Chapter 1 - The Search for Das Boat!
We made three trips to the U.S., from New Orleans to Maine to find the perfect boat.
Remember house hunting? Well, this was the same; We saw over a dozen boats. My favourite and out of our financial range, was perfect - clean, sleek and French, which means 20%+ in import duties and taxes. On one boat, the broker actually told us not to bother - everything needed to be replaced - he thought it would look better on the bottom of the lake. On another, also beautiful, it was actually raining in on the inside - water just ran down the walls. But the best yet, was owned by 3 guys...their motto was "don't clean, just paint over it" even their oven looked like a BBQ pit. A sister ship, who was in beautiful shape, had absolutely nothing on board but the beds and toilets. All she had added was a refrigerator that needed to be plugged in on shore.
Finally we found her; actually we had originally seen her and walked off in disgust, but, after our search, she proved to be the best, with the most goodies. We have found that in boats, the bigger you go, the more the price increases exponentially, per foot of length over 30 feet.
She is a Morgan 462 - Ketch - with 2 masts
The Morgan's were originally designed and built for the charter trade. They assumed anyone renting a boat wasn't necessarily knowledgeable or caring, so they built them to take anything folks could think of - remember the U.S. is a very litigious country so their goal was, let them hit anything, but don't let the boat sink - just think of the movie Captain Ron.
That sounded perfect for us...learn as we go...a bullet-proof boat - yahoo.
The boat is definitely designed for the open ocean and long distances - look at the front view picture of the hull shape - wine glass shaped, with a modified-full keel and skeg hung rudder.
She has several weird features - some were actually put in by the previous owner (aka Old Dude). You can definitely tell she is American because she has a specially designed and built gun cabinet which holds 4 rifles plus a separate munitions compartment - both locked. Old Dude then decided that the front stateroom would look better if all the walls, from top to bottom, were covered in dark blue fuzzy/bristly material. Somewhere, there are 2000 nude tennis balls in hiding. He also never took anything off the boat. Anything that broke and needed to be replaced stayed there and something new was added....but, nothing left...like the unions, everything had a place for life. It took took family and friends over a whole day to toss things out of the boat into the dumpster. Her refrigerator and freezer are so large, someone will have to hang on to my ankles so that I can reach the bottom.
Old Dude literally walked off into the sunset clutching his cash, leaving all his possessions behind - 3 sets of cutlery, pots and pans, bedding, towels, snorkels and fins, 10 bags of rice, 20 containers of engine oil, even his bathing suit, and a bag of 10,000 QTips - to name just a tiny portion. There wasn't one inch of clear floor space on the boat - every nook and cranny was stuffed. What a pack-rat....this is starting to scare me, Roy is just the same.
The transport company hauled her, stuffed, all the way from Annapolis. She must have been sloshing all the way because she also carried a full tank of diesel fuel and her holding tanks from the 2 toilets was also full. No wonder the road clearance from the bottom of the trailer was only about 2". See the picture.
We will have to replace all the interior cushions - they were covered in glorious shades of purple, pink and violent blue. That's why there is only one interior picture.
Her name, as you can see, is "Flying Eagle" a name, not too great for global travel. Roy, being frugal, suggested we change the E in Eagle to B, to be "Flying Bagle", anything so that he doesn't have to repaint the hull. NO! So far, the only name we can sort of agree on, after 8 months, is "Drum". Any ideas?
Anyway, she's home now at Bay Port Marina in Midland on Georgian Bay. So, anyone wanting to visit and see that we've accomplished after a long summer out of the water, just cleaning and painting, is very welcome.
Chapter 2 - A Summer on the Water