Not really, but sounded good. So there we were awake at 230a on the Friday morning after we closed on the boat purchase. We already had a long list of stuff that we wanted to change on the boat. We had seen our friends who live on a 42′ boat in Alameda earlier that week, and they mentioned that Marina Village in Alameda had 8 open liveaboard slots available. This is unheard of… it’s usually a very long waitlist to get a 40-42′ slip, much less getting a liveaboard. Add to that the adrenaline of just having made a large purchase and we start talking.
D – “You know, we just bought a cruising boat and we’re heading back up to Port Townsend on Sunday.”
K – “Yeah, I know. I was just thinking about bringing the boat back up to the PNW and all the work we need to do on her. We don’t have the group of sailing people, the people to work on the boat, not to mention our friends like we do in the Bay Area.”
D – “I was just thinking about all of that too. What do you think about coming back to the Bay Area and moving onto the boat? We can get a liveaboard slip in Alameda. I realized earlier that I can make more money working just 10 hours a week in the Bay Area than I can working an entire month in Port Townsend.”
K – “But, I want to go cruising in the PNW, and I really want to do that Alaska roundtrip.”
D – “We can come back to the PNW first. That could be our shakedown cruise to see if the internet/working thing will work for you. And we can start cruising from there.”
K – “OK, sounds good, let’s do it. We’re both in our 50’s, and it’s time, because if we don’t we may never. Let’s get this show on the road.”
As my Uncle Pat, who is just 6 years older than me and currently “cruising” on a motorcycle says, “If not now, when?”
Absolutely. So, mid-October, we’re going back, but not backward… actually a huge leap forward.
Post Persuasion Equation discussions, we make an offer on the boat in Emeryville CA. I cannot believe after all of this, after traveling to South Carolina, after living in Port Townsend, we’re making an offer on a boat that’s in our previous backyard, but that’s how things work sometimes. The good thing is that having the boat down there, we can easily bring her back up to the PNW where we live.
One thing to note about living in Port Townsend is that it’s RURAL. I mean, RURAL RURAL. It takes us 2+ hours to get to the airport from here, which is a little bit more time than it takes to fly to Oakland from Seattle. Frankly, it’s a hassle to go to the airport. By purchasing a boat that’s not here, that means we have to fly a few times to look at the boat, sail the boat, survey the boat, and finally buy the boat.
The test sail is scheduled for Monday May 31, and the survey is scheduled for Tuesday June 15. David and I fly down to the Bay Area Thursday evening, and we get to reunite with all our friends whom we haven’t seen since September 2020. Also, David officially retired on June 1, so we have a retirement “party” with more friends where David announces his retirement.
On Monday, we take the boat out on a windy but beautiful day. It’s not clear the last time this boat has been out, but it’s been a while because nothing works on her. We can’t get the main sail up all the way. We can’t pull the jib out because it’s overridden. The traveler doesn’t work. Basically, we never do take her sailing, so she fails the test sail. But, still we forge along because all of this is stuff we can fix.
I fly back to the Bay Area for the survey on Tuesday, June 15. The survey goes well, with some minor issues and one major issue, but still not a huge deal. We can fix all of it. And then, as we leave the yard, the engine won’t start. We have to leave the boat at the yard and hitch a ride with the other broker back to our cars. But, still we forge along because all of this is stuff we can fix.
I’m giggling to myself now, because we are still going to buy this boat.
The negotiation on the purchase took 6 weeks, 2 of which included us being back in the Bay Area for David’s spring break and crashing out on Dustin and Holly’s airbed in Point Richmond. Finally, on Saturday July 3, we turned the engine over on Pru402 and moved her to Richmond Yacht Club from Emeryville.
It made sense to have the same delivery crew that moved Old Pru from Alameda to RYC. We toasted, we sailed, and we put her into her new slip without hitting anything. Even Ernie doesn’t seem bothered by her, as he wandered all the way to the bow of the boat (he hated walking on the decks of Mid-Pru).
And then, just like that, the party was over and we had to headed back to Port Townsend on Sunday, leaving our beautiful new boat behind.
