What is it like?

There I am - nestled in on the leward side. The wind picks up slightly. The boat heels over a little more. I feel the pressure in the helm as the boat tries to head up. I let it as it works its way over the top of a swell. Then I lay off slightly to power up and to build back speed. I note that the jib sheet has stretched a little in response to the increased wind pressure. If the wind stays this way, I will tighten the sheet a few clicks to help us point. I glance at the main. All 4 tell-tales are streaming out from the leach although the upper one is trying to curl back.


I am at one with the wind, the boat and the sea.


Then Bev shakes me. Wake up, wake up. It is almost dawn and we have 80 nautical miles to cover before we anchor today.


I groan. I step into my clothes and then take to dogs to the cockpit so that they can do their business on their "welcome mat". They have given new meaning to the expression, "the poop deck".

I start the generator and fire up the coffee maker. I check for water in the exhaust and note voltages and charge rates. I know that engine and generator fluid levels are OK because I checked them last night before turning in. I turn on the instruments and start booting the computer. I retrieve the dogs and check their food and water. I start the main engine and check its exhaust for water as well. The coffee is almost ready. Bev has started her shower.


I go to the upper helm station and pull covers off instruments and open the front window of the flybridge enclosure for better visibility. I make sure the computer screen is displaying navigational charts, our position, speed etc from the computer below.


By now the coffee is ready and Bev is slipping bagels into the toaster.

I return to the upper helm station and, using the remote windlass buttons, hoist the anchor. We will attach its safety line later. There is light but the sun has not yet risen. I turn out the masthead anchor light and turn on the navigation lights.


I slip the engine into gear. At 1000 rpm (idle is at 800 rpm), we thread our way out of the anchorage at 5 knots. Once we hit the channel, I nudge the throttle to 1200 rpm and we pick up speed to 6 knots. We still have very little wake. There are other boats anchored just off the channel and I don't wish to disturb them. At this speed, we probably burn about 1.1 gallons per hour.


As soon as we clear the last boat, I nudge the throttle again, to 1450 rpm. We are bucking a very slight chop. Our speed is 6.8 knots. We are now burning 1.9 gallons per hour and getting about 3.5 nautical miles per gallon. In a flat calm, we might do 7 knots at the same rpm.


As we round the point and hit the open sea, I contemplate how far we have to go and at what time we might arrive. The previous owners cruised at 1700 rpm. In a calm, they would hit 8 knots but I know that today, we would probably only hit 7.8. Our mileage would drop to about 2.5 mpg.


While I am contemplating this, I note that the exhaust note has changed. The bagels are finished and Bev has turned off the generator. The Perkins, although much larger and much more powerful than the Onan generator, is comparatively very quiet.


As I lock in the autopilot, Bev arrives on the flybridge with hot buttered bagels. We discuss arrival time vs fuel consumption. The last time we filled up. diesel was $2.05 per gallon so if we travel 1 knot faster, we will save 1.5 hours but spend $18 more in fuel. Today, we have no incentive to arrive early, so we opt to travel more slowly. Another day, at these fuel prices, the decision might be different.


Now that theses decisions are out of the way, except for keeping a lookout for other vessels and for crab pot floats, we have nothing to do for the next 11 hours or so.


Did I mention that driving one of these things is kind of boring. It's like driving a RV down the middle of a 6 lane highway with absolutely no other vehicles at 15 kilometers per hour. You still have to pay attention, but really, there is absolutely no challenge. Did I mention that it is boring. Well, its really boring. If you get into a good book, Murphy's law makes it certain that a crab pot float will sneak up on your propeller. There is nothing to do, but you still have to pay attention.


So, the challenge of using the forces of nature to conquer the sea is no longer the point. The point is to have the luxuries of home in exotic and remote locations. After all, you can rent a lot of hotel rooms in pedestrian locations for way less than the cost of owning a boat.


In this way, trawler boating is similar to RVing. Paying $95 per night to park a RV in a really terrible campground in Las Vegas would be stupid. Paying $10 per night to park a RV in a remote campground with no services but located at the top of a cliff overlooking the Grand Canyon is priceless.


So what else is it like you ask?


There is an old saying that "if Moma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy". Moma is ecstatic. That is the good side and it is a very good side.


So what is the price? There is an old axiom that simple things simply tend not to break. Compared to any boat I have ever owned, this thing is incredibly complex. My friend, Bob Williams, informs me that compared to his boat, ours is very simple. Still, there is a lot here that can go wrong and most of it has not been new since 1981!

The marine surveyor left me with a list as long of my arm of things that needed to be fixed. None of it was hugely expensive, but it all takes time. Because most of the equipment on the boat is new to me, I am spending a lot of time sifting through manuals trying to figure things out. One of the problems is that although there is a manual for almost every piece of equipment on board, there is no manual for the boat as whole.

Part of the problem is that I believe the boat had been marina serviced. The previous owner was elderly. I believe he was very conscientious, but employees of marinas are sometimes neither so conscientious nor so capable as one might have liked.

Let me give an example. When we did the sea trial, the generator would not start. As part of the deal, the owner had it fixed. The starter was removed, rebuilt and its solenoid was replaced. Reportedly, this cost the owner somewhere in the order of $700 to $800. A few weeks after we took possession of the boat, the generator started to hunt. Fortunately for me, my friend Bob Williams was on board. Being an old motorcycle mechanic, his approach to an electrical problem was to grab a handful of wires, to shake them and to see if anything changes. While doing this, the main power cable to the starter came apart in his hand. He also found that neither of the bolts holding the head of the starter to the generator was tight. In addition, the single bolt at the other end of the starter was entirely missing. The loose electrical cable not only explained why the generator had started to hunt but why it had failed to start at all for the previous owner.

So here we have a situation where a conscientious owner had paid a lot of good money to have a problem fixed, but the "fix" had left the situation worse than it was before. To add insult to injury, inspection of the cable showed that about 6 inches from where it attached to the starter, the main power cable had chafed through its insulation and had arced half way through the copper. This was a major fire just waiting for the right time to happen.


Even an incompetent mechanic (like me) should have been able to do better!


All of this is to say that I plan on spending a lot of time maintaining this boat.


What else is it like?


The storage areas are the pits.

Comfort is great.

The generator is noisy, but I think I can do something about this.

The generator must be run a lot. Part of the problem is that the boat is really designed for marina living. For example, when you turn on a switch, it energizes 6 lights - not just one and there are lots of incandescent lights on this boat.


What about rolling? The boat has hard chines and so it probably rolls less than some. When you are in the upper steering station, however, your head is about 16 feet off the water. Even when the boat rolls a little, you move sideways a lot and so you really feel it.


The movable furniture really does move. This is great when in harbour but can be less than great at sea. Unless something is restrained, if you don't put it on the floor when you leave port, chances are that it will be on the floor and broken when you get to your destination.

The steering is strange. When you turn the wheel, it takes a while before anything happens. When the boat finally starts to turn, you had better start to countersteer right away. Otherwise, you will overshoot. Bucking a head sea is OK but I have found that you don't have to be a drunken sailor to steer like one in a following sea.

So, in summary, it's comfortable, it's going to be a lot of work but Moma is really happy, and if Moma is really happy, I am really happy.

That's what it is all about isn't it?

(Note from Bev) Yes i am really happy.

The galley is wonderful, lots of hot water.it really is a galley for one but close to salon so we can talk as I prepare meals.

The sundeck is the best thing on the boat , next to the fishing cockpit.

I can set up my sewing machine, have people over for dinner, pull up the wicker chairs, need I say more.

When we bring boat home as we are doing my girls can swim from the cockpit, as we will be right there, life is good.