Lots of progress (and big purchases) on the cruising front. We bought a windvane and (another) dinghy!

Instead of exchanging gifts this year we dipped into the cruising fund and purchased a Monitor Windvane. We decided to go with the Monitor for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they had experience designing and building Monitors for Jason 35s, they are local to the Bay Area, and have a great reputation. So far it's been a great experience working with them, they've been very helpful and willing to answer all our questions.

And questions we've definitely had, as the instruction manual contains something like 20 steps, many of which involve drilling holes in the boat or cutting parts of the very expensive windvane with a hacksaw. We are a solid two days into the installation process, and it looks like we have at least 1 more to go. Right now we are waiting for the epoxy to dry on the deck so that we can finalize the mounts. This will undoubtedly be followed by more drilling, hacksawing, skinned knuckles and the occasional curse word.
(Accompanying photograph is Julia with Ron from Scanmar who drew the installation drawing and answers all our questions about installation-thanks Ron!)

We are optimistic about the windvane, as we've read a lot of good things about the Monitor. We'll definitely be writing more as we get the chance to use it and learn more about it. It also feels great to be moving forward on this because it's the first really big purchase we have made for Pisces to ready her for cruising, and also because in some ways it's the only purchase we would absolutely have to make before we leave to go cruising. Although there are certainly other things we do plan on buying (Liferaft, EPIRB, etc.) we could do without these. I think this is a really great testament to the quality of the work that Gary put into building Pisces.


The second big purchase we made was much more spontaneous than the windvane, we bought another dinghy. So, as of today we own 3 boats (thankfully two of them are under 8' in length). We have been going back and forth on the dinghy issue for a while now, wanting to stick with a hard dinghy, but finding that deck space is at a real premium on Pisces. By pure coincidence with saw an ad yesterday in the new copy of Latitude 38 for a 7' Fatty Knees Dinghy. This morning we drove up to San Rafael, took a look, measured, and found ourselves driving back over the Golden Gate bridge with a dinghy on the roof of the car. It's a beautiful little dinghy, and as you can see from the picture below it fits much better on Pisces.



All and all it's been a very exciting holiday!

We went out for the first time since the oil spill. I secretly felt a little guilty about it, due to all the warnings about how boats break up oil and make the spread worse.
However we stayed in the South Bay, didn't see any oil, and flew the asymmetric for the first time. What a fabulous sail! I love how light it is and how crinkly it sounds, and am looking forward to flying it again soon.

We had an explosion of productivity over the weekend with our various projects around the boat.
The head rebuild has progressed another major stage; we installed and mounted the toolboxes on the back wall, mounted the electrical outlet and hung a hammock for miscellany. As I write this, it doesn't sound like a big deal, but these toolboxes have taken a long time to mount. We have been thinking about, talking about, testing ways of mounting those toolboxes; realizing that idea won't work, going back to the thinking about, talking, testing, mocking up another way and so on. I was a big proponent for the hammock method (string mesh tightly across the front and back of the boxes and they will be inert). It turns out this method does not pan out in reality the way it did in my mind, primarily due to the fact that the boxes are remarkably heavy and it's difficult to get the mesh tight enough to hold ~20lbs of hammers, screwdrivers and spanners.

Our current method involves a block for support at the front of the boxes with shock cord over the top. It seems to be working great-and I am looking forward to seeing how it holds up to a test sail. The head rebuild is really starting to come together-we've been using it as a workroom for a while now.

The bookshelves are coming along nicely also; the epoxy is drying as we speak and tonight we will go see the results of our handiwork.

SPILL UPDATE
We went up to Sausalito yesterday scouting for wedding ceremony locations, and kept an eye out for the fuel spill on the Bay. I was surprised by the amount of boats out on the Bay day sailing; considering that club races are canceled, Angel Island is closed and the Coast Guard has requested that recreational mariners stay out of the water. Haven't they seen what that stuff will do to their hull? Check out the 'Lectronic Latitude article and pictures for details.
Sadly, the oil seems to be continuing to spread and affecting wildlife. There was a notice at Brisbane Marina stating that oil had been spotted only 1/2 mile north, and the nice guy who works at West Marine in South San Francisco said he had seen a bird covered in oil walking around the lot when he got in to work.

