If you love to sail…

Join a sailing club. If you love boat maintenance, get a boat.

I’ve heard the other boat jokes far more often

-the happiest days of a boat owner’s life: day you buy the boat and the day you sell it

– a boat is a hole you pour money into

– BOAT is an acronym for: Bring On Another Thousand

But so far, the first one is the truest advice no one wants to hear. Even down here in California, in San Francisco Bay, where there is good weather and good winds nearly year round, it is far more common to see people down on the docks fussing with their boats than actually see them sailing them. Even in the summers, when the wind can be relied upon for 20 knots every day, it isn’t uncommon for me to be the only boat as far as the eye can see, once the sailing school turns in. Of the boats at my marina, I would guess maybe 15% of them are sailed with any regularity. The rest bob about in their slips in various states of disrepair. It seems shocking that anyone could let a boat fall apart (and I still don’t understand who wants to pay slip fees year after year on one of the most expensive marinas in the country for a boat they never touch)… until you have one.

Then you realize that they need constant attention. And that constant attention is not just time consuming and expensive and dirty, it is also mentally laborious. Getting the engine guy to come bless my Yanmar once a year takes no less than three months and fourteen emails to set up. I took a break from boat work last year sometime around my trip to the South Pacific only to come back two months later and find mold beginning to bloom. I had the boat hauled out and she hadn’t been back in the water a week before the depth sounder fouled. On my first ocean race the tiller broke about one mile outside the gate. On the way back from Half Moon Bay, the rigid vang ripped out of the mast while we were sailing downwind. When I got the Dana she was in great shape and there was nothing wrong with her- she just needed everything updated: standing rigging, running rigging, bright work, hatch seals, rebed the scuppers and through-bolts, new instruments, new upholstery, new water filter etc etc etc.

This week, with weather that was to die for, I didn’t even consider taking the boat out. She’s a mess and it’s hard just being on her in all that chaos, let alone securing everything for sailing. The absolute only time I ever really think about bigger boats is when I am in the middle of a project and to get x you have to move everything out of y and onto z, only to realize that z is where you left the screwdriver and so now you must move everything back.

This particular mess was from the ongoing diesel heater saga. I know on all the other boat blogs everything magically is put together and no problem, and nothing ever breaks, but let’s consider this blog a counter to that suspiciously un-real-life-like depiction of life. There isn’t a problem with the heater, except that the kit didn’t come with the thru-wall fittings so those needed to be ordered independently. That project is back on hold until those come in,

The next project was to replace all the cabin lights with LED three-way red and white lights. I had already converted the lights from incandescent to LED a couple years back, but red lights are so helpful at night. They are soothing when you are winding down, they din’t affect your night vision, and they’re even just nice when you have to get up and use the bathroom or cant find your water glass. With two of us taking the old ones down, stripping the very short wires, connecting them to the new lights, piloting new holes and installing the new lights, it took a couple of hours. This was one of the less painful and messy projects and had a high payoff.

there was not a lot of wire to work with

Hello new lights!

The next project was to remove the water tank. I skipped the water marking test because I basically just decided that all the water I had found was from the tank leaking. This was an educated guess, as I had a vague recollection that I was informed that it leaked when I bought the boat and I know another Dana that had a leaky tank, and there were no leaks anywhere until I filled up the tank but it was still pretty lazy sleