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It’s been many weeks of chaos, living on the edge, packing, sorting, throwing away, pawning stuff off on neighbors, and things are finally feeling a bit more “normal” again. OK, it hasn’t been living on the edge, and our new lives are far from normal, but since last Thursday I’ve been able to get back to work part of the day, we’re sleeping well, and David is teaching his morning stretch classes without any issues. I’m also back to getting coffee in bed every morning thanks to my amazing husband, even if “bed” means the V berth on the boat.

We left Port Townsend on September 29, just a month beyond a full year since we left Point Richmond, CA. The weeks prior to that involved getting rid of stuff, storing what “little” we wanted to keep in UBoxes (those remained in storage in Port Townsend), and loading the 15′ moving van in the rain with the rest of the stuff we didn’t know if we were going to need or not. The first night, we stopped at David’s sister’s house in Eugene and set up our bedroom set there. She had just bought a 4 bedroom house, and didn’t have enough furniture. We can now drive 8 hours north and sleep on our bed and eat on our dining room table, and it helped her out too.

From there, we worked our way over Siskiyou Pass in a sketchy torrential downpour, and spent the night in Shasta, CA. It was LOVELY to see snow all over Mount Shasta. We’ve passed by here many times in the last year, and it’s looked like a big brown molehill. Shasta Lake had a lot more water in it too.

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We arrived in Richmond on Sunday, October 31, at 5p… just as the Richmond YC’s Great Pumpkin Race was gearing up for the party. What a homecoming! We saw most of our friends, some of our new Pacific NW friends, and got to hang out in our club which we hadn’t had the chance to do since before Covid. The next day, we unloaded the truck full of more stuff than we should have brought IN THE RAIN. In the rain up there, in the rain down here. The difference between the two is the PNW gets rain all the time, and California needs it. So, we now have a storage locker full of stuff we need to find a place for on the boat, or ditch it and call it a day. (Yeah, some of it will go back up to Port Townsend, because wherever we end up after this next part of our life’s journey will involve reacquiring everything that’s in those boxes.)

We’ve been living on the boat since October 31. This is a temporary situation until we can temporarily move into the temporary house sit up in the Berkeley Hills. That should happen in the next few weeks, at which point we can really start ripping into the boat and taking care of the bigger projects that need work. We have a long list, though every day I look around and am grateful that David and I made this happen. This boat is STUNNING… it’s like our own little Craftsman cottage. I mean, the drawers on this boat are dovetailed… on the front AND the back. I don’t think I’ve ever even owned antiques that had both sides dovetailed.

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And even though we’re back in Point Richmond and we know everybody and the lay of the land, things feel different. We’ve changed a lot in the last 14 months. We have grown together, we moved to a beautiful place, and met some amazing people. David retired from a full-time job, which has opened up both of our possibilities for freedom from being locked into the 8 to 5 grind (I already had that, but with him unlatched, we are both free to move about the cabin.) David loves racing, and I’ve started to get involved in it too… and we’re getting opportunities to travel and race which we did not have before. David has started racing with different people, which I’m very happy for him about.

After years of begging Ernie to go to the bathroom on the last boat, he doesn’t seem to have a problem with this one at all (crossing fingers this new habit of his remains when we go to Angel Island). On the last boat, he would walk halfway up the deck and pancake, scared to go any further. On this boat, he trots around it, lays on the deck, likes to sit on the bow and watch the water and the world go by. His life is a little nicer down here too, because he gets to lay in the sun and there’s more things for him to look at than hanging out at the foot of my desk all day long.

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We don’t take quiet and calm for granted; Port Townsend was teeming with relaxing and safety. The Bay Area not so much… though living here at the yacht club is calm and quiet. When we hear sirens, we note that we haven’t heard many of those in the last 14 months. Anyway, I won’t go into all the ways the Bay Area sucks, because it really doesn’t in a lot of ways. I’m looking forward to going to an art museum in the next couple of weeks… and I did go to Trader Joe’s last night, so for those of you in Port Townsend that are from here, you probably can read between the lines!

Speaking of rain, we had an “atmospheric river” come through here two days ago. 45+kt gusts, boat heeling in the slip, and it just rocked us to sleep. It was kind of nice. No leaks on the boat either… she’s dry.