Over the weekend we took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and headed down the coast to Half Moon Bay with two other boats; Fancy and Vitesse.

Everyone was marvelous about taking photos, and as a result there are far too many to post here, so I will settle for posting links to the various photo galleries:





Photos from Pisces
Fancy and Vitesse pics: Half Moon Bay 2007

It felt so wonderful to be out on the ocean--Pisces is such a great boat for the ocean swells. We had dolphins accompany us on both days and I saw more jellyfish in the ocean than I've ever seen in my life before. They were drifting in the current down south, so watch out for them if you're in southern CA!

We had a wonderful crew and with their help and experience we bought some trolling line and lures and trolled for salmon on the way home. Unfortunately all I managed to catch this time was jellyfish guts, but now I have the line on the boat-I am very positive about my successful future in fishing.



We were looking forward to another sailing trip this weekend; either out to the Farallones if the weather was amicable or just a quiet overnighter anchored in the Bay. Unfortunately, an incoming tanker hit a pylon of the Bay Bridge this week dumping around 58,000 gallons of tanker fuel into the Bay. The slick moves around the Bay with the tide; the last report I heard was that oil had been reported in the North Bay by the Richmond Bridge, down in the South Bay by Hunters Point, and outside the Golden Gate south to Ocean Beach and North to Bolinas.

Here are some sites for more information:
US Coast Guard
NOAA
Oiled Wildlife
Baykeeper Citizens Response

Needless to say, large parts of the Bay are closed and the weekend trip is off. Instead, we are going to see if there's anything we can do to help out with containment.

The weather has been pretty good in San Francisco the last week, the summer seems to be hanging on a bit longer. It's been a nice change to get out sailing in the lighter winds and we've been taking advantage of the opportunity to keep learning more about how Pisces sails. She's a great boat, surprisingly good in the light wind, and we love the flexibility of the cutter rig.

One of the reasons for starting this blog was to have the opportunity to interact with more Jason 35 owners, and here's a great example. Below is a comment on an earlier blog post from the owners of the Jason 35 Velic. It has some great information, so I wanted to bring it out to the front. In the future we may try to have a branch off of this blog that's solely dedicated to Jason 35 facts and information, but for now, it'll have to be mixed in with our personal experiences. Enjoy!

I thought I'd left a post, but it seems to have disappeared, so here's another try. (We don't have a blog or a web site of our own.)

You're right, there isn't much information out there about Jason 35s, probably because there aren't many Jason 35s out there. I believe fewer than 60 were ever built by Miller Marine. We had difficulty locating owners to interview when we were considering the Jason 35, among other boats, as a larger boat for ourselves. We did eventually contact a few other owners - two in Washington, one in California, and one in either Arizona or Nevada (I can't recall which state right now), and were able to take a day sail with one of the Washington owners.

After we bought our Jason, we also met and consulted with Ted Brewer about some of the modifications we wanted to make, but especially about the excessive weather helm that some of the earlier Jasons had (and which we knew about in advance and used as a bartering chip when negotiating a purchase price). This was a real puzzle to Ted, and he had spent many hours recalculating the design specs and examining the plans to find an error. He never found an error and, in fact, the numbers all crunched perfectly - there should have been minimal weather helm, as is desirable and was intended, and why the boat exhibited such heavy weather helm remains a mystery. Thus confirming my theory that boats are, in reality, organic creatures subject to the sort of mysterious quirks we all are afflicted with. In any case, once the problem was discovered, subsequent boats were manufacture with the mast moved several inches forward of the original design location. This alleviated the weather helm to a great extent.

