Smitten (How Our Boat Found Us)

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The Other Side of the Boat
SMITTEN

Let's back-up and start at the beginning...

Oh, the sweet, sweet joy of irrepressible, illogical love—whether it be for the “well-beyond-our reach” homecoming queen or the “well-beyond-our-funds”(and insurance capabilities) cherry-red sports car. We’ve all felt it. Reveled in it! We’ve all said, “To hell with the consequences!” andtaken the plunge. It seems like only yesterday…

It was on a crisp, bright autumn morning in Annapolis when across the boatyard I spotted a brawny, broad-shouldered brute of a boat. My heart tugged me and I tugged my husband Jeff across the yard and up the ladder. The exterior was craggy with experience-worn teak decks. Its noble bone structure personified toughness. But along with that bad boy exterior came a heart of gold, and this one was 18 carats. At the bottom of the companionway steps I took a look over my shoulder into the saloon. “This is the one!” I hollered up at my husband.
Always the voice of caution, he replied, “We’ll see.” And as if I were a headstrong teenager, the more words of caution and reasonable alternatives I heard, the more stubbornly enamored I became.

To really understand the dynamics of all this you have to understand the events that brought about this bonding of woman with boat. My husband and I had taken an active interest in sailing two years before our current boat hunt. This was extremely difficult, considering we lived in landlocked southwest Kansas, where the biggest body of water for 300 miles is the municipal swimming pool. After several charters, we decided to reconfigure our lives and spend more time on the water. But first we had to find “the boat.” At about 2,000 miles away, Annapolis was the closest shopping place and the October boat show was the queen of the sailboat malls.
Of course, before we headed east, we pinned down exactly what we wanted in a boat—strength being at the top of his list, beauty at the top of mine. And we made a solemn vow: We were only looking, not buying! As a woman who has come home too many times with too many shopping bags full after making the same vow, I should have known better.

During the show we climbed on and off of hundreds of boats. While he exclaimed over engine space, I compared leather to printed chintz and admired the decorative ferns. Every boat was beautiful in its own right, but not one called out to me. Finally a boat dealer at the show, having heard our requirements, steered us to a used boat that fit every one of them.
It did nothing for us! But, it was from the deck of this boat that I spotted my true love, a 1987 40-foot Tashiba. It was kind of like being set up on a blind date and falling for your date’s best friend.

I guess I should explain what my requirements for our future boat were. First and foremost, I had to have a scoop-end swim platform. We had chartered a boat once in the Caribbean that had only a short boarding ladder on the side, and I discovered the only way I was going to be able to haul myself out of the water and on to that boat in anything resembling a speedy (forget graceful) manner was if a hungry shark suddenly chose me as his mid-afternoon snack. Even then it was going to take an act of God. Other items on the wish list included a spacious aft cabin (with a queen-size berth) and a nice roomy cockpit in which to entertain all the new boat friends we would be making.

So how did this hunk of a boat with its decidedly round stern manage to turn my head. For the first time in days, when I ended my climb down the companionway I knew I was on a boat. The timeless woodwork and the heavy brass portholes told me so. Absent were the ferns and designer fabric I had thought so important, and in their place was the tried-and-true style of protective close-knit spaces and gracious curves. It just kept whispering, “I’ll take care of you.”
Meanwhile, up on deck, my husband was cautiously rejoicing with fingers tightly crossed, for the boat had everything he had dreamed of. A full keel, lots of weight, a cutter rig and that canoe end—everything he knew would protect us well during whatever cruising we decided to do.
Oh, I forgot to tell you—he was loaded, and I appreciate that in a male of any type. I’m talking about the boat now, not my husband. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know boats are traditionally female, but not this one.) The boat had been outfitted for extensive offshore cruising by a lawyer who took a two-year hiatus from work. He sailed around for two years and then put the boat and everything on it up for sale. The equipment included would have taken us years to purchase if we’d had to equip the boat ourselves. The guy had back-ups for his back-ups.

In order to finalize the deal, we hired a crusty old surveyor, who acted as though we were doing him a disservice by asking him to come survey our boat. He was truly confounded that we had come looking at the first boat and had ended up with this one. Dumb luck, I guess, and I know he would agree. He merely rolled his eyes when we talked of refinishing the teak deck (which we learned later had merely mellowed to a healthy gray and required no refinishing at all). He grumbled when we mentioned getting rid of all the unsightly bric-a-brac on the stern end (which turned out to be our wind generator mount and a steering system). But he just couldn’t control himself when we allowed as how we’d have to get rid of those ugly red sails. “Who would ever pick that color?” we asked. Slowly and patiently, gritting his teeth, he explained that “tanbark” was the traditional sail color. (I really wish I was making all this up.)
After, two days of the surveyor’s mutinous banging around on our hull and sniffing through lockers, we were finally ready to take the boat out for its sea trial. “I suppose you’ll want to get the sails up,” the surveyor inquired, obviously annoyed at the thought and hoping we would be too embarrassed to show anybody those “ugly red” sails. But we insisted, and he ended up grinning the whole time as the heavy boat heeled over smoothly and, to our amazement, made an easy seven knots.

Once again he scoffed at our naivete, “What did you expect? After all she’s a Bob Perry design.”

Whoever he is. We had no idea at the time.

Needless to say the boat passed the survey with flying colors and became ours. And two weeks later we sacrificed an already booked charter in the Caribbean to sail our new boat on the Chesapeake. We snagged our first crab pot, ran aground a couple of times, and the dinghy motor crapped out on us. We loved it so much we came back six months later and spent the next six months discovering the Bay. From Langford Creek where really big things (skates) went bump in the night, to Dobbins Island for our first thunderstorm and dragging, to Baltimore’s wonderful Inner Harbor to countless secluded anchorages and charming towns, we fell in love with the Bay while falling more in love with our boat.

Since then we have stretched our sea legs a little and have sailed as far north as Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, where there is no such thing as a secluded anchorage and boaters have a really peculiar notion of anchoring. (“What do you mean I’m dragging in forty feet of water, I’ve got eighty feet of rode out!”) And we’ve gone as far south as Key West which is just plain peculiar and proud of it! And are currently exploring the Beautiful Bahamas. I’m happy to say the love affair lives on. My first impression of our boat has held true and he has loyally protected us from wind and wave and, more frequently, ourselves. And of course compromises and adjustments have had to be made along the way—as in any relationship. The captain bought me an extended ladder so I can exit the water gracefully should any hungry sharks come cruising, and we’ve always been able to make more room in the cockpit for new friends. Although a nice rear end with a scoop swim platform can still turn my head, I’m standing by my boat.

Next Blog: Back to The Rules: A little more practical way of picking your boat