The journey has started finally… many years in the making, many years thinking about it individually and together. To hell with status quo!

We’re leavin’ together
But still it’s farewell
And maybe we’ll come back
To Earth, who can tell?
I guess there is no one to blame
We’re leaving ground (leaving ground)
Will things ever be the same again?

I played piano at a friend’s wedding that took place in Stern Grove in San Francisco. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever played piano for a wedding; I’ve been doing that since I was about 13 years old, with my first performance at my mom and Carl’s wedding. I played Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring”. If you’ve ever heard or know this piece, it never ends. Ever. Ever ever. It just goes and goes and goes. At 13, I had no sense of the fact that I was just playing for the walk down the aisle… I was playing to hear myself play. Kind of funny when I think about it. Anyway, the last wedding I played with this wedding in Stern Grove, for my friends TJ and Meghan. She had picked out “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming” by Franz Schubert. He decided he was going to also walk down the aisle before her, and I was to play a “classical” version of “The Final Countdown” by Europe. Still one of the funniest things I’ve ever done, morphing this silly 80’s piece of music into classical, and I swear not that many people were aware of it at that time.

Anyway, this song has been going through my brain since October 1. We’re in the final three weeks of living in Port Townsend, living amongst much of the stuff we’ve surrounded ourselves over the years, and heading off into a life of who knows… who knows if it will work out, who knows how it will feel, who knows if the boat will be big enough, who knows? And I keep reminding myself that in reality, you just never do know anyway, so really who knows?

Yesterday morning, I had a weird adverse reaction to getting rid of our couch. IT’S JUST A COUCH. But, I like it and it’s comfortable and we’ve had it less than a year. I don’t think it actually had anything to do with the couch. I think it was the sudden “it’s time to let it go” that I had not planned for, even though I know that it’s coming. Also, we can’t land back in the Bay Area until Halloween weekend, so I had to push everything out a week. Not a big deal, gives us more time to get together with people we want to see up here. Just a lot of logistics.

Logistics

lo·gis·tics/ləˈjistiks/ noun: logistics

1. the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities, or supplies.

This operation is quite complex. Some stuff is going away, some is going into long-term storage, some is coming with us to the Bay Area (and even some of that is coming back up here into storage when it’s time to leave the Bay Area by boat), some is getting sold to neighbors, some is going into the garage sale this weekend, and some we’re giving to our favorite people. We have a staging area in the now empty guestroom with multiple piles, so at least we can continue to live in here without it driving me bonkers (I’m one of those people who hates disorganization; it drives me nuts.)

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And in other news…

David spends his days packing and working in his shop when it’s not raining outside (winter is here btw). I’ve been trying to focus on work. David has been cooking every night within the weight loss plan I’m following, and as a result we’ve both lost weight. I’m almost 20 pounds down, and he’s probably close to 20 pounds down too. Last weekend we went to Eugene, Oregon to visit David’s sister Wendy, and enjoyed visiting a winery in the Willamette Valley. We’ll be heading north from the Bay Area to visit her regularly. On the way back we stopped to see our friends Michael and Sylvia at their new two story houseboat on one of the rivers just outside of Portland in the small town of Scappoose. As lovely as that place is, it made Port Townsend look like a metropolis.

Onward. Uncomfortable. Too bad so sad nevermind it, it’s ok. Moving forward. It always works out. My pal Pam says I have a lucky cloud over my head. I’m counting on that.

“Taking on a challenge is a lot like riding a horse, isn’t it? If you’re comfortable while you’re doing it, you’re probably doing it wrong.” ~ Ted Lasso

Yesterday, David graduated from the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding Marine Systems program.

The pandemic-year class that David was in was full of really interesting people. Some veterans, some that were looking to start a different career, some who were retired. Most everyone was from different parts of the country and had moved to the Port Townsend area specifically to attend this school. They are all interesting people.

Yesterday also made me think about the circle of our lives in this past year. This time last year seems like such a long time ago, because we managed to pack in a lot of life in the last 365 days. We came up here for David to change his life; it’s so important to me that he be happy and enjoy his life.

David learned a lot in these 6 months, including what he was really good at (diesel mechanics), and what he wasn’t so good at (I’ll let him tell you about that). But, he persisted, and he finished, and I’m proud of him for sticking it out despite his frustration and aggravation (mostly at himself).