We moved the mast on our boat after we brought it home, as we had planned to do, and this, in conjunction with redesigning the mainsheet system, vastly improved the weather helm. A new main will be the final step in resolving the weather helm issue, but we're able to use the new mainsheeting system to flatten the current old sail pretty effectively, when needed.

We've made many improvements to our Jason in the years since we bought her, beginning with the standing rig and including replacing the entire main companionway and the foredeck hatch with newly built ones. We've moved our efforts below during the past couple of years and are currently wrapping up an interior remodel that will add to our safety at sea as well as enhancing our stowage capacity. All this while both of us are working at "day jobs" full time and still trying to get some sailing in. It's slow-going, working after hours and on weekends, but very satisfying to see the improvements. I have a suspicion you know very well the feeling I'm talking about!

So we'll keep checking in on your site, to see how things are progressing for Pisces. If you'd like to know more about some of the things we've made on Velic, just ask.

Best regards.

Thanks again!
In terms of the weather helm, Pisces has a short bowsprit (~3 feet) to help alleviate this problem. She certainly can be very heavy on the helm, but we're still learning, and in large degree I think some of this might be due to the fact that we're coming from a much lighter boat with a fin keel and spade rudder and therefore are just not used to the feel of such a big boat with a tiller...We are definitely still learning, and still seeking out those moments when everything clicks together, and Pisces is happy charging along in the groove. If you have the time, I'd love to hear more about your new mainsheet system. Stay in touch!

Over the weekend we built the actual toilet section of the head rebuild. I had wanted this section in wood--preferably aromatic cedar--I had images of a beautiful room filled with fine woodwork and craftsmanship, put together with relative ease. My actual woodworking skills were not what I remembered them to be from the glory days of high school woodworking class. FYI: woodworking is not like riding a bike. I definitely forgot a lot.

However we are happy with the result. It is infinitely preferable to a marine head for two primary reasons: no plumbing to stop up underway and a full size toilet seat. Marine toilet seats are remarkably uncomfortable.

We ended up using oak for the primary construction and two boards of aromatic cedar as slats in front. The seat hinges up (to one side) for both bucket removal and so that guys who wish to pee standing up can do so.

I have been surprised at the amount of negative responses we getting about pulling out the head and replacing it with a bucket. While I wouldn't say that I prefer a bucket over a normal indoor household toilet, here's why I think it's better than other marine options:
1) Head with overboard discharge: When you are at sea and pumping overboard this is essentially a mechanical bucket with the chance to break and flood the boat through a seacock. When you are in port this is worse than a bucket because you are pumping overboard whereas we plan to use Wag Bags which allow for biodegradable (and discreet) disposal.
2) Head with holding tank: At sea this is worse, because although you can pump out your holding tank, owners almost always add in chemicals to keep the holding tank (and boat) "smelling clean." In harbor it is more convenient than a bucket with wag bags...until you have to find a place to empty it. Additionally, on Pisces the holding tank is underneath the v-berth (underneath my side). So, if we're using the holding tank while in port or anchored, we'll also be using the v-berth, and the idea of sleeping on top of a tank full of dirty waste is not particularly appealing.
3) There are other options and variants of the traditional marine head, all of which are too expensive for us to realistically consider.

Basically there is no good option, this one just strikes us as the simplest, cheapest, most reliable one.

The room is really coming together, which is exciting. Our next steps in that room include trying different methods to hold the tool boxes in, installing a drawer, teak grating for the pan, and re-plumbing the drain overboard via hand-pump (which has a dual benefit: we can remove and fill both seacocks in the head, but still shower :) ).





To be continued....

Julia and I have been lucky enough to crew aboard an Ericson 33 Fancy for the past several seasons in the South Beach Yacht Club Friday Night Series. Here's a short video of a recent start, where Fancy ended up taking first (after the protests were heard;-)

The switching the staysail from roller furler back to hank on project is almost complete. The sail has hanks, the furler is sold, we re-bed the chainplate and installed new terminals and wire.
Next time we go out sailing we will figure out where we need to install the pad eye for the sail's tack.