Back in 2018 when we first started looking at buying a Sabre 36, David’s brother Mike told us about “Persuasion”, a 1989 Sabre 36 that was located in Manchester, MA. This boat was beautiful. All lines were led to the cockpit, the canvas was new, the upholstery was new. Everything on this boat had been redone. Mike had maintained this boat throughout the years, so the electrical was in fantastic shape. And, given it was a New England boat, she didn’t spend a lot being sailed either (half of her time in the yard). So, she may have been a 1989, but she’d only been sailed like she was a 2015.
The owner wanted $89k for her. Shipping from the east coast would have been $15k at the time. That was more than we wanted to spend on a sailboat at the time – a lot more – so we decided against Persuasion.
Then, we found Austral, and shipped her down from Seattle to the Bay Area. We paid $49k for Austral, and it was $8k total to get her to the Bay Area.
We used the Persuasion sales brochure as our guide on how to upgrade our new Sabre 36. Ultimately, we spend $20k more upgrading Prudence than we would have had we just bought Persuasion and shipped her west. And still, Prudence wasn’t where Persuasion was when we sold Prudence.
So… the Persuasion Equation tells us that buying the less expensive boat isn’t always the right decision. It really depends on what needs to be done on the boat you are looking at. In the case of the 402s, we were looking at the less expensive option in Hilton Head, but ultimately the Bay Area boat was going to be the better choice because it was going to cost us less overall.
Last we heard, Persuasion’s owner still owns the boat. It probably was good for him that he didn’t sell her to us anyway.
In mid-May 2021, we flew to Charleston. We had made an accepted offer on a 2001 Sabre 402 that was located in Hilton Head, SC, and we were going back there to look at her.
This trip was two-fold: David grew up in Charleston, and hadn’t been back in many years. And I had many nieces and nephews I had never met, and I had never been to Charleston. We spent 36 hours running around Charleston, seeing the Civil War era submarine “CSS Hunley”, and even went to a house party before we headed down to Hilton Head. We also had a lovely time spending a night with Sally, David’s mom.
CSS Hunley in Charleston
The boat we were looking at was our first time on a Sabre 402, other than the pulled apart one at Dustin’s shop from a few years earlier. The older couple that owned her had bought her new and cruised her for 20 years up and down the east coast. There were some DIY-type issues we had with her, but really didn’t think anything would be any issues for us. After all, we are also DIY kind of people, and we knew we could pretty much surmount any issues that we ran across.
The other fun part of this trip is that our broker, Allison, who we’d known for many years through Richmond Yacht Club, had since become a close friend of ours, so we were doing this trip with Allison. It’s always fun having a trip with friends, especially when it involves sailboats.
Hilton Head is VERY DIFFERENT sailing territory than the San Francisco Bay Area!
The South Carolina Yacht Club, on the island of Hilton Head. We had dinner here with Sam and Karen, owners of another Sabre 402 who had given us the “virtual tour” before we chose to make an offer on the boat.
Hilton Head is an interesting place. It is mostly developed neighborhoods on a very thin island on the edge of South Carolina. It’s a short drive away from Savannah, Georgia. The weather was fantastic while we were there, not too hot, and just the right humidity. I was surprised to find out that during the Civil War, this island was the base of operations for the Union blockade of the Southern ports. Once the Union took the island, hundreds of ex-slaves moved to the island, where they could buy land and go to school. I wish we’d had more time to explore, but we were there specifically for the survey, which was happening the day after we arrived on Saturday.
On Sunday, we left the slip early and headed out for a test sail into the Intracoastal Waterway. Since I’d never been to this part of the country and had never seen the ICW, I was excited about this test sail – first sail on a 402 and first sail on the ICW. There was almost no wind, but after motoring for a while, David detected some wind off in the distance. We went over there, and picked up just enough to pull the sails and feel the boat.
This boat can SAIL, and beautifully at that!
The test sail was wonderful, and we were hooked. This was the boat we wanted.
