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.

what we got

So here we are, at the turning point of our voyage to become trawler trash.

We had a list of what we were looking for. We set out to look at "oldie goldies". Mostly, we saw "mouldie oldies".

We finally found a boat having most of the characteristics we were looking for and the asking price was not too far above what we felt we could afford.

The broker helping us find the right boat had warned us not to appear to be too excited when we saw something we liked. Otherwise, the offer acceptance price just went up.

The boat was what I will call a Gulfstar stretch 38. That is a standard Gulfstar 38 motor cruiser with a 5 foot cockpit added at the back to make the overall length 43 feet.

Bev was ecstatic. Asking her to completely contain her exuberance was like asking a balloon to behave like a 1000 psi pressure vessel. It could not be done. She would have exploded!




This is the standard Gulfstar 38. Ours is similar except that it has the cockpit, a single engine (a perkins 6 cylinder, turbocharged monster sized chunk of cast iron), a bow thruster, 300 gallons of water storage and 250 gallons of fuel capacity.








As you can see here, our boat also has a cockpit enclosure .

In this photo, you can see the crane for lifting the dingy onto the roof.

It has radar, two depth sounders, two radios, a hydraulically actuated autopilot, 2 permanently mounted GPSs (as well as the one tied into our laptop that we use to navigate), twin steering stations, a flat screen TV and two CD-AM/FM stereos.

This photo was taken at the dock before we took possession. You can see the shade screen on the sundeck (or back porch).

We are finding the cockpit to be very handy when at anchor.

The next few photos show the sundeck. It is the main outdoors living area except when under way. The furniture is plastic (wicker) and may be moved as we see fit. I thought it might move about more when under way, but so far that has not happened.

Another shot of the sundeck.

I am not sure if the maroon carpet will stay. It matches the trim on the boat beautifully but it shows the dirt too well.

Final shot of the sundeck showing the entrance to the saloon, the main indoor living area.

I suspect we will not keep the freezer on board. It consumes 14 amps (at 12v) when running. If we assume a 50% duty cycle, we would have to run the generator another 2.5 hours per day when at anchor.

The saloon: I really like the comfort of the leather chairs.

All the furniture in the saloon is movable. When we get "waked" by large powerboats, this furniture can move around a fair bit. If things like lamps are not restrained or put on the floor, they will tend to put themselves on the floor.

Another shot of the saloon looking aft.

Access to the motor and generator is via large hatches in the saloon

This is the master bedroom (under the sun deck). We wanted a bed with access from both sides but at least it is very comfortable.

Shelving in the master bedroom. See all those cupboards. Actually, storage is a real challenge on this boat. The potential storage space is just not well used. The sliding drawers provide very little usable volume as compared to what straight shelves might have given.

The wood work is beautiful though.

The master bedroom has its own head, complete with bathtub, electrically flushing toilet, sink, mirror, cabinets and sewage treatment system so that in most coastal areas, you do not have to use a holding tank.

This is the indoor steering station and has probably never been used.

There are some nice wicker faced cupboards between the decks and the floor. Unfortunately, after you install two air conditioners, related ducts, a huge manual pump, the main electrical panel and a heart charger/inverter, there is almost no space for storage of our stuff.

This is Bev in the galley when we were doing our initial inspection. As you can see, she has her best poker face on so that the broker would not know that she liked it.

Galley, sink and storage. That lid in the corner is not the top of an ice box. It is where we put pots and pans.

More of the galley.

We wanted an gas stove but the boat came with an electric one instead.

The hot water tank is also powered by electricity. We have learned to start the generator in the morning to power up the coffee maker (it takes about 80 amps at 12 v). By the time we have had our first coffee, the water is hot and the batteries are well on their way to being charged (when you pump 100 amps into them, it does not take long to bring the voltage up).

This is the double bed in the forward cabin.

The storage in this area is pretty good. Our guests lose out, however, because we fill it with our stuff before they arrive.

The guest quarters do contain another head complete with its own lectrasan sewage treatment system. The guest head does contain a shower (untried by us) that is the type that washes down the whole head.



So what is it like? Tune in for the next installment.

what we saw - part 2

The Marine Traders generally offer a lot of boat for your money. The problem is that they are not always in good shape. The good thing is that they are supported by a really good owners group. That group has a newsletter and you can get old copies on a CD. By going through the CD, you can get an idea of the problems people have encountered and what it took to fix many of these problems. Unfortunately, it is a little like reading a medical text. You may have felt pretty healthy when you started, but you are wondering about your own minor symptoms and eary onset of a great number of terrible diseases by the time you have finished. I had no idea that boats could have all these problems or that they would be that difficult and expensive to fix!!

This is one of the first Marine Trader 44s that we went to see. It was beautiful from the outside. One of the major problems that these boats have is that the teak decks leak. The way to fix it is with a crow bar (to remove the teak), a saw (to cut out the upper layer of fiberglass), a spoon (to remove the plywood coring underneath), more plywood (to replace the goop that you removed with the spoon) and then lots of fiberglass to replace the upper deck. The alternative is to write a check for about US $20K. The problem is that if you don't seal the leaks, not only does the deck get to be rather spongy, but things within the boat (e.g. fuel tanks, steering systems, electronics, all upholstery etc) deteriorate at an alarming rate in the Florida climate.

In this case, someone had already replaced the decks. BIG PLUS!!!

This style of boat has a nice galley down and often a dinette across from it.

The boats which follow have similar interior layouts except that this one had no dining table in the saloon. For Beverley, this was a big minus.

This particular Marine Trader 44 had a single propellor in a well protected location. This is a very big plus for mileage and for keeping out of trouble in shallow waters. Unfortunately, it had no bow thruster and so would have been a challenge to control in some low speed situations.