We put the sail up at the dock the other day to see how it was, and it was so satisfying to be easily able to hoist it up, then release it and watch it drop to the deck in just a few seconds. This is a much better arrangment for us than the furler.

These last few months we have been working diligently on our list of "Things To Get Done Before Leaving." The list is nicely organized into categories such as long term, short term, high importance, medium importance and so on. Some items just require buying (ie liferaft) and others require project design and planning.

Head to Work Bench/Tool Storage Conversion
The most time consuming project has been the re-design of the head. I first remember Jacob bringing up the idea of replacing the counter space and cabinets in the head when we were looking at the Cal 34. At the time I thought it was a brilliant idea-I am not exactly the type of woman who carries a lot of toiletries, and I can't imagine starting to use a hair dryer once we go cruising if I don't regularly use one now. Additionally, as I am the go-to person for finding and storing stuff on the boat, I am constantly pulling boxes and containers out to the tool or part we need that is invariably nested at the bottom of the box. Finally, the concept of totally removing the entire system from the boat was appealing; and the head when we bought it was leaking in several places (and in my opinion a little stinky), so the options were either replace or remove.

The first step was cleaning out the holding tank. We had pumped it out prior to the memorial day bbq (see previous post), thinking that after the bbq we could start pulling out the plumbing and head. Unfortunately it turned out someone used the head during the bbq, and then realized they had no idea what to do next (you know who you are). So, we had to pump out the holding tank one final time. This involved pumping and rinsing, pumping and rinsing, fill the tank with water and vinegar, pump and rinse, etc. You get the idea.
Back at the dock, we started to remove the hoses and fittings to the head, sink, shower sump and forward bilge. This step was possibly one of the most disgusting things I've ever done. The odor of open head plumbing that has been in use for ten or so years is remarkably strong and we never knew when we pulled off some hose if dirty water would come shooting down the end onto us. This was not a pleasant process. Eventually everything (head, sink, pump and many feet of hose) was sitting on the dock, and while the odor still lingered, I hoped that eventually it would disappear.

Next we cleaned. I will not go into gory details, but leave you with one image: me crouched in the sail locker in the v-berth, with my whole arm in the holding tank, scrubbing then vacuuming everything out with the wet-vac, then scrubbing again.

At this point the head area was a mess, with the bench and sink ripped out, the veneer stripped off the wall and hull, and the fiberglass pan exposed. When we took people out sailing during this time, we just closed the door and hoped that no one would ask about the closed door or need to use the head.

Then came the putting-it-all-back-together stage. For weeks we scoured stores for what we needed, debated in parking lots about the merits of particular wood or metal, returned stuff, changed our mind. It was a time of trial and error. A highlight was placing in the wood for the work bench. Suddenly we could see the space becoming a real utility space. The vise went in shortly after that. Then came the hunt for material to replace the veneer. Stainless steel sheets were the first idea, but rejected due to cost and a slight dispute about the merits of having tread on the walls. Today we installed the final version which is a combination of many trips to Tap Plastics, 2 layers of sheeting on each side.

There are still things to figure out; our next steps will be anchoring the tool boxes, attaching the electrical box, creating storage underneath the bench (and possibly a drawer), and buying cedar for supporting the bucket. The plan with the bucket is to have a removable bucket (with wag bags as recommended by Lin and Larry Pardey), with a toilet seat and a bench that will close on top of the seat that can be used to shower or sit on while working.
But the bulk of the project is done; our tools are in one place and we have bench space for projects that we are already using.



