We Own A Boat!

An old, beat down, somewhat neglected boat...but still, she was ours. The next two months, we spent several weekends driving down to the boat for inventorying, cleaning, and evaluating. Once our new slip was ready, we enlisted a friend to help Nathan make the 30 minute motor or sail, while I removed all our old docklines and drove to the new marina to get them set up in the new slip. What a moment to see Nathan come motoring down the marina entrance channel! And then our real fun began.

We knew nothing about owning a boat. And we may have had one of the oldest and smallest boats in our marina, but not once did any of the other sailors make fun of us or give us anything other than support and advice. We had a great introduction to the sailing community. We quickly found that most systems on the boat needed at least some work. Because this was a weekend project, and I was still a Nervous Nellie, we spent most of that first summer doing work and staying at the dock. We'd go out for day sails, but come nightfall, we were back in the marina. The biggest reason for this was the toilet. Or more specifically, the holding tank. We didn't have one. We'd had a bag, that was full of waste from years past, and no way to pump it out. With the Chesapeake Bay as a No Dumping zone, and rightly so (side note, that beautiful, unique, gorgeous area of the United States is currently under environmental crisis), my option for trips longer than a few hours was a bucket with a lid. Since we were paying $3500 a year for fancy, schmancy slip with clean, working toilets at the end of the dock, no thank you to the bucket option. Had I only known how much I'd come to love anchoring in a quiet cove, then that first season would have gone much differently.

Regardless, we forged ahead with installing a new holding tank and all new plumbing...and then the toilet didn't work. Nathan took it apart, cleaned everything, and nothing. Lots of research and thinking and staring...at summer's end, we bought a new toilet. And learned a great lesson in following Kenny Rogers' advice of knowing when to fold. We cleaned...and cleaned...and cleaned. How a 27' boat could get that dirty, I don't know. We examined sails, had a new roller furler edge sewed on, re-ran electrical, sanded and varnished, worked on the solar panels, took off the outboard motor for a service, made fabric covers for all exposed woodwork, repaired gelcoat, and the list goes on. Most important, we purchased a parachute fabric hammock to swing between the mast and headstay - the single best $30 we ever spent on boat improvements. We spent the summer sweating in the 90+ degree temps and running for cover into our cabin during frequent rain sqalls (which led to our biggest projects for the second season being a huge piece of Sunbrella to drape over the boom for sun/rain cover and fitting a window A/C unit into our companionway opening), some light sailing just to get out on the water, and enjoying what I came to call our "beach house." We may not have been sailing as much as we wanted, but 7pm on Friday nights had us making the 45 minute drive to the Bay, where we spent two glorious days by the water, returning home on Sunday nights refreshed and ready for another week of work.