Congratulations David on making a HUGE life change, and walking away from your 23 year career for a different future and realizing that…

You get out what you put into this life.

In a year, it’s easy to trace the path of how we ended up where we are now. A year ago if you’d told me that we would be gearing up to move onto a 40′ sailboat to prepare to go cruising, I would have wondered what gummies you recently ingested.

• Rent what is probably the only rental house in Port Townsend on a road trip up here in August 2020. (There’s a serious housing shortage here… 10,000 people in the town, and 5,800 houses, many of which are owned by Bay Area people). They don’t call this place “Berkeley North” for nothing!
• Leave Point Richmond September 29, 2020. At the time we really thought we would be settling here in the PNW, because Port Townsend was just a larger version of Point Richmond without the large metropolitan area. Neither of us realized what living in a super rural place meant at the time… or what being 2.5 hours from the airport really felt like. (It doesn’t feel good.)
• Get on the waitlist for a 36′ slip at Port Hadlock shortly after arriving in Port Townsend. We start to learn how really difficult it is to find a slip in the PNW.
• Within 6 months, decide to sell our 36′ boat at Richmond YC because we can’t get a slip in this area.
• The new owner of the 36′ boat calls me one morning to talk about the cabinets in our old condo that we had built, because she has the same floor plan and wants to do the same cabinets. During the conversation, she finds out we’re selling our boat, and within a week she’s bought our boat.
• As is typical of Murphy’s Law, the boat goes into contract the same day we get a slip at Port Hadlock.
• We start looking for another 36′ boat in the PNW. Turns out 36′ boats are as rare to find as size 8 women’s shoes during a shoe sale.
• I contact Port Hadlock a month later, and ask to get put on the 40-42′ slip waitlist. She tells me they just had someone leave a 42′ that very day, and asks if I want it. Is that a rhetorical question?
• We start looking for a 40-42′ boat, and finally buy one after 5 months of searching.
• David officially retires from a real job and decides to do part-time physical therapy and part-time working on our new boat.
• And just like that, we take the steering wheel and turn right again, and decide now is the time to get on with the next phase of our lives.

So, here we are within a month of leaving Port Townsend and heading back to the Bay Area, but not back to who we used to be.

We went through an interesting twist this weekend when we started to consider spending another season here in Port Townsend. It was an 18 hour discussion, which resulted in us staying the course that we’d already discussed.

Ultimately I don’t know if it was fear of making a drastic right turn here, fear of the unknown, or just talking about making sure we’re doing the “right thing”. Definitely for me, fear of the unknown does crop up occasionally and is always there in the undercurrents of my brain. Then, I have to remind myself that I never actually DID know what was coming next, and that it’s important to just enjoy the moment and be…

grateful that I’m still upright and breathing.

This has been an ongoing theme throughout my life. I was first married at 23 years old to a man I met when I was in college. I was the lead alto sax player, and Paul was the lead tenor sax player, in the Boston Conservatory Jazz Band. He was cute cute cute, and was pursuing his degree at MIT (dude graduated top of his class in Electrical Engineering, so he was a smart man too). Every other girl coming out of college was getting engaged, and I wanted to get engaged too. Fear of the unknown drove me to control the entire situation, which resulted in sitting in a mall parking lot “getting engaged” right after we had bought the ring (together) at Zales in the mall.

I had other girlfriends who were getting magical romantic proposals, and as I aged (and now divorced) I realized that I had really shorted myself the

“magic of life”

by worrying about what I couldn’t control but faked myself out to believing I could control it.

Fast forward to meeting David, and even though this same personality quirk was there, I committed to letting myself not get in the way of life. When David asked me to marry him, not only did I not believe him (in fact, my response was “are you fucking with me?”), but David also waited until we were high above the Napa Valley in a hot air balloon trip I had actually bought HIM for his 50th birthday. It was truly romantic and magical and everything I thought only other girls lived through (but not me). Not only all of that, but I ended up with the partner I always wanted, because I stopped trying to control everything. Anyone that knows David knows that he is stubborn and has very firm well-established boundaries. Nobody gonna control that man other than that man.

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At 53 years old, I’ve learned to live with this need to control things, and recognize when I’m slipping into these old patterns. I’ve become better at controlling my fear.

