my certification. We had a better appreciation of how to read charts and pilot our boat through waters we had never seen before. The demystification was in process.

Life has a tendency to throw you some curve balls and we’ve seen a few. Not nearly as bad as some folks, but they come. A few years ago I started planning my dream trip. I have not seen much of the west coast and became interested in the old park lodges at the national parks built early in the last century. We upgraded our pickup camper by adding a generator and began to plan an extended trip to the western states. At first I thought I’d just shove off without any plans but as I read about the national park lodges, I realized that we would need reservations to stay at those that interested us.

I again purchased a couple of books on the national parks and began the process of researching these beautiful old lodges like Old Faithful at Yellowstone. The plan was to book a night in each lodge and otherwise spend our days in the camper. (Again, like planning to drop in at a marina for the night but otherwise be on the hook. There really are a lot of parallels between these two lifestyles.) I laid our whole trip out on an excel spreadsheet….through the Dakotas, up to Glacier park and even into Canada, back through Idaho into Washington, staying at the Inn used for the Shining movie with Jack Nicholas, down to Crater Lake, doing the redwoods in California, then Arizona and New Mexico as the weather cooled. It was going to be about 3 months and we had scheduled a leave-of-absence at work.

Well, we never took that trip and it’s still on the drawing board. You see, my mother was over from Spain visiting 3 of her sons in North America when at her last stop in southern British Columbia she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She had yellow in her eyes and was becoming jaundiced. She flew back to Michigan with my brother, my other brother drove down from Ontario to say goodbye and we were on a jet to Spain within 2 weeks of her diagnosis. Since we had already scheduled a leave from work, it was a relatively easy to get away and let her die in her own bed, which is what she did two weeks later.

So, watching someone go from apparent good health to death in 4 weeks is another one of those life perspectives. I do know I could be dead tomorrow! My father had died at Christmas the previous year at 87, and now my mother was dead at 82. They both had good and adventurous lives so there are few regrets. My dad was less of a surprise than my mother who we thought could live to be 100. And yes, that helps us build incentives to break away from work rut routine and go cruising. And I still do want to make my way across the continent and soak up the national park scene. Hopefully we will still take on that trip while we can enjoy it.

We had owned a cottage on Lake Michigan for 15 years, just south of the Little Point Sable Lighthouse. Last spring we contemplated selling the place for a variety of reasons including diminishing usage and increasing costs. We had a lot to do to finish up the place but listed it anyway. To our great surprise the first person that looked at it gave us a full price offer and before we knew it we were having a last traditional Paella party with friends to celebrate the good times and shed a few tears about selling a great place. We even spread our dog’s ashes on the beach and know she would have it no other way. Ginger, our yellow Lab who had just died after 15 years, had helped select the place and spent many hours on the beach and in the waves.

This was a cleansing that can come with planning to cruise. It seems a somewhat common but different experience for boaters. We kept the best of what we had and wanted. The stuff to keep was either sold with the cottage, given away or stored in our condominium basement. Everything else was put in a pole barn, laid out in rows of boxes and we had an auction. It’s really amazing to have a pole barn full of extra possessions that are picked up over the years. It was there one day and gone the next. I had less than a pick up full of trash to get rid of and a half hour sweeping job before I closed the door and walked away. The way I looked at it, I was just been paid to have people cart off those things (trash) I didn’t need or want. (And I never have looked at the auction details….I didn’t want to know how many items went for $1 or how little we received for others) It was good.

Now, maybe I was a bit corrupted by having some money in the bank but the next major step was to change our roles at work. After 18 years of starting and running a service business, both Vaughn and I decided to appoint our key employees as President and Vice President and to become Board Members with an advisory role. This decision to step out of the day-to-day operations was done to preserve both our physical and mental health. We do hope the business will survive without us but felt it necessary to take control of our lives and do something different. Cruising was now one step closer to the horizon.

We’d still need a boat at some point and this past summer was spent looking a boat ad’s and making a few trips to look at boats. We initially had our sights set on a Hatteras LRC. We looked at one in Annapolis that had been stretched to 52’ and cruised extensively by an interesting couple. We looked at one in Nashville which was under cover and being used as a liveaboard by a southern gentleman. We did put in an offer on that one and could have been part of the Hatteras LRC club! And we looked at one in St Louis which was owned by a couple who did not use the boat much at all since bringing it north a couple of years earlier. This boat was not covered, had not been used enough, and it showed. She was a neglected lady causing me to have second thoughts about these older boats.

This quest to find a boat has been fun. We made it fun. We would use last minute travel to minimize costs and plan on side excursions. We flew into Washington DC to see the Annapolis boat, had dinner at a historic pub in downtown Annapolis and spent a couple of nice days in the DC area. We love all that DC has to offer, hitting the museums and strolling along the Mall. We really look forward to visiting the area by boat and deferred our visit to Mount Vernon until we can tie up at their docks with our boat.