The following day, we took the boat over to the haulout. Haulouts and yards are not very plentiful in this part of the country. The surveyor showed up from Charleston, and started his job along with his bag from Dunkin’ Donuts. I made a comment about the bag, and he said “of course, I’m from New England, gotta have Dunkin’ Donuts.” When I asked where, he said Gloucester, which is where my sister and brother in law live. When I asked if he knew Mike, he said “THE MIKE PARKER???” and I said yes, the one who works at Manchester Marine. Amazingly enough, Nick the Surveyor knew Mike and had grown up with my niece. Sailing… where you can go anywhere and know someone.
The boat was passing muster, and nothing really was a surprise until we pulled her out of the water. There were a couple of serious issues that were found during the survey that we were just not willing to deal with and didn’t want to fix along with the cost of shipping the boat to the west coast and the other issues we had already known about. It was at that point that we sadly decided to pull out of the contract and walk away from this boat. I had never had a survey go south before, though I hadn’t done that many surveys on boats anyway. Up to now, I believed that nothing could knock David and I off of any boat, but there were a few issues on this boat that knocked her out of contention.
A strange thing happened on the way to this point though. The 402 down in the Bay Area had dropped in price to within our range. It was still expensive (to us), but not much more than this boat would have been with shipping.
At that point, I started calculating the Persuasion Equation, and after talking with David realized we were better off buying the boat in the Bay Area.
David and I have had the pleasure of “rebuilding” two boats together.
1978 Islander Freeport 36 (“Old Pru”). This is the boat David had when I met him.
Old Pru was boat college if there ever was one. This boat had a lot of issues; a few of them include lots of leaking, the engine had been submerged in salt water and didn’t run, the fuel system needed replumbing, and there was old diesel in the fuel tank that looked like maple syrup. Through a lot of time spent working on her, we did end up getting her sailing, and we stopped the leaking with some very fine silver duct tape around the windoze. She really was a sturdy boat to sail, and the layout for a 36 was made for a couple to cruise comfortably. We sold her in late 2018 when we bought the Sabre 36, “Mid Pru”.
Flash forward to 2021 and our boat search, we finally came up with a list of what was important to us in a cruising boat:
Should be a boat within 20 years. We knew we’d pay dearly for a boat this new, but having less needs and more simple maintenance was the thought.
Must have 2 sizeable cabins so we can comfortably cruise with another couple. And let’s face it, our friends are not all small either, so we couldn’t have a “guest” cabin that was only 4 feet wide.
Must have a separate shower from head. You don’t want to get the toilet paper soggy every time you shower. That’s just gross.
Should have an easily accessible berth. The Sabre 36’s V berth was high. We jokingly talked about putting a trampoline under the berth to get in and out of it.
Must have a swim step. This makes it easier to get in and out of the dinghy. Neither boat before had a swim step, so you had to step onto the ladder from the dinghy. If we are going cruising, this is important.
Must not leak, have major trauma, have an engine with low engine hours, and have been well-maintained.
The engine must be accessible from all sides. Old Pru’s engine was in the floor, and that made it really difficult for David to maintain. See what I did there? I wasn’t going to lay on the floor to work on it.
Must be a well-built boat. This really narrowed the field. We love Sabre quality, but you pay for it. That leads me to …
Must be resellable. I firmly believe that if you spend money on quality, if you have to sell that item, it will resell. This is why we stay away from mass-produced boats, because there’s so many of them on the market, we will likely have trouble reselling. Selling a boat is hard enough as it is, so why would you make it harder on yourself?
With this list, it didn’t take long for us to realize we were looking for a Sabre 402.
We had first seen a Sabre 402 at Dustin’s KKMI-based shop a few years ago. The boat layout is almost perfect for a couple cruising, the galley is perfect, and the boat hit all of our requirements. This boat is also featured in Ferenc Mate’s “World’s Best Sailboats”, so it shouldn’t be hard to resell if we need to. The boat is also designed by Jim Taylor, who has done a lot of award-winning designs. He knows how to design boats.
Sabre 402
What’s the problem then?
Well… not much really. It just wasn’t the boat we thought we were going to end up buying. They are not inexpensive, and there’s not very many of them for sale at any given time.
Sabre only made 112 of these boats over a 7 year period, and the people that own them love them and keep them.