When you are making an audacious right turn, and about to jump off a cliff into an abyss you know little about, it’s best to just hold your breath and trust that you will get through this no matter what. The pay off of the experience is better than not experiencing it at all in my opinion.

Jump

Yesterday we started taking inventory of every single thing in our house, and each item was placed into a bucket: Boat/Bay, Storage, Sell, or Donate. There isn’t a lot of stuff going to the Boat/Bay, and about 25% of the stuff we have is going to Storage. This means a lot of cool stuff is going to be sold or donated in the next 6 weeks. It’s funny to me that we’ve been hauling 75% of our stuff around all this time if it’s this easy to let go of, but I guess that’s what Americans do…

Pay a lot of cash to collect stuff, pay to haul stuff around, pay to store stuff, and have stuff to look at. Buy as much stuff as you can, because it’s never enough stuff.

The reason for the inventory is that we have multiple paths going at the same time. We have to get what we’re keeping into a climate-controlled storage unit, we have to get the 2 plants we own down to David’s sister Wendy in Oregon, we have 2 cars to get back to the Bay Area, and we have stuff to go back to the Bay Area that we will either put on the boat or get rid of there if it doesn’t fit on the boat.

A couple of days ago, we discovered that U-Haul has something they call U-Boxes (it’s their branded version of PODS). PODS doesn’t come to Port Townsend, but there is a huge U-Haul facility here with one of the climate-controlled Raiders of the Lost Ark storage buildings for these U-Boxes. October 6 is when 3 boxes will be delivered to our front door, and 2 weeks later they will haul them away. You only pay for the boxes you use, and I expect we’ll only use 2 boxes anyway. It’s stress-free to be able to load our stuff directly into the box, have someone else move the box, and when we get to wherever we end up a few years from now, they will deliver the boxes to wherever that is (this includes international).

The “Red Bra Regatta”, a huge woman regatta, is going on in the Bay Area the weekend before we leave Port Townsend. I think I’m going to put the top down on the car, and drive down to the Bay Area for the regatta and leave the car down there. That clears up the two car issue, so if we need to rent a small truck to get the rest of the stuff down there, now we can.

As the days get closer, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how much I really do love Port Townsend and the Pacific Northwest. We’ve been here only 11 months; it’s so nice to live in a town where you can leave your front door or car unlocked, and nothing gets stolen. The beauty of this area is astounding. And I’ve come around to realizing something, hold onto your hats… I really don’t like the Bay Area anymore. I’ve lived off and on there since I was 15 years old, and I know the area really well. I have some incredible friends there, and there’s parts of the area I really like. But, it’s changed in the last 10 years. There’s garbage everywhere. The traffic is horrific. The homeless problem is huge (Slumdog Millionaire huge), and everywhere you look there are tent cities. It’s expensive, and lower-income people really struggle with living there. In the last few years, the Bay Area goes through many days during “fire season” where the smoke is so thick you can feel it searing your lungs.

I’ll never forget how creepy “Orange Wednesday” was.

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I remind myself regularly that we’re doing all of this for the end goal, the goal we both had individually before we met each other. The path to the goal is in sight, and we’re going to achieve it.

Two years to get the boat cruise ready and save more money into investments, and we’re leaving. We’ll come back up here. The next time we are “living” in Port Townsend will be in a transient slip on our boat.

In other news, this morning while I was walking Ernie, I met a couple who bought a house right around the corner from where we live here. He was wearing a Three Bridge Fiasco t-shirt and a Swiftsure Yachts vest. Initially I mentioned the vest (that’s the same brokerage we bought Prudence through), then I saw the Fiasco shirt. Turns out that they own a 44′ Alden that they used to have in Brickyard Cove Marina. Small world. Then again, that’s why people have started calling this place “Berkeley North”.

I wonder how long before we get a Berkeley Bowl and some whacko rent control in this town?

(The Kim Project just passed it’s 2 week mark yesterday, and has lost 8 pounds. The risk assessment team says it’s going to be a successful launch.)