For both the other boats, I drove the camper to Cincinnati for work since we had an office there and I needed to be down there for the week. For the Nashville boat, Vaughn flew into Nashville on the Friday morning while I drove down and we spent a couple of hours looking at the boat that afternoon. We finished the trip by going to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky where getting claustrophobic Vaughn underground was major feat. She had terror in her eyes but made it down and out without incident. St Louis was similar in that she flew into Cincinnati airport a different Friday morning and drove cross country to St Louis to see the boat Saturday morning. Both trips involved using my book on free campgrounds so being on the land camping hook kept our costs down. After walking away from the St Louis boat, we headed north to stay along the Mississippi at a Corps of Engineers Campground for $5 and spent the next morning at the Mississippi River Visitors Center at the lock at Rock Island Armory….the equipment on display and the national cemetery there are both worth the visit.

Now if you’re not familiar with Site 59.com you need to check it out. It would be a great way for cruisers to take a quick trip home or wherever to take care of business or personal items. You use empty airline seats and hotel rooms or cars. Prices are typically excellent and cheaper than anything else available at the last minute. You can leave on Thurs, Fri or Sat, returning Sun, Mon or Tues. Sometimes it includes Wed options as well. Just plug in your departure city and hit search….it will bring up all the possibilities. We’ve used it extensively for both personal and business purposes, saving a ton of money and even enjoying luxury accommodations! I’ve got to believe that this site would be of great interest to many cruisers and as good as having an Enterprise Rental Car office nearby when you need it.

Now I must tell you that throughout this process of looking for boats, we had clicked on the Yachtworld Site enough to give us carpal tunnel syndrome. Many times we had brought up a GB boat named Wings in Holland, Michigan which is within an hour of where we live. I know we both had considered it at one time or another but had never made the call. Sometime in August we sent an email to the broker asking about the boat and when it could be seen. His comment was “that boat needs a new owner”. We traded correspondence on the boat and learned that it was primarily a freshwater boat. It had originally been trucked across the country when purchased by the first owner and named “Jade”. The second owner wanted to do the loop and was from the Indianapolis area. They also kept the boat in Holland.

Wings was now in storage. She had been there for over a year as evidenced by her coolant and oil change dates from last August. To us she was in great shape. I think the prior care of the owners, the freshwater use and the indoor heated storage she had come accustomed to have helper her to hide her age. After looking at many saltwater boats and really looking hard at the three Hatteras LRC’s, we were surprised to find a 15 year old boat in such nice condition. The paint on the Cat engines hardly showed wear compared to many we’d now seen where there was white overspray everywhere, trying to hide the corrosion. We carefully considered all the things we’d learned from Pascoe, Passagemaker and persistence. She looked great to us.

Wings was a GB 46 Classic model with the galley down that we’d liked at the boat shows we’d attended in Newport and Miami. Grunert refrigeration system for refrigerators and freezer. Nice aft cabin with a queen bed that we’re used to. She had the big CAT 4208 375 hp engines which I didn’t know much about at that time except that they’d burn a lot of fuel! The mixed message there is that we liked the idea of speed if we needed it but were not sure we’d like the credit card charges when diesel was over $3/gallon.

She met a lot of our other objectives and desires…..a quality boat in good used condition, solid reputation (and hull), diesel, twins, freshwater, available to purchase in the fall, near the price window we had budgeted, reasonably equipped. I think the only other wish items were stabilizers and some newer electronics but you can’t have everything. And being close to home was a bonus after we had been considering the costs to get other boats back to our home area of Spring Lake, Michigan.

So we put in our offer and headed down to Florida to the Southwest Florida Yachts Powerboat School in Fort Myers, Florida …..during hurricane season. (Yes, we still need to work on prudence) We were serious now and elected to charter their twin 42 GB for all three of their powerboat sessions. It cost a pretty penny but we believed it was the right thing to do for a number of reasons. It worked out perfectly for us now that we were pretty sure we were going to become a proud member of the Grand Banks Owners club.

This powerboat school was just what the doctor ordered. We were both quite intimidated with such a large and complex boat as well as the many daily routines and requirements we would need to know to cruise her safely and effectively. The school can not make up for experience but it definitely can add substantially to your own book of knowledge in a relatively short period of time.

From knots to knots. From safety to stern. From dead reckoning to dead, if you’re not careful. From belts, to vibrations, to fluids, to leaks, to through-hulls. From secure anchorage to anchor dragging in 10 minutes. From a day’s cruise to a dead generator in a hot engine room…..then systems checking and jimmy-rigging to get operational. From the Florida coast to the Florida Keys in the open water of the Gulf of Mexico….both ways. From anchorage among million dollar homes in Naples to anchorage among the many birds, fish and crabs of the wild Everglades Park. What an experience! Good food and wine. From wonderful sunsets, through the stars of the night sky to the dawn and sunrises. A school to remember.

We came home from the Powerboat School with a new sense of confidence. Two days later we headed out to Holland for our sea trial of Wings. I had no problem going over the electronics or engines that seemed more cryptic a few weeks before. The survey, sea trial, engine survey and related testing really came off without any surprises. It looks like we Grand Banks owners at last! The most difficult thing (beyond the bucks) was putting her back into storage until next spring. Patience and anticipation…..