We start looking at 402’s, and there’s 5 on Yacht World, and we know everything there is to know about every one of them. We know what we want, and what we don’t want, and start looking at one in Hilton Head (South Carolina). It’s priced lower than the others, but looks like she just needs a little bit of TLC. If we can get this boat and ship her across country, even with the boat shipping, we coming out ahead.
In the last post, I did a basic “catch up” of the few months post-lockdown and how we find ourselves in Port Townsend, Washington at the end of 2020 and most of 2021.
In January of 2021, David starts school at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking. March 2021 begins the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding. All through David’s many months, he’s been getting up very early, and after bringing me coffee in bed, he is on Zoom running personal training sessions and every morning stretch classes. Then, he goes to school all day, and comes home and often cooks dinner. How I got so lucky in the husband department after so many years of being with losers is beyond me, but I’m lucky!
Since our Sabre 36 sold in February, we start looking for a new boat in March.
The real estate market is hot hot hot, and you can’t find houses to buy. As soon as one is listed, it sells and usually for way over asking price. This is the same situation in the boating market. The pandemic and social distancing has caused people who probably shouldn’t even be buying boats to buy boats. Some people are selling houses and dumping ALL of their money into large sailboats they move onto, go sailing around the world, only to realize they don’t know how to sail as soon as they own the boat. Other people are taking basic sailing classes and thinking they now have the ability to sail in the ocean. All in all, it’s crazy, and because of that, 36′ boats are almost non-existent to buy.
Let me clarify that. 36′ boats that we WANT are almost non-existent. There are still plenty of Catalinas, Hunters and Beneteaus to be had out there. And since we have a 36′ slip in Port Hadlock, that’s what we are looking for.
In April, I contact the marina and ask if we can be put on their waitlist for a 42′ slip. As luck would have it, she says, “I just had a 42′ slip open up today, do you want it?” Well yes, yes we do. Suddenly our options have opened up.
Or have they?
We keep our eyes open now for larger boats. The various boats we looked at include:
Ohlson 38 – BEAUTIFUL, but at only 11′ beam, a bit too thin for us.
Sabre 42 – local, but looks like a blown-up version of the last boat we had, and doesn’t really do much for either of us.
Spectre 41 – could be a perfect boat for the PNW, but this one is in San Diego and the aft berth is not large enough.
It’s about this time that we start nailing down what’s important to us in a cruising sailboat.
Since the time David and I met, we’ve both been talking about going cruising. We came to the relationship independently wanting to cruise. My job is conducive to cruising too. Things start to line up, and we realize…
WE ARE IN OUR MID-50’s, and
IT’S TIME FOR US TO START HEADING TOWARDS THIS GOAL.
Or, as my uncle says “If not now, when”.
And that’s when we start coming up with the idea of what makes the perfect boat for us.
For everyone on this planet that is aware of the word “Covid”, the years 2020 and most of 2021 have been life-altering.
Just a quick rundown of what’s happened since the last post that was on this site:
Sunday, March 8, 2020 – David and I purchase a Columbia 5.5 so we can race in the estuary, 3 people, with our friend Aaron.
Friday, March 13, 2020 – I learn of this “tsunami” of Covid heading our way, and move my desk, computer and monitors back into our 1-bedroom condo. Unknown to David at the time, this was also his last day at work. Ever.
Monday, March 16, 2020 – Covid lockdown in the Bay Area. We’ve been told we shouldn’t be leaving our homes, we shouldn’t be sailing, we shouldn’t be seeing our friends, and it’s impossible to find toilet paper suddenly. Within a week, David starts running stretch classes online, and I continue to work. In a 918 square foot condo with a fantastic view, we set up a studio for David in what was our dining room, and my office is between the living room and the kitchen. We work like this for 5 months, together all the time, both listening to each other work.
Late March, 2020 – We start sailing our Columbia 5.5 together on the estuary. Around that same time, we start drinking more wine every night, because there’s nothing else to do but watch TV and drink wine.