As you can probably imagine, we’re going through a monumental shift in our lives, individually and together. Leaving the Bay Area was a huge shift in thinking, because we’d both lived there a long time and we have a tight group of friends there. Our sailing community is there. However, living and working in a wee condo full-time and watching David waiting for a pandemic to loosen restrictions on his job… well, I was watching him bored to tears every day. I couldn’t even get him interested in watching General Hospital reruns, because he just wasn’t interested.

After making the mental leap of “let’s get the cruising goal underway by moving aboard”, I started imagining myself living on a boat and overweight. It’s no secret than I’m overweight; I’ve been overweight most of my life, except for a few days here and there. At 53 years old, I’ve started to think that old classic “how does this weight serve me?” Realizing it’s not going to serve me living on an adult jungle gym, it’s not serving my mental health, it’s not serving my energy level, and it’s not serving my blood pressure (which was recently diagnosed as high, so I had to start taking low dose blood pressure meds), I have come to the conclusion that it’s time for me to grow up and make choices that will be good for me, keep me alive, and keep me off of medication. I really don’t like medication as a fix for things, and until this blood pressure med, I didn’t take anything.

I’m now in a committed relationship with The Kim Project.

I had wine flowing through my veins. I haven’t had a drink of anything for a week, and our diet has completely changed. As usual, my amazing husband (and chef and personal trainer) has upped his game and thrown all his support my way. Up until this morning, I was already feeling better, but man… today I have felt like doing the zoomies like a young puppy. Something in my internal wiring kicked in, and I’m flying high as a kite (and that’s without edibles). Happy to report in my first week of low to no carb with protein and vegetables, I’m down over 5 pounds. I won’t say how much more I want to lose, but let’s just say it’s a chunk. And this time, I’m going to get there, not because I want a “beach body” or I want to fit into these cute 501s… this time it’s health related. First time in my life it’s not been about vanity.

Here’s to my clothes falling off of me. Here’s to not having to take drugs. Here’s to throwing our lives to the wind and enjoying the journey. And here’s to Ernie still being alive. Cheers.

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I’ve had a few people recently ask me what the plan now that we own our cruising boat.

The loose plan as of now is to go back to the Bay Area in mid to late October, get the boat ready to move aboard (things like the fridge and freezer need to be fixed for example), and then move onto her. This is the subject to change part, because we don’t actually have a timeline on that yet, but let’s just go with that timeline for now.

We have some furniture we will be selling, and some of the better furniture we can’t replace that we will be keeping. That stuff will be left in storage in Eugene, Oregon, where David’s sister Wendy currently lives. We’ll take the wine, our clothes, and some of our kitchen stuff with us. The loose plan is to live in a friend’s extra house for now until the boat is ready, maybe 3 months, maybe 6. Or less.

I’ll keep working and saving as much as I can. David will work part-time with some of his clients who still want to see him weekly, work part-time for one of the boat shops, and work part-time on our boat. The loose plan is to do this for 2 years.

After that, we will head back up north to the Pacific Northwest, stopping first in Port Townsend for an undetermined amount of time. I really want to cruise up to Alaska and back, and we may winter over in the PNW. Then, the trip really begins… we’ll hop down the west coast stopping in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, and then down into Mexico. Puerto Vallarta. Then further to the Panama Canal, and over to the Caribbean. Past there, we have two options we’re considering – back up to New England, or maybe follow the Robin and Mike route and go to the Caribbean. All the while, I’ll probably continue working a little bit, since I can and frankly we’re not independently wealthy. At least not yet we aren’t, but I keep working on it!

At least that’s the loose plan, subject to change.

I really do love living up here. This is the first time I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest after having lived all of the country, though my parents had lived here for a while before so I used to visit a lot. Too young to really appreciate it, and it’s a totally different place east of Seattle than it is here on the Olympic Peninsula.

This place is stunningly beautiful. It’s a sailor’s paradise, the water is a deep dark blue, and there are mountains everywhere you look. On a clear day, we can see Mt Rainier poking up beyond Marrowstone Island, majestic and just absolutely huge. To the west of us is the Olympic National Park, where the range has snow most of the year on it, including some glaciers at the highest peaks. And, across the Juan de Fuca Strait we can see Mount Baker in all it’s glory.