Changing the staysail from roller furler to hank-on
We are also converting the staysail back to hank on. Thanks to the ever-handy craigslist we successfully sold the furler unit, and ordered new wire and other necessities from the friendly people at Svendsens.
One small snag that we are running into is that the Furlex system we removed is all metric. This is not conducive to finding parts that fit, here in a country that doesn't use the metric system. We considered ways to just "make it work," like just popping a 1/2" pin into the 14mm hole and "keeping an eye on it." As this is my preferred method, I was comfortable moving forward with this. Luckily for us both, Jacob found an article by Brion Toss on this exact tissue which clearly states that this will compromise the integrity of the whole system. Here's the article if you are interested: http://www.briontoss.com/education/archive/miscoct98.htm
So today we removed the deck-mounted chain plate, which depending on price we will either have drilled out to fit a 5/8" or completely reworked. We ended up using the staysail halyard to gently pull up the chain plate, it was so weird watching this huge chunk of metal slowly ease up through the deck!

And don't get the wrong impression, we've also been getting out sailing in between all this work! So that's the update for now; more soon.

On Memorial Day we had a boat-warming BBQ at Pisces.
The weekend leading up to the BBQ was cold, windy;
in general not good BBQ weather and I wasn't hopeful for a good day for our BBQ.

However Memorial Day was perfect,
and our friends piled on Pisces until the waterline was lower than we'd ever seen.

We hope that everyone had as good a time as we did-from the big smiles and sunburned shoulders at the end of the day, I'd say they did. Many thanks to Rob for stepping in to grill the most delicious burgers and dogs!




The next step for us is to start on our list of short- and long-term projects to get Pisces ready. This last weekend was productive: we sold the inflatable dinghy (yay!); changed the radar mounting (we used a rotating arm that previously supported a TV to mount the radar inside so that the radar can be swung inside to be viewed from the nav. station and swung out through the companionway so it can be seen from the cockpit); and removed the pesky GPS mount (that I always sat on) and other unwanted hardware in the cockpit and spent the day epoxying and filling miscellaneous holes and cracks.


However, the largest project that we began this weekend was re-designing the head. We removed the cabinets in the head in preparation for our new design: a large workbench and tool and parts storage. The head looks like we've taken a wrecking ball to the area, but the space we gained is significant. We need workbench and tool storage space more than we need a third sink (in addition to the two in the galley) and pressure water. More on this as we progress.

This past week we brought Pisces up the coast from Oxnard to her new berth at Brisbane Marina in South San Francisco. We've spent the last several months working like crazy to prepare ourselves and Pisces for this notorious trip, and it's great to finally have her close to home. The trip was also a great learning experience, and gave us more insight into the little things that work and don't work on Pisces.

Preparation:
Our usual routine involved leaving work on Friday and either driving most of the night or waiting in airports and car rental terminals in order to be in Oxnard Saturday morning to start boat projects. Sunday afternoon we would reverse the process and head home to be ready to start the work week on Monday morning. It was an extremely tiring few months, and we often felt like the list of projects grew every weekend rather than shrunk.

One of the difficult things about a trip like this is having to schedule time off from work so far in advance that you have no way of knowing if the weather window will actually allow you to complete the passage. We half-expected that the weather wouldn't be good for the trip around Point Conception and we'd end up spending the week sailing the Channel Islands (which would have been fun, but disappointing). About a month before our trip was scheduled work commitments forced us to push our timeline back for one week, this ended up being a blessing, as there were gales up and down the coast during our original week. When we left we were able to speed up the coast with very mild conditions between the previous week's storms and the following week's return to normal weather patterns.