Sailing on the 5.5, March 27, 2020 (Photograph by Heidi Stagg)
July 4, 2020 at Angel Island, tied up to SV Sonho and enjoying a socially distanced gathering.
August 25, 2020 Port Townsend, WA. We travel to Port Townsend scoping out the rest of our lives.
April 2020 – David’s dad dies of Covid-19. Later that month we attend our first Zoom “funeral”, where David’s brother has taken dad’s ashes to the Gulf in Mississippi (where Ed was from).
May 2020 – Impromptu estuary races start, and we start sailing more on the estuary. We still have our 1987 Sabre 36 in Point Richmond, and we’re still working full-time out of our small condo in Point Richmond. We also start having regular happy hours with our friends on Zoom. Some friends are more Zoom-friendly than others.
At some point we start having weekly outdoor dinners with our friends Dustin and Holly, where we find a grassy area, bring a grill and our own food and wine, and sit 10 feet away from each other for dinner. This silly act became the high point of our lives!
August 2020 – Early in August, David is just finishing his 8a morning stretch class and I’m still reading the news. I say to him, “I have an idea.” (I do not know where this idea came from, but it was a weird shot in the brain.) I say, “hey, you’re always semi-jokingly talking about going to wooden boat school when you get older and retire. How about we sell out of the Bay Area, sell our condo, and move to Port Townsend (WA), and you can go to wooden boat school?” We were also betting on the fact that we were in a real estate boom that was just getting hotter by the minute, and we were living in a condo that was difficult to resell (we’d tried the year before so we could upgrade into a larger place). He calls a couple of people, and by noon that day we were ready to go. Never mind that David had never been to Port Townsend, it seemed like a good idea right? David applies for the Marine Systems intensive program, and we list our condo on the market again. We list it with the top seller in the complex, we stage it like she tells us to, and we move onto the boat. In late August, we go on a road trip to Port Townsend, and we discover a maritime culture and a beautiful quiet environment. Why not? On our way back from Port Townsend, the condo sells – full cash offer, 10 day close. We sign the contracts sitting outside of a cafe in Crescent City, and head back to Point Richmond to get things moving forward.
October 2020 – We arrive in Port Townsend, move into our massive Victorian rental in Uptown, and enjoy the next 2 weeks of weather… it was truly convertible weather… and then suddenly, just like that, the sun started going down at 4p and coming up at 930a. And it was dark. For many months. And it rained. For many months. It even snowed.
Two weeks after our arrival in Port Townsend, my mom and stepdad also arrive here and buy a house. We decide to wait on the house purchase, even though we are keeping our ears to the ground. Housing prices here are climbing, primarily due to the influx of Bay Area people. Plus, we’re still not sure we’re staying.
We continued to have happy hours with our friends, and weekly Zoom “dinners” with some of our closest friends, and still do to this day.
December 28, 2020 – We decide to sell our 1987 Sabre 36. After spending months trying to get a slip in the Port Townsend area, it’s not looking like we’re going to get a slip. A friend from our yacht club and neighbor in Point Richmond calls me earlier in December to talk about the cabinets we had installed into our condo. I mention we are selling our boat, and she is interested in looking at it. The next day, she says they want to buy it – the same exact day we get notification we have a 36′ slip in Port Hadlock! We decide to sell the boat anyway. In February, Prudence (mid-Pru) becomes “Syncopation”, and is no longer owned by us.
Read the next post on searching for sailboats… because that’s where we are now!
Meet our new (to us) but barely used Fatty Knees dinghy, “Dear”.
She kind of fell into our laps. We had a nutshell pram that I didn’t particularly care for as a dinghy – it felt unstable, didn’t have a motor mount, the dog didn’t like it, and it needed a centerboard (which had broken a few months ago). It didn’t tow very well either, which made it not really fun to take over to Angel Island, or anywhere else, for a weekend.
Anyway, our good friend Michael said he had a friend who had this dinghy sitting in her backyard that was collecting dust, and she wasn’t using it. She had bought it a few years back, sailed it once in Tomales Bay, and never again. At 8′, it came with the full sail kit. This dinghy new with the sail kit was $5500+, and we nabbed it for $1700! The sail kit folds up into a nice little package that fits into one of the lockers on the boat, which makes it super portable as a cruising dinghy. And, it’s incredible stable and solid, and even has classic New England lines.