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Port Townsend, where we currently live, has an interesting history, having been settled by the first non-Indian settlers in 1851. With it’s proximity to the end of the Strait, and the entrance to the Puget Sound, the early settlers believed this would be a great place for the northwest terminus of the Trans-Continental Railroad. They built beautiful large Victorian-era buildings on Water Street “Downtown”, where the sailors would come in and frequent the brothels and the bars. The “moral” ended up building large Victorian houses up on the bluff above town in “Uptown”. The citizens of the town worked hard, building this town into a beautiful place, so the powers that be would choose Port Townsend, the “City of Dreams”, as the terminus. In 1873, the choice was made to go to Tacoma instead.

The town was abandoned by many people at that time, and it fell into the history books. It’s extremely rural, located on the northeastern tip of the Olympic Peninsula, in a place that is not easy to get to. Around 1960, the town started to grow again with the influx of hippies.

In 1981, Port Townsend was used as the location for the movie “An Officer and a Gentlemen”. Fort Worden, the nearby state park built in 1902, was used for most of the scenes in that movie.

As for us, we arrived to Port Townsend on October 1, 2020. I had been here in 2008 for the Wooden Boat Festival, but never thought of this place as a place to live. We were so lucky to rent one of these large Victorians in Uptown, an easy walk into Downtown, with a view of the water. There are many things we love about living up here, which is the reason we will bring our boat back up here to cruise first. I LOVE that it’s a small town, and it’s quiet. You can hear birds sing all the time, and there is not the underlying din of traffic noise that you hear everywhere you go in the Bay Area (you may not believe me, but we notice it now when we go back, even from the “isolation” of Brickyard Cove). I can walk out of the house without locking the door, and I know that when I return nobody will be in there and my stuff will still be inside. On that note, I can leave my purse in the car and go into the store, leave the car unlocked, and when I get back it will still be there. (I don’t do that often, that was a mistake the one time I did it.) I’m more in touch with nature here, whether I want to be or not.

So, why would we want to leave here?

There’s a few things I don’t like about living in Port Townsend. This town is 10,000 people, and growing constantly. Most of the people that are coming here are from California (us included). The difference between us and them is that most of those people have wads of cash to spend on real estate, and it’s driven the cost of housing here just absolutely off-the-charts crazy. This doesn’t affect us, but we do live in a town that is fully gentrified and inaccessible to the people who grew up here or work in the service industry. Those that don’t have wads of cash, or come with their own business, or who aren’t independently wealthy, have a hard time finding affordable housing. Some end up homeless. This is not a hospitable place to live for many people. Frankly, I don’t know why people keep coming here if there isn’t a place to live, but they do… I don’t want to live somewhere where the line between the “haves and have nots” is so extreme.

We live 2-2.5 hours from SEATAC in a town that doesn’t allow Uber/Lyft or good regular transportation to the airport. Given the rate that we like to travel, that’s a long way to drive. By the time I get to the airport from here, I’ve already spent more time driving than the flight takes to get back to the Bay Area!

Almost everyone in this town is a white person and they are older than we are. When we arrived, I heard a few times “it’s nice to see young people moving to town.” I’m 53 and David is 57… we’re not young. After having lived in the Bay Area for most of my adult life, peppered with some Austin Texas and Boston MA in there, I like having different cultures around. I like having options for good ethnic food to choose from. I like living amongst people who know the difference between Laotian and Thai and Cambodian food, and who can tell when someone is Japanese or Chinese or Korean. It’s actually uncomfortable to me to notice when I see one African-American person a month. I get a lot out of interacting with different cultures, and learning from other people that didn’t grow up the way I did.

Washington is a very white state, and we chose to live in the whitest town in the state. Having said that, if we could afford it, I could see us settling up here someday. Maybe.

The name is Prudence. It’s always been Prudence. Pru402 is now Prudence, Mid Pru was Prudence, and Old Pru was Prudence. The name arrived when David arrived, and he says that as long as he’s wanted a big boat to live on, he’s wanted to name it Prudence. Why?

“It’s a play on words,” David says. “What’s less prudent than owning a boat?” The answer is always “owning a horse.”

Some people consider renaming a boat a travesty, an affront to the sea Gods, and goading Neptune to sink your vessel. After a lot of research though, it’s done often, and as long as you do it right and with plenty of expensive champagne, the ocean should take care of you.