Leg 1:
We loaded the car up with a week's worth of food and water, a rental liferaft and EPIRB, charts of the California coast, and drove down to Channel Islands Harbor. We were so unsure about whether we would successfully complete the trip that we loaded the liferaft and EPIRB under cover of darkness. We knew that if we started the conversation with anyone on our dock about the northbound trip we would hear a whole variety of horror stories about the passage and Pt. Conception.
Sunday morning arrived, and we left the dock, halfway out in the channel we had our first problem, with a stuffing box that was overheating. Jacob crawled around in the bilge adjusting the stuffing box with two ill-fitting wrenches, and after a half hour or so we motored out of the channel.
Northbound up the Santa Barbara Channel winds built, until we were getting 25 kts true wind speed. At this point we shifted off our rhumbline course and headed more Northerly into the lee of Santa Barbara. We were concerned about the conditions at Point Conception, but wanted to push forward at least until Cojo Anchorage. As the sun set, the wind in the channel moderated a bit. Julia (our official weather girl) had been monitoring the coastal buoys, and reported that winds at Pt. Conception and Pt. Arguello were both under 10 kts. Hearing this we furled our jib and motorsailed directly for Pt. Conception.


We had planned our rounding of Pt. Conception for midnight, as the seas and winds often drop during the early morning hours. We stayed to this original plan, bypassing Cojo Anchorage, and continuing directly from the Santa Barbara Channel out around the point. As we made the turn to round we had our bow pointing directly at a bright planet, with several shooting stars overhead. Our rounding was relatively straightforward, the winds remained moderate from the North, and the seas were uncomfortable but manageable. We tried to maintain at least 6kts of headway through the night, as the stretch of coast between Pt. Conception and Pt. Arguello leaves you feeling quite exposed.
In the morning we were roughly adjacent to Morro Bay, the first possible stopping point of the trip. Based on the current weather forecasts we felt that we should continue up the Big Sur coast while the conditions were favorable. We had plenty of diesel onboard, and so we bypassed Morro Bay and continued on towards Monterey. The day and night along the Big Sur coast were beautiful, with large swells but glassy water. The cliffs rising out of the water were magnificent, but also a constant reminder that there was nowhere to duck in for shelter along this stretch of coast.
At 3:15AM we entered Monterey Municipal Harbor, and tied up at a slip, exhausted. It was a beautiful location, and we spent the next day and night there, sightseeing, relaxing, and changing engine filters.



Leg 2:
We left Monterey at 4PM, in order to arrive at the Golden Gate during daylight hours with a near slack tide. We had a nice sailing wind across Monterey Bay, and got a chance to quiet the diesel and learn a bit more about how Pisces sails. Approximately parallel with Santa Cruz we had our first equipment failure of the trip. Jacob, down below at the chart, asked Julia to alter course to make the turn up the coast. Julia tried to change the autopilot heading, and found that the control unit was blank and the helm was locked. Luckily, when we cut power to the autopilot the helm released, leaving us to hand steer for the next 14 hours in half hour shifts.
This leg of the trip was short, but difficult. Heavy cloud cover meant that we could not see the difference between the water and sky. We were surrounded by pitch black. The bow would climb upwards unannounced, and drop into the trough spraying water back over the boat. We chose to stay East of the large vessel shipping channels, and although this was the most direct route, it meant that we encountered a lot of small boat traffic throughout the night. Radar was indispensible here, but we still needed both sets of eyes on watch the entire time. In retrospect, were we making this trip again, we might choose to head out farther offshore past the shipping channels, thus avoiding the fishing boats and crab pots we encountered inside.
We arrived outside the Golden Gate on schedule to meet the 7:45 slack tide, and after waiting for several freighters to transit the channel we came in under the bridge, exhausted but elated. We went directly to Richardson Bay, dropped anchor, looked around in semi-disbelief, and fell asleep.

