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.