Old Pru had been named Mabuhay by the previous owners when they bought her new at the Cow Palace boat show in 1977. They cruised Mabuhay up and down the west coast, and took her to Hawaii. When David acquired her, he had not gone through the proper channels to rename a boat, and that boat had all kinds of issues. She almost tried to sink herself, even. He thought I was crazy when I said “well, you didn’t rename her properly, of course you are going to have problems.” Neither of us are superstitious people, but why flaunt your arrogance when you don’t actually know for sure? David and I removed all traces of the previous name and the name “Prudence”, went backwards, and alone we did a renaming ceremony.

When we acquired Mid Pru, she was named “Austral”. She was on the hard at KKMI when we did her renaming ceremony, but first we denamed her. Then, on a dreary January day we invited our friends to come over and rename her from the pavement, we had some decent champagne, and some munchies. It was a fun, simple afternoon party.

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Pru402 came with the name “Blow’n Away” in HUGE letters on both sides. The ‘A’ alone was 16 inches high. Someone wanted to make it very clear to everyone in the bay that they were “blown away”. The man who originally owned and named her was someone Allison (our broker) knew, because she was the one that commissioned the boat for him. The 2nd owner never changed the name, and it appears he barely sailed the boat. We decided to rename this one too, because why change the name if it’s been working so far? It’s like a good luck charm.

July 24, 2021, we had a renaming party at Richmond Yacht Club with 20 of our friends. This time, we bought good champagne for Neptune and a couple bottles of excellent rum. We had Cornelio at the taco truck behind the Chevron make us a platter 120 street tacos for the event. And, we had an excellent time making the boat ours. The party lasted well into the evening with most of the same people that were at the last renaming party.

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How to Rename a Boat 

1. Remove all traces of the current name.
2. Begin the purging ceremony.
3. Begin the renaming ceremony.
4. Appease the four wind gods.
5. If you have champagne left, indulge in honor of completing the ceremony.

1. Remove all traces of the current name.

Start by taking any and every item bearing the boat’s name off the boat. This means documents, decor items, nameboards, and even life rings. Then, strike the name from every record, ranging from log books to maintenance documents. Some people recommend burning them, to ensure you obliterate the name, but white-out fluid does the trick just as well. Finally, after you’ve checked and re-checked that you’ve completed these steps, write the old name in water-soluble ink on a metal tag. Do not, under any circumstances, take even one item with the new name onboard yet! In fact, you can’t do this until you’ve completed all of the tasks outlined below.

2. Begin the purging ceremony.

The official ceremony, in which you address Poseidon himself, calls for good champagne, and good friends as witnesses. Once you’re gathered together on the bow of the boat, recite the following:

Oh mighty and great ruler of the seas and oceans, to whom all ships and we who venture upon your vast domain are required to pay homage, I implore you in your graciousness to expunge for all time from your records and recollection the name (mention the old boat name), which has ceased to be an entity in your kingdom. As proof thereof, we submit this ingot bearing her name, to be corrupted through your powers and forever be purged from the sea.

At this point, drop the metal tag over the bow into the water. Then say:

In grateful acknowledgement of your munificence and dispensation, we offer these libations to your majesty and your court.

Pour at least half the champagne into the water, from east to west. Share the rest among yourselves.

3. Begin the renaming ceremony. 

Speak to Poseidon once again:

Oh mighty and great ruler of the seas and oceans, to whom all ships and we who venture upon your vast domain are required to pay homage, I implore you in your graciousness to take unto your records and recollection this worthy vessel hereafter and for all time known as (say the name you’ve selected), guarding her with your mighty arm and trident and ensuring her of safe and rapid passage throughout her journeys within your realm.

In appreciation of your munificence, dispensation, and in honor of your greatness, we offer these libations to your majesty and your court.

Make sure you have more champagne on hand, because you’ll need to pour it, minus one glass for you and one for the mate, into the water, this time from west to east.

4. Appease the four wind gods.

Renaming a boat also involves asking for fair winds and calm seas for your pending voyages. Recite:

Oh mighty rulers of the winds, through whose power our frail vessels traverse the wild and faceless deep, we implore you to grant this worthy vessel (say your boat’s new name) the benefits and pleasures of your bounty, ensuring us of your gentle ministration according to our needs.