Saying Goodbye and into the yard
After a wonderful day with Gary, Susan and Pammy, learning about Pisces, crawling around in nooks and crannies and a tearful goodbye, Pisces is ours.
The first step is to take her to the yard to get some work done to ensure that we sleep well at night up in San Francisco while Pisces sits in Oxnard. Jacob is in Chicago for work, so I fly down to Los Angeles and hire my Dad as crew for a day (for the cheap price of breakfast) to come help me move Pisces to the yard (picture to the left includes my crew and Pisces in the travel lift).
We leave Los Angeles as the sun is rising, stop at Coogies for our traditional father/daughter breakfast (Dad's been taking me there for years whenever he used to pick me up or drop me off when I was a camp counselor in Malibu), and make it to Vintage Marina by 8:30am. I've been cramming my head with diesel knowledge for the past week, trying to forget everything I knew about the Atomic Four in our Cal to make room for the diesel saavy I know I will need.
I have images of us somehow sinking the boat in the middle of the harbour, or ramming full speed into a multi-million dollar yacht; effectively crushing any possibility of cruising.
Once we get to the boat, it's a beautiful day, the engine is perfect, and Dad has claimed his spot on the cabin top for his lounging purposes. We get out of the slip no problem and spend a few minutes turning figure eights in the harbour so I can get the feel of the tiller before taking the boat into the hoist slip at Anacapa Boatyard.
We putter up to the boatyard, I'm feeling confidant, everything's going great (we've been here before for the pre-purchase haul). Johnathan the yard guy yells: "Reverse in!" I instictively yell "NO!" before realizing he's telling me what to do, not asking me. As a good sport, I make about four attempts to reverse in (bear in mind I've never reversed a full-keel 18K lb boat in my life, and have no clue which direction the prop walk is), and Dad says to me "want me to do it?" I shoot him a look of death, and continue in my futile efforts.
Finally the yard takes pity on me and I slowly come up to the dock in forward, throw them a dock line and they haul me in by hand.
Dad and I mooch around until the boat is set and blocked, and we head off on our next adventure home via ouija for a wonderful lunch, the cactus shop and singing rock and roll as loud as we can.
Out of the yard!
Three weeks later and only a few surprises (the boat has no blisters after all--but we do need a new shaft), Jacob is back from Chicago and we head down to take Pisces back from the yard to the marina. Anacapa Yard has been remarkably friendly, un-sexist, reasonable in their rates and accomodating to our need to deal with issues from San Francisco.
This time Jacob takes the tiller, I cast us off. We get to our fairway and back into the slip with no major mishaps (although we must've looked like we were going to hit the concrete piling, becuase a nice gentleman ran over and offered us a hand).

We had to pack up sooner than we would of liked to get back to Los Angeles; but Pisces now has a new packing gland, new bottom paint and no blisters. We'll be back very soon to spend our first weekend crawling around the boat, fixing some stuff, selling some stuff and going for a sail!

We started dreaming about finding our next boat a year and a half before we found Pisces, and we had many adventures along the way. What follows are the highlights of our search-the wonderful people, the interesting boats.

The First Physical Step
After months of perusing internet boat sales sites, and walking docks in the Bay area, our first physical step towards boat hunting was when we flew down to Los Angeles in spring 2006, to see a boat we'd been oogling on Yachtworld, a 31 foot Cape George cutter. Ruck the broker (who's cell phone was constantly ringing with "bad to the bone") also showed us a Nor'Sea down in Long Beach. We took advantage of our rental car, and drove up to Ventura to see a Williard 8-ton, and down to San Diego to see a famous Bristol Channel Cutter, Baba 30, another Nor'Sea, meeting Greg the broker (who called us for months afterwards with large expensive boats with teak decks). We came away from that whirlwind visit with our heads spinning in boats, costs, teak decks, transportation-buying a "real boat" was going to be a big deal!
We continued looking once we were back in the Bay, scouring Craigslist, Yachtworld, Latitude 38 for boats that might be "the one." Walking the docks became a weekend pasttime, driving to Sausalito, or the East Bay marinas, seeing which boats we liked, and thought we could trust with our lives. We left notes on people's boats with our phone number, asking them about their boats, we emailed people from class associations, and had some wonderful experiences.