These little dinghies are very popular on the east coast, just like the Sabres, so the two are a good match. You can read more about them here and Cruising World did an interesting article about inflatables or these dinghies back in 2013 here. We do have an outboard motor that came with the sailboat, but we’re not likely to use it, even though Dear has a motor mount.
Once we have her cleaned up next weekend, I’ll measure the transom, get the name ordered, and affix it myself.
We’re looking forward to many weekends and weeks “cruising” in the Bay, offshore, and who knows where else. Another piece to the puzzle.
We bought Prudence, our 1986 Sabre 36 CB, in December 2017. I’ve been remiss in putting up a blog, though it’s been on my mind a lot. I wanted to be open about what we were spending, upgrading, and our future plans for our boat, but I never did get around to putting the site together until now.
Prudence (Old Pru), 2017. Sailing down the Richmond channel with Bryan, Bryan, Pam, Patrick, David and Kim.
A little background for those that don’t know… I met David in December 2013 right after the America’s Cup in San Francisco had come to a close. David and I were both very active in the sailing community, but he being an avid racer and me being an avid cruiser, never did we meet. I’m not embarrassed to admit that we met on Match.com, even though 100 of our “closest friends” never did put us together. He had a 1978 Islander Freeport named “Prudence” (aka “Old Pru”). Prudence was actually a beautiful boat underneath all her projects. Between 2013 and 2017, David and I spent countless hours on her, working towards making her a proper living boat as well as sailing the heck out of her. I guess it became a bit of an obsession, and we enjoyed working on it together. I started to refer to her as “Boat University”. The breaking point on our love for Old Pru came when we found the “final leak” we had been chasing, and it was the portholes. Replacing the portholes because a massive project requiring Tyvek suits and grinders, and finally David was willing to let that relationship go and move on to a new healthier boat.
We fell in love with Sabre sailboats when we went cruising in Maine with David’s brother Mike and his wife Amanda. Amanda’s dad has a Sabre 38, and we spent a week with them sailing in and out of coves up the coast of Maine. Add to that both of our backgrounds with New England and it was a good match again. When Old Pru fell out of favor, we started looking at newer boats, focusing on Sabres in particular. It’s very difficult to find Sabres on the west coast, as they are hand-built and well-loved on the east coast.
January 2018. Prudence (New Pru) delivered to KKMI, sitting on Cutting Blvd. on the truck.
We found “New Pru” in Seattle in December during a particularily long downpour, and she didn’t leak. Looking back, it may have been that one thing that really drew us in initially (well, that and the fact that she was an untouched, original Sabre, with no modifications at all other than having been maintained properly). We bought her (previous name “Austral”) in mid-December, telling each other she was a joint Christmas gift. I also had managed to sell Old Pru as a project boat in a 48 hour timespan at the end of November, with my primary objective of getting her out of our slip to get ready for a new boat that was for sure going to be here any day.
New Pru was delivered to KKMI from Seattle by truck in January. It was such an odd thing seeing our sailboat sitting on the back of a truck in the middle of one of our major roads around the corner from us. She spent a month in the yard getting new bottom paint, new thru-hulls (they were also original), new lifelines, new stern name applied, and a bunch of other small things just to make her ours. We had a christening party in the yard. Finally, she was splashed and arrived in her slip at Richmond Yacht Club at the end of January.
We’ve spent almost every weekend either sailing her or working on her, though there’s not a lot of work to do on her. I think after 4 years of the constant work on Old Pru, it felt like we needed to continue, but moving a paper towel rack or installing a hook aren’t really big projects. In the 10 months we’ve had her, we’ve only had to do one larger project, and Boat University kicked in again. It was a great experience, and we’re both glad that we worked together to replace the shift and throttle cables. We learned a lot about the aft end of the boat, and how it’s all put together.
We’re very happy with our new boat. Here’s hoping I can continue with the blogging from here on out, and updating when we do something consequential (or at least consequential to us).