Next, address each wind god individually. In facing north, pour champagne into a champagne flute and toss the libation to the north as you say:

Great Boreas, exalted ruler of the North Wind, grant us permission to use your mighty powers in the pursuit of our lawful endeavors, ever sparing us the overwhelming scourge of your frigid breath.

Next face west, repeating the champagne pour and toss while saying:

Great Zephyrus, exalted ruler of the West Wind, grant us permission to use your mighty powers in the pursuit of our lawful endeavors, ever sparing us the overwhelming scourge of your wild breath.

Face east, repeating the champagne pour and toss while saying:

Great Eurus, exalted ruler of the East Wind, grant us permission to use your mighty powers in the pursuit of our lawful endeavors, ever sparing us the overwhelming scourge of your mighty breath.

Lastly, face south, pouring the champagne and tossing it while reciting:

Great Notus, exalted ruler of the South Wind, grant us permission to use your mighty powers in the pursuit of our lawful endeavors, ever sparing us the overwhelming scourge of your scalding breath.

5. Finish Off the Champagne

If you have any champagne left, indulge in honor of completing the ceremony.

Now, at long last, you can take your first item bearing the new name onto your boat. Hopefully you haven’t had the transom graphics changed yet. If scheduling issues prevented waiting until after the renaming ceremony, though, keep the new name covered until you finish all the steps.

Yes, this is incredibly detailed, and incredibly superstitious. But would you rather tempt fate?

The boat we just bought has a top priority list of things that need to be done on her, and managing these projects from far away isn’t easy. It’s made much easier though working with people who have become our friends from the last many many years of living in the Bay Area.

We have 2 large projects going right now…

You may have noticed our boat does not have a dodger on it. We get to have a dodger built for her exactly the way we want the dodger built. When we were last in the Bay Area, we stood at the oversized wheel, and measured for height and viewing pleasure… which is great, because many dodgers either cut through your line of sight, or one of us can look successfully under it, but the other can’t. This dodger is perfect for both of us. That should be installed in early October, and will make the boat infinitely more pleasurable to sail.

The second large project is the furling boom system. These furling booms are to make sailing easier, and along with the furling boom usually comes an electric winch. The system we have on this boat is a Shaeffer, and it’s fine and works. We just don’t like it; it’s more parts that could go wrong. The boom also is attached to a rigid strut, and not a proper boom vang, so the idea of “blowing the vang” isn’t an option. David is a main trimmer and a racer, and he really didn’t like the limited capabilities of this system.

Replacing this boom is a challenge, because you have to get a new boom (usually have one made) and a new main sail (usually have one made), and all the parts that go on the main and the boom. I think you are starting to get the point here – this is an expensive problem.

Our friend Jim on the east coast bought a Sabre 402 within a week of us buying ours. I “met” Jim on the Sabre owner’s list online, and had told him about our boom replacement situation. The boat he bought has an in-boom furling system on it too, and he knew we were planning on doing the replacement. So, when he discovered his boat came with the original Hall boom and the original main sail, he grabbed both of them for us. We bought both from him at a huge Sabre-friend discount, then the challenge was getting them to the west coast.

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The boom itself is close to 18′ and about 85 pounds. And it was in Connecticut. I called in a friend favor from Raychel, and she picked the boom up, took it home, packaged it all up for shipping, and took it to a boatyard nearby. Our amazing broker called her amazing boat trucker, and he stuck it on the side of a boat he was bringing to Anacortes Washington. I found a guy who picked it up the Saturday after it arrived in Anacortes and trucked it to Bay Marine in Point Richmond, the place where we’re having the boom replacement done.

Working for a sailmaker himself, Jim was able to inspect our new/old main and get it shipped to Quantum in Point Richmond, where it’s being very slightly worked on (the sail itself was in fantastic shape). All in all, we spent around $1k total to get the parts for the new system, including shipping. Bonus points include being able to resell the system that’s on there for more than we paid for the replacements, plus our boat will be happier because we’re putting her back the way she’s supposed to be.

Sometimes it takes a village to get boat projects accomplished!

The boom swap project is well underway, thanks to Facebook Messenger, Rolfe and Chris at Bay Marine, Ryan at Rogue Rigging, Will at Quantum and Hippie James. Thankful for knowing all the players. I wouldn’t have any clue where to start doing this project here in Port Townsend.