This Canadian Marine Trader 44 looked beautiful in the adds. Its price was reasonable and, we thought, if the duty and GST were paid, then so much the better.

This is the dining are in the saloon. There is plenty of space across from it for an arm chair or other comfortable seating arrangements.

This photo offers a glimpse into the master bedroom. There is lots of storage space and access to the queen sized bed from both sides.

The selling broker wanted us to negotiate price before we got to see the boat. If we came to an agreement, then the owner would clean it up for inspection. We made a low ball offer and then got on board before price negotiations were complete. This is what we saw:

The first impression was that you had to hold your breath. Your eyes watered. This was because of rampant mould growth.

The bucket was to collect water in the master bedroom.

The drip marks are from a botched effort to seal up the deck leaks from the inside. This is water that has sat in the core of the deck until it finally found a way out. So what is the condition of the deck? What is the condition of all the upholstery? How would you wash down and clean each and every surface inside the boat? And would the mould come back? You bet it would.

My guess is that the owner (who had left the boat there on the hard for about 3 years) was not aware of the damage being done to his pride and joy. What a shame!!!

This is a photo of a beautiful Marine Trader 44 right where were based in Indiantown. The owner came down for 2 or 3 days every month or two in order to keep up the maintenance. It appeared to be in beautiful shape.

We made an offer - about half of what the owner was asking. Our offer was meant as a starting point and had no conditions. It was just a cash offer like a wholesale deal. We knew the boat had been for sale for 3 years and that he had not even had a nibble for almost 2 years. We knew his asking price was too high but also knew that he wanted his money out of the boat to buy real estate. If you want to buy in Florida, right now is a pretty good time.

All we did was to insult him. He wouldn't even counter.

Oh well.

Then we saw a Thompson 44. These were built as empty hulls by a fishing boat compamy. They were finished by the owner, but usually in a professional yard.

They are wide beamed (don't roll too much), shallow draft and often had only one engine. Often they had fuel polishing systems and other things that relate to a no-nonsense fishing boat heritage (as opposed to a yacht - toy background).

Side view of "Loafer". I love the name for a slow moving trawler.

Look at the space in the main saloon!!!

Loafer's master bedroom with Ethan Allen furniture.

But then....

You could not actually sit down at this table. Neither could you sit in the forward head - at least not if you wanted to close the door.

The engine room was so big, you could almost walk inside it.

This was a good thing since you needed lots of room to duck under all the wires that were handing higgldy piggldy from the ceiling.

A complete rewiring job was necessary in my estimation .

Also, there seemed to be something that was missing. Then it hit me. In one of the other boats, the head of one of the motors was missing. In this case, the whole motor was missing.

In fairness, the owner had set out to freshen it up (valve job by his buddy an out of work mechanic) only to discover that the block was cracked. Oops!!!

Anyway, the motor was being replaced at the owner's expense.

The boat had other weaknesses. It had no swim platform. Also, it had this beautiful davit but I could not understand where you were supposed to park the dingy once you hoisted on board using the davit. It turned out that the owner's idea of a dingy was a motorcycle. Go figure!!

So you have seen what we saw. What did we buy?

None of them! After kissing a lot of toads, Prince (or Princess) Charming finally showed up.

So what is Princess Charming like. Well, that is the topic of the next installment of this blog.

What we saw - part 1

We looked high and we looked low for a trawler meeting our needs that was still affordable.

We looked at a PT 38 that someone wanted to trade for the Stray Cat but that turned out be a derelict.

Doesn't look too, too bad from the outside - well maybe if you squint a lot!!

Now usually if someone says that the port engine is missing a little, you think of a fouled spark plug or maybe of a fouled injector. This motor was missing a lot!! Actually, the head was there, it was just not on the motor. That is because the motor was siezed solid due to salt water ingress - not a healthy thing for a fine piece of machinery.

We looked at a gulfstar 43 that even had stabilizer wings but turned out to have steering posts that were almost completely rusted out.

Gulfstar 43 - they even built sailboats and motorsailers on top of this hull. It has round chines and a reputation for being "rolly".

Nice back porch. Too bad you have no direct access to it from the saloon as you do on motorcruisers. Instead, you have to go out the side doors and then go around.

This one should not roll much. See the stabilizer fin. There is one on the port side as well. They turn to counteract any rolling action. Expensive but cool!

Nice saloon, but small for a 43. That is because the side decks are wide. Oh well, I guess you can not have it all.

They do have a reputation for being solidly built compaired to the Tiawanese boats and offering comparatively few long run problems.

We have looked at a Marine Trader 40 Labelle Sundeck that had oh so much space and so nicely proportioned. Unfortunately, it had twin engines that were sandwiched in so tightly that only one of them could easily be serviced.

Nice back porch or sundeck. There is a substantial crane for lifting the dingy onto the roof.

There is also a bit of a vertical climb from the swim platform to the gateway. This would not be great with an arm load of groceries.








Saloon. Note the galley down to port and the dining table to starboard. The space on this boat is extremely well used.

The far side of the engine (the side you have to get to in order to maintain it) is sandwiched tight up against a tank. Marine Traders also have a reputation for having fuel tanks that corrode out necessitating either removal of the engines or cutting a huge hole in the side of the boat in order that they may be replaced. Bummer!!!

This boat appeared to have been well looked after. There were still some signs of significant damage due to water leakage (typically around doors and windows).

We looked at a Formosa 40 that had all of its major systems very recently redone, had few signs of significant leakage but was a traditional trawler design and so had little useable space.


Stern view.

Galley to port: The refrigerator seems like an afterthought.

Across from the galley was a very nice dinette. Unfortunately, that was it for lounging space. Compared to other boats we saw, this one was really tiny inside.

Next: The Marine Trader 44s we looked at and a Thompson 44.