Just Drop It

Hello all,

Honestly I have no idea what I am doing with a blog. I have never followed one and have only been asked to once (sorry Andrew, I tried). I just figure since we are going to be doing this trip I should keep my friends and family updated on what we are doing or not doing.

I guess I should recap on the last year or so. In fall 2011 my husband, Paul, and I took sailing classes together on little 14 ft sailboats in Newport Beach which was a lot of fun. I got really good at reading the wind and together we smoked the other boats (we were always racing but I don’t think anyone else knew that). Paul also (seriously) raced on a sailboat for about 8 months so he gained a lot of sailing knowledge then and that’s where his whole dream of sailing around the world started.

We bought our first sailboat, a 30 foot Tartan for those of you who know boats, back in May 2012 when I was about 8 months pregnant. Paul found it on craigslist so we went to meet a 30 something year old guy who had been living on it for the last few years. He sailed up and down the California coast and if I had to guess never cleaned it once. I almost laughed out loud when he told me we could keep the bean bag chair he had…holy gross, thanks but no thanks I am trying to get through life without any VD. She, Rita, was functional as a sailboat but not pretty (at all). She eventually came to earn the name Dirty Rita for good reason. Paul and some friends sailed it up from San Diego, thank you Dietz, Kamil and Matt, to our slip in the armpit of the Los Angeles Port where about 1/3rd of all the countries imported good come in. We figured I should stay back and do the driving and not put the life of our unborn child at risk, yet.

The first time we took it out we had no idea what we were doing and I was almost in tears. Swearing up and down that was the last time I would step foot on that boat. I thought we were going to die. The boat was tipping on its side, called heeling, and after Paul even admitted he was scared. Later when we went in is when the other sailors who live at the marina told us it was like 20-25 knots and that is why we didn’t see any other boats. We had no business being out in weather like that and from then on we learned to ask others and look at the wind speed before we took her out. Needless to say I did go back on the boat and we learned to sail her really well. We took her to Catalina island which is about 26 miles off the coast and spent a few weekends there relaxing and talking about our/his dream of sailing down to Mexico. After owning her for 1.5 years we decided if we were serious about sailing long distance the boat was too small and we needed to get a bigger one. We sold Rita pretty quickly and waited a month or so to start looking to save some money. After looking at 4 or 5 boats Paul took me to see a 36 foot Islander in Ventura and I was sold on it pretty quickly. It had a lot more room and good storage (very important when sailing long term on a boat) so we offered them a lot less than they were asking. Paul was really nervous like they wouldn’t take it. Looking back now I would’ve offered even less and asked a lot of other questions but that’s easy to say looking back…I’ll explain why later….stupid boat. So after a lot of back and forth with an old man, who has the onset of Alzheimer’s even though he doesn’t know it yet (at one point he called my mother in laws house a few times after we had left AND she had told him we weren’t there any more), we agreed on when to do the sea trial and ask the owner a lot of questions before we said yes. So we took the 2 hour drive and when we got on the boat and put our son Oliver in his life jacket he freaked out so I decided to stay on shore with him. He hadn’t been in one for a few months so we gave in for everyones sake. Oliver and I sat on shore talking with some boat kids who were definitely a little weird but very nice. He got back and we asked that brit (yes the previous owner was British) a bunch of questions and went home to make sure it was the one since it would be most of our savings. Paul was so pumped and he’s good at talking me into things so we bought it.

Why I feel like we got a little ripped off was because a big part of the reason we wanted this boat was because it has almost all of the extras we wanted (wind vane, water maker, stove/oven, autopilot). Well now it seems like all the stupid extras are broken and they’re not cheap to repair or replace. I just wish we had done more looking into everything before we said oh great this boat has it all. Paul, of course, tries to pretend like we got a good deal no matter and that it will be easy fixes. You know how people say nickel and dimming to death we are going to get thousand of dollared to death because everything that is broken is like a thousand dollars or more to fix. We also haven’t even paid the taxes on it…couple more thousand. I can hardly think about it or I just get all pissed off and blame Paul even though we decided together. For a long time he was so gung ho on 30 feet and that’s all we need and blah blah then all the sudden that wasn’t safe and we needed a bigger boat. I agree we did but you see what I am saying. He can find the information to back up whatever he wants that has to do with sailing. I shouldn’t have started writing about the boat problems you can tell my mood has soured over the last few sentences. We will make the most of it.