OUR JOURNEY
The journey began before we bought Sea Venture. The early story goes way back to my childhood and then slides forward to 2003. Read it here in a piece called A Sailing Odyssey (See page tab).
In October of 2003, we bought Sea Venture from a fellow who said her teak decks had all been replaced with new fiberglass. And, oh, that stucco on top? Great non-skid. In the 1970′s and 80′s, Hudson, Formosa, and some other builders of William Garden designs used yards in Taiwan. Though their craftsmen were artists with teak–the inside wood on SV is pettable–and they built incredibly solid hulls, they had trouble with teak decks, which is why we bought this particular boat. Call us naive, thinking all we’d have to do was change the wavelets of stucco to something more… um…shall we say, in keeping with the elegant nature of the boat? When the folks at the yard tried removing the mess, sheets of it pealed off. Oops. Underneath, they found fiberglass that leapt into their hands; non-marine-grade, rotting plywood; and a whole bunch of old, rotten teak. So began Sea Venture’s nine-month in-Mexico refit, and so began the transfer of cash into that vast hole in the water that boats occupy, with huge chunks benefiting the airlines and gasoline vendors during Michael’s supervisory trips every two to three weeks. We even bought SV her own little car that Michael used–instead of the gas-guzzling truck–to haul things down or back or to get him from an Arizona airport to San Carlos.
The gallery page has a picture of Michael next to the Big Boat as well as photos of the new glass decks the folk at Marina Seca San Carlos installed. These are good folk to work with. They made some mistakes in application of the Awlgrip: five years later they fixed it. Not that we got away with anything on the 2009 haul-out. Far from it. But we do now have a gorgeous deck. So, we will say thank you and trust the Lord with our finances.
By July of 2004, Sea Venture had a new Alwgripped deck, shiny new Awlgripped topsides, and all sorts of upgrades. Joshua and his friend Andrew Hale joined us for the drive from CA (and from the Phoenix airport for Andrew and Normandie) in Michael’s loaded-to-the-gills truck. It was one of those praise-the-Lord-anyway trips. The truck transmission began to fail in the desert of Sonora, the customs agent at Kilometer 21 wanted us to unload the fifty cubic feet of stuff packed on top of the outboard–just in case the motor was new enough for them to demand duty (it wasn’t, so our paperwork sufficed), and we limped into San Carlos to find the boat not even close to being ready to go out for our fun week of snorkeling and exploration. Instead, we struggled for days with last-minute, leftover issues, and play turned into work for all. Still, the marina is lovely, and young men in their twenties can be easily satisfied with great food and a dinghy with a fast motor. We did anchor one night in a lovely cove where Andrew accidentally donated his glasses to a myopic fish.
Michael and I sailed SV from San Carlos across the Sea of Cortez, after dealing with a broken boom mid-sea. (An area of dry rot had gone undetected and hidden under paint.) The main sail held all that day as we beam reached toward the west, but we lowered it as night fell–chubascos (powerful summer storms) come up suddenly in the Sea as I knew from my last sailing experience there. We motorsailed overnight and into the next day, then anchored the second night on the Baja side in Bahia San Evaristo. A plumbing issue kept Michael working into the wee hours, but we wanted to get an early start, hoping to arrive in La Paz by daylight. Then, a leaking transmission forced us to head into the wind with only the jib and jigger (mizzen) raised and no auxiliary power to hasten the trip. We tacked a lot that day, having fun with our new Furuno radar/chart plotter, checking its accuracy by plotting our course on the paper charts. The autopilot and I did most of the sailing and charting, while Michael kept busy in the engine room, hoping he could repair the transmission problems as we traveled. We really wanted to have the engine available when we entered La Paz harbor. Night found us again at sea, the lights of La Paz creating a glow in the distant sky. I decided to heave to so we wouldn’t get too close to the islands to port or the cliffs to starboard. This proved a fortuitous choice when the wind piped up into the 30′s with occasional larger gusts, and the seas became confused and lumpy. I learned a lot about stabilizing Sea Venture that night as she took the waves and slid over the them, inching along in the hove-to position at about a knot. (Since those day, we have also learned that Bahia de la Paz and the northern islands are subject to these nightly winds called Corumuels.)
At dawn things quieted. I’d heard the dolphins blowing in the early night hours; now we saw them leaping around the boat. One danced, did a flip in the air, fell on his back, again and again. What fun. Michael saw a shark–fortunately, I missed his slinking shape. We sailed toward La Paz, and as we neared the harbor, Michael massaged the transmission with extra oil, so that we tucked neatly into our slip at Marina de La Paz. While I spent the day checking us in, Michael played mechanic with the help of Jesus Cabrera, a delightful local mechanic who was small enough to fit back behind the engine where he could play with the transmission.
The next days and weeks were spent back and forth to Mexico–me from NC and Michael from CA–checking out the repaired transmission in a sea trial, importing a new transmission when that continued to leak, driving back and forth to Cabo to deal with customs, having the new tranny installed, me doing bright work in 107 degree weather, making friends, eating. Did I mention the great food?
Sea Venture finally made it to CA in late September. She held down the fort at Delta Bay Marina in Isleton, where she underwent extensive restoration. Michael spent evenings and weekends working on her innards, ripping out miles of old wire; antique, worn-out systems; tired furnishings; tired, brittle plumbing. On December 2, 2006, we moved to Delta Bay Marina in Richmond, CA — a few miles closer to the Golden Gate.
As Admiral, I got to make new settee cushions, new equipment covers, and new shades. A dear friend, Denise Smith, who lives aboard their lovely Tayana 36, Whisper’s Echo, got busy on her sewing machine and made sail covers and a new bimini for the boat. Thank you, Denise! I miss our walks together along the lovely shoreline.
Michael built new booms out of Sitka Spruce, put up Strong Tracks for our main and mizzen. We had Pineapple Sails redo the main to work on these and the Yankee as a furling sail. Lee Sails built us a light-air genoa, a new staysail and a new mizzen. Michael designed and bult a new galley in the lower salon, with the Northern Lights generator under the U-cabinet. A new nav station with all the new radar/radio equipment is in the pilot house. The lower salon has a Newport diesel heater and new book cases. I won’t tell you all about the aft head; you’d be jealous. Both have new toilets, one manual, one electric. Before we left SF Bay, Michael installed Spin-tec roller furling on both headsails.
Now, we’re back where we began. It’s January 2010. We got through Hurricane Jimena here. We have newly painted decks. Our Mexican journey began in Ensenada. How we got from there to here with my newly installed Splendide washer/dryer,the air conditioning, and the 45 GPH watermaker Michael built, is documented on our blogs. Sea Venture’s Journey or the earlier days on Sailblogs.