Meeting generous enthusiasts
We had been researching Westsail 32s for a few months when we decided to see if there was an active association in the Bay. I contacted Jay, with Pygmalion, (A WS32 in Alameda) and he generously offered to take us out sailing for a day, and introduced us to another WS32 owner (Craig) who had gone to Hawaii.
We were also looking at Falmouth Cutters, the little sister to the expensive Bristol Channel Cutter. We went and met Ron at his boat in Alameda, and loved the tiny, beautiful craftsmanship of the boat.
A Cabo Rico was posted for sail on Craigslist. It was out of our price range, but such a beautiful boat that we wanted to see it just in case. The owner kindly offered to take us for a sail, and the boat was perfect under sail. On the way back in to the marina the engine quit, we had to anchor in the channel and were towed in by the Harbor Master. A lesson to be careful with engines.

Summer of Boats
Everywhere we went over the summer, we met cruising enthusiasts who shared their experience and knowledge.
We saw (this is not a comprehensive list):
Ingrid 38
Tayana 37
Roughwater 33
Williard 8T
Cape George Cutter 31
Bristol Channel Cutter
Nor'Sea 27 (2)
Bounty II (2)
Alberg 35
Bristol 40
Nicholson 31
Cabo Rico 38
Sabre 36
Baba 30
Flicka
Morris Frances
Freya 40
Valiant 32
Cal 34
Islander36
Contessa 32
Pacific Seacraft 25
Pacific Seacraft Dana
Shannon 28

Making our first offer
In August 2006 we took a trip up to Port Townsend, to see a Nicholson 31. It was the first boat we had seen that could be the one. But it didn't sit exactly right-we couldn't put our finger on it. There was also a beautiful little Francis next to it in the lot that was very distracting. We made an offer through Larry the broker, but it all fell apart in the negotiation stages. We cancelled our tickets to go up for the survey, and told the surveyor the deal had fallen through. Everything we looked at after that was compared to the Nic 31. Had we made a mistake in walking away?

Cal 34
A Cal 34 was posted on Yachtworld for a great price. It was ready for cruising, had been cruised down from the Northwest, but due to family illness the couple had to abandon their cruise. Ironically, it was for sale through the same broker (George, with the slogan "Everyone needs a bigger boat") that we had bought our first boat from (a Cal 29). The price was great, we knew Cals, the weak points and the strong, it would put to rest our desire to take our Cal 29. Jacob went to look at it, and took me back the next weekend. We made an offer. Then did the numbers. Although it was a great price, our gut feeling was that the boat wasn't the right boat for us. The clinching reason: There was very little room for storage. It was difficult to imagine where we could store the spares, safety gear, food, and other things that we will want to bring along.
We pulled out of the offer.

December 2006
It was almost the end of the month, we'd been searching for a whole year, and were about to go to New Zealand for Christmas. We'd just pulled out of the Cal 34 offer, and were constantly debating the differences between the Cal 34 and the Nicholson 31 (which was still for sale): two ends of the spectrum.
Jacob saw that a Jason 35 in Oxnard had significantly lowered their asking price. We'd looked at the listing before, but dismissed it because of it's high price. We were just a week too late on another Jason 35 earlier in the year in the Pacific Northwest, and were always keeping our eyes out for them. Jacob bought a one day ticket to LA and went to see Pisces two days before we were leaving for New Zealand.
He came home exhausted and exhilarated. He showed me all the pictures, and the boat was beautiful. But I was hesitant, it was on the upper limit of our price range, I didn't want to end up with the perfect boat but with no money to be able to leave and cruise.
We talked for hours about how we could make it work, what were we going to do.
We decided to go for it, and made an offer (which we mailed on the way to the airport to go to New Zealand).

January 2007
We interviewed surveyors over the phone from New Zealand, and found Ross Hubbard, who we knew was the right surveyor when he said "oh, I know that boat, they were right next to my boat in the yard, and I saw him working on it. I would love to inspect the work that he did." So Ross cancelled his existing survey for the day and the weekend we got back from New Zealand, we went down to Pisces for the survey and haul. It was a big step, we were making an offer on a boat that I'd never seen that was at the top of our price range. I was nervous. But as soon as I saw Pisces I knew. She was the one.