Monday, December 31, 2007

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Had you whispered in my ear two years ago that at end of 2007 I'd be selling my house, quitting my job, going back to school, gearing up to sail the world, and oh-by-the-way ass over tea kettle in love, I would have enjoyed a hearty guffaw at your expense. "HA HA HA" I would bellow, holding my belly and pointing at such foolishness. "What a maroon!" I'd chuckle to myself as I slowly shook my head. But as it turns out, you'd be right and I'd owe you an apology. I'm not great at apologies so consider this a sheepish smile and a manly chock on the shoulder and then we shall never speak of it again.

The restlessness showed up sometime in 2006. I started to get the feeling like my life was on railroad tracks and the scenery looked all the same. I'd been working for the same company for going on 7 years. I settled into a pattern of work, friends, and TV. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. I dreaded being asked the standard "What's new?" question because my answer was always the same. I used my weekends to shake up the pattern and that worked for a time. I'd head off on my motorcycle or con some unsuspecting friends into backpacking trails that far exceeded our physical conditioning. Come Monday morning, I'd find myself sore and covered with bugs but right back on the same railroad tracks motoring past the same scenery.

Around this time, I'd ended up with a very few extra ducats in my savings account from selling my condo and the smidgeon of stock options I'd been hanging onto. The financially conservative Jason would have promptly buttoned up that pile of change into mutual funds and CD's and fiscal what-not. But another side of me felt like this was an opportunity to derail. I decided to go back to school and finish the degree I started 17 years ago. That was the good news. The bad news was that during all my fucking around at the University of Oregon 17 years ago, I never got around to taking any sort of math class. Therefore, a large chunk of 2007 was dedicated to suffering the slings and arrows of a year of calculus in preparation for the computer science program at the University of Washington. I'm keeping my job in tact long enough to polish off all the prerequisite classes before going back to school full time this spring.

Since I'd swapped out my smallish suburban condo for a more expensive townhouse in downtown Ballard, I had a problem deciding what I was going to do about my mortgage payment after the money stopped coming in. I debated whether to hemorrhage cash out of savings to pay for my townhouse, to get a roommate to stifle the flow, or just sell the place and immerse myself back in the college lifestyle of shag carpeted studio apartments. Eventually, and with the help of a good friend, I arrived at what I find to be a ridiculously elegant solution. The long version of the story is written up here. The shorter version goes something like this: sell the house, buy a sailboat, move on board. And up until about a couple weeks ago, I was charging in that direction. But before I finish that thought, there's another matter to be tended to.

Our first date was the Seattle Boat Show. We walked amongst the boats, laughing and flirting. We had a great time talking over food and beer at a local bar. As evening approached, we decided to sneak back into the boat show after hours to walk among the boats without all the crowds. And that's when I figured out that this girl was different. Christy and I have known each other just a few short months but it feels like years. I'm taken aback at how much we parallel each other. The things we want out of life, the way we see events, that which makes us giddy are all eerily similar.

From very early on, plans of our future just naturally evolved. One day a few months back, we both had crappy days at work and school. We were both cranky and needed a diversion. So we decided that evening we'd plan the Work Sucks Tour aboard the s/v No Tan Lines. I stopped at a book store on the way over to Christy's houseboat and bought a map of the world. We spent an evening pouring over different islands of the world deciding how we were going to sail to each one.

"We should go to Easter Island."

"OK, while we're at it, let's go to Christmas Island. They can't be that far apart right?"

"I'd guess about four months."

As so it was that we forged our plan to set sail. Our destinations are still pretty fuzzy and mostly irrelevant. Life together on board a sailboat at the whims of the weather is what appeals. We're targeting 2010 as the point where we cast off, take a left at the Straight of Juan de Fuca and sail towards azure waters and umbrella drinks. That should give me enough time to finish up school and for us to even work a bit to build up a cruising kitty. Oh, and buy a boat. And learn how to sail it.

The more our lives intertwine, the more they get fragmented between two households, neither one of which ever has enough clean clothes. After lots of discussions about selling houses and buying sailboats and living aboard at the dock, we decided that our life needs one household not two. Since Christy already lives on a bad-to-the-ass houseboat on Lake Union, it became quickly obvious that we could scrunch our two worlds down into the 450 square feet on board her houseboat. At some point in the spring, I'll sell or rent out my house and settle into the houseboat. And then we'll start off on this life together.

I want to take a second to say thanks for stopping by. This blog is mostly a mental exercise for me and secondarily a place for my family and friends to stop by and shake their heads at my goings on. But it means a lot to me that you all stop by every now and again. I hope you have all had a wonderful past year and that you're all healthy and happy and that your life is on an upwards trajectory.

2008 is gonna kick a metric ton of ass.

Sunday, December 30, 2007

seemed a good idea at the time

Good ideas are a function of context. What seems like a good idea at one moment can be pure folly the next. And so it was in a cloud of vodka and various other forms of liquid courage, we all agreed wholeheartedly that the only logical course our houseboat party could take at that juncture was for all of us to get naked and huck ourselves into the December-chilled Lake Union water. It was only as my naked white ass rotated through 180 degrees during my unsightly front flip down towards the black water that I gave pause to reflect.

Maybe we shouldn't have left the blaring deck lights on.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

delivery

JohnL and Jess scored themselves a slip in Shilshole to nest their big shiny Hunter 375, s/v Endless Winter. I partook in the delivery from her original slip on Lake Union through the canal, out the locks and into their fancy new home on Shilshole's M dock. After exiting the locks, we hoisted sail and took off south on a close haul. Right up until the point we saw the teeth of an interesting weather system coming out of the south to meet us. We tucked tail, put in two reefs and ran downwind back to Shilshole just as the rain hit. A tense but well executed docking maneuver called for a round of whiskey for all.

JohnL and Jess - congratulations! Endless Winter's a beautiful ride!


left to right: JohnL, Jess, Jess' dad Bill, Jess' brother Matt

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

s/v endless winter

So you remember that entry where I told you JohnL bought a boat and it was a great big Tartan named s/v Adios?

I lied.

Or rather, circumstances changed a bit. The survey came back a bit rough on good ol' Adios so JohnL and Jess bid her adieu. No sooner did they sadly walk away from Adios then they stumbled across this little crumpet of floating luxury:



Say a hearty hello to shortly-to-be-christened s/v Endless Winter and her proud new owners. The inevitable post describing a night of drunken back-slapping aboard this posh vessel, however delayed, will be forthcoming. I promise.

Would I lie to you?

Thursday, December 13, 2007

on the one hand

On the one hand sits a nice, shiny production boat. A Jeanneau or maybe a Catalina with all the amenities that come with such boats. A house-sized interior. Great big aft cabin. Shiny wood. Big airy portholes. A swim deck with hot and cold showers. Definitely the choice for the majority of time you spend at anchor or the dock. Lots of room to pass around a pitcher of gin and tonics. This is not however, a boat that likes to be out of sight of land. This is not a boat that welcomes six foot following seas. This boat subscribes to the Tuck Tail And Run school of foul weather management. That's great in the San Juan Islands. Not so much in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

And on the other hand sits a burly bluewater brick shithouse of a boat. Pacific Seacraft. Island Packet. Lots of other names that I can't even afford to type their names in a blog entry, let alone purchase. Beautiful lines. Overhung sterns. Full keels. Skeg-hung rudders. Small sheltered cockpits with high coamings. A tight interior riddled with handholds and lee cloths. This boat subscribes to the Is That All Ya Got? school of foul weather management. Six foot seas feel like home aboard this boat. This is not the boat that holds cocktail parties. You're in the middle of the Atlantic. Who's around to have a cocktail party with anyhow?

I've identified the ends of spectrum and love them both for what they are. What I don't know how to identify is the middle range. We're not sailing Cape Horn here. But sailing to Mexico is well within reality. Or Hawaii. Bermuda. Europe. And when we get there, I think we'll mix up some gin and tonics and spread out in the cockpit.

Still no closer to knowing what I want to buy.

Friday, December 7, 2007

crickets

I'm having altogether no fun right now so no updates to the blog. I figured the interwebs don't really want to read about how much fun I'm not having.

This quarter is drawing to close and calculus is on its way out of my life. Which means more time for sailing and general shenanigans which usually end up on here.

Monday, November 19, 2007

up the mast

Nooo... not me. Me = deathly scared of heights. Fisher went up his mast this weekend to clear the goldfish out of the deck light mounted on the spreader before we sailed on Sunday. In the process, he snapped a couple cool shots of way-the-hell-up-there.


Fisher in rare air.


s/v Patriot II (soon, I'm told, she'll be renamed Whitecloud)


Jess pretending not to notice what Fisher's doing with his "tiller".


Hi large fast steel freighter!


The recently married couple.


I'm just sure I'm being useful here.


Some filled Yankee canvas in a rare moment. After boat speed through the water peaking at 6 knots, we set a new record of sustained 0.0 knots through the water.

Friday, November 16, 2007

docking pics

One of the fine folks at Puget Sound Sailing Group (Sherri, I'm guessing?) took some pics of me docking a couple weeks back. Since I've been doing fuckall on the blogging front while school tenderizes the life out of me, I thought I'd throw these up here.


On approach.


Pulling in.


"What do you mean the engine QUIT?"


"Hey, what didya kill the engine for?"
"Shaddup."


awwww....

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

rock you like a... really strong breeze

Saturday was another outing with the Puget Sound Sailing Group, this time out of Shilshole in Ballard. Our flotilla consisted of a posh Elite 32 and 2 J24's. Ken W. skippered the schmancy Elite 32 with her furnace, galley, couches and berths while Ken V. and I each skippered an extremely bare - and in Ken's sake, partially functioning - J24.

The winds were, lessee... big. Really big. The 32 registered a high of 27 knots apparent wind. That's almost twice the previous max speed I'd ever sailed in. We left the main up and piled the jib on the bow for most of the day.

Ken V. had the same idea, but apparently the J24 they were on - Slicker Than Snot - wasn't particularly slick raising the main in gonzo wind. After a frustrating hour of doing "crazy ivans" trying to stay into the wind to get the main raised, they pulled the boat around and headed in to shore for a spot of bar sailing.

Christy and Cathy, her friend from her racing days in Cleveland, got our main hoisted and we flew out into the wind on a close haul heading south around Magnolia. We got bounced around a bit and soaked but it was wicked fun. Christy and Cathy were both super comfortable and really helpful teaching me things like how to surf the boat down a wave to keep the bow from slapping. We made it down to the Elliot Bay Marina before turning around for a broad reach downwind.

On coming back into Shilshole Bay, we circled by the sea lions to say hey. They were unimpressed and a few of them were right pissed off. Eesh, cranky. Since we were the last to arrive and everyone was hanging out on the 32 when we pulled in, I got to dock the boat with EVERYONE watching. I can't begin to tell you how much fun I wasn't having when the engine quit on me about thirty feet from the end of the slip.


Ken W., Mat, Tammy, Katherine and Nancy hanging out in the first class accomodations aboard "Quintessence".


Cathy, Christy and Sherri hanging in the steerage accomodations aboard "Slicker than Snot". You saw Titanic, us po' folk have better parties.


Skipper Ken keeps a weather eye.


Christy at the helm.


Cathy at the ready.


I asked Christy to get some shots with my camera as water came up over the bow. This is the last picture I have that doesn't have a big blob of water on the lens. Huh, didn't see that coming.


Fun.


More water onto the lens. At this point, the camera is now turning itself on and off and operating the zoom sans operator input. I think something in the water re-animated my camera. Just like in Pet Cemetary only with digital cameras, not creepy children. Stupid zombie camera.


This is the part where I'd really like to not gybe.


The reason I'd like to not gybe is that Cathy prefers the contents of her skull to stay in her skull. She can be such a princess.


Contemplating the Nalgene bottles on board full of handmade margaritas.


Cathy steering us this way and that.


"27 knots? Meh."

Monday, November 5, 2007

everybody's working for the weekend

Friday night: sunset sail on Fisher's boat.
Saturday: sailing a J24 around Magnolia into Elliot Bay in 27kt apparent wind
Sunday: day sail on Fisher's boat watching some bad-ass sailboats racing

I'll post more later but I wanted to throw up these pics from Fisher's boat.


Proud skipper on his shiny boat.


JohnL poking his head out of the cockpit


JohnL and I hanging out aboard the soon-to-be s/v Whitecloud.

Friday, November 2, 2007

s/v adios

JohnL and his wife Jess bought a boat! They scored themselves a 1982 (or thereabouts) Tartan 37 which will be their launch platform for climbing and skiing up and down the Inner Passage. Their offer was accepted and now they wait on the financing, haul out, and survey part of the buying process. Expect another post full of drunken back-slapping in a few weeks or so.

In the meantime, I'll supress my envy long enough to post some pics:


s/v Adios


Jess doing some driving.


Salon.


Starboard.


Galley.

I can't wait to meet her! Congrats, John and Jess!

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

s/v whitecloud

My buddy Fisher sealed the deal on his 1973 Yankee 30 a few weeks back and then promptly flew off to New Orleans. On his return this weekend, JohnL and I hauled a "shetland" pony keg of some bad beer into the cockpit and drank to the future s/v Whitecloud and her proud new owner. We followed our onboard celebration with a debaucherous evening at The Sloop (are there any other kinds of evenings at that bar?) capped off by some horrific pool playing and a disappearing act by Fisher. He must've been offended at my pool playing.

The next day, we took Patriot II - her current name - and her monster genoa out for a spin around the Puget Sound and cleared out the previous evening's cobwebs.

Mr. Fisher - here's to you and s/v Whitecloud. Congratulations! When are we going sailing again?

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

tangential

In 2005, three guys from Seattle piled on to a 44' cutter named s/v SohCahToa (the name s/v Never Seen A Girl Naked must have already been taken) and sailed it around the world. As they hopped from ridiculous tropical paradise to ridiculous tropical paradise, they were so kind as to post frequent and hilarious updates to their website. I lost several hours this last weekend reading from start to finish, only to find out that they just triumphantly returned a few days back.

These guys are all sorts of bad ass. Here's to ya, fellas. Welcome back.

http://www.svsohcahtoa.com/

Friday, October 26, 2007

rabbit hole

I know fuckall about boats.

That's the point that I'm starting from in this little venture. I don't know how to maintain them, fix them, keep them running in the face of insurmountable odds. Oh, I'm sure I'll learn. I'm also sure these lessons will be hard fought and caked with layers of oily bilgewater and cuss words.

Because of that, I've been eyeballing the new-ish end of the used boats spectrum. I don't want to inherit someone else's high blood pressure, mine'll do nicely thanks. In the new-ish end of the used boats spectrum, my budget lands me in the middle of cheap production boat territory. I've been wading through listings of Beneteaus, Jeanneaus, Hunters, and Catalinas trying to distinguish what level of quality I can expect from these boats.

There seems to be alot of poo-pooing out there amongst the saltier crowd about these production boats but I can't ever seem to get an unbiased opinion why. Too slow, not well built, cheap interiors, too slow. After I hear this, nobody follows that up with something that tells me what that means, almost like they're just repeating what they've been told when they bought a boat. I can't figure out how to get an unbiased factual understanding of the sort of differences in quality between these low end production boats and the likes of say Tartan, C&C, Sabre, HR, etc.

I'm starting to broaden my boat searches into boats of finer pedigree but slightly older. I'm finding some beautiful boats (who am I kidding, they all look great to me) but I'm not quite sure how to evaluate an older boat. What does 16 years of saltwater do to a sailboat? What does it do to an engine? Was it maintained? And how in the world do I know if it's been maintained?

I'm crawling down a rabbit hole here. Every piece of information raises more questions than it answers. Anybody have any great advice, drop it in the comments.

Thursday, October 25, 2007

one for you, nineteen for me

Now.

Immediately. Post haste. Yesterday. That's when I want my boat. I'm not a patient guy and when I want something, it's usually right bloody now that I'd like it please and thanks. I've found umpteen boats on yachtworld that I must have, can't miss out, need to buy! However, there's this whole capital gains thing that's in my way. I bought my house in May 2006. If you sell a house less than two years after moving into it, you owe the gub'ment taxes on the profit you made. After two years? Free and clear. Before two years? Cornhole'd. So here I sit, waiting until May 13th, 2008 before I can sell my house whilst all these beautiful boats sail past my office window whispering "take me home!".

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

sailing lake washington

Christy and I went sailing with the Puget Sound Sailing Group out of the Island Sailing Club in Kirkland this weekend. After a game of musical outboards, we took out one of their Capri 22's, skippered by the ever-capable Mat (with one T, not two).

Much to Christy's disappointment, we had no spinnaker to fly and go zipping by everyone on the lake. However, we had lots of decent wind to sail in and kept the rails of the boat in the water enough that everyone went home happy.


Ken helping out with swapping out the outboards on one of the Capri's. This would have been a great pic if they had actually dropped the motor in the water. However, this was an entirely uneventful exchange. Sad.


Christy and Mat working hard.


Mat looking nautical.


Me hanging out in my bulletproof life jacket.

(I'm completely running out of clever ideas for blog post titles. This is a sad indicator of the depth of my clever reservoir. Got suggestions? Leave 'em in the comments and I'll be happy to take credit.)

Friday, October 19, 2007

kayaking lake union

(I need to come up with a different title because this won't be the last time you'll see a post like this.)

Christy and I stepped out of her living room and into kayaks. (Any way you slice it, that kicks a metric ton of ass.) We decided we'd paddle from her houseboat on Eastlake up to the north and around into the Montlake cut. Our plan was foiled by both I'm-getting-really-hungry and did-you-bring-powerbars-I-didn't so we made it up to Agua Verde, a future kayak to dinner spot to be sure, and then turned around.

It was a rigorous paddle punctuated by frequent and long breaks at just about every cool boat/houseboat we saw.


Internet, meet Christy. Christy, internet. She is *nine* kinds of cool, people.


In on our of many breaks, we watched a sea plane land right over the top of us.



Action shot!


Paddling back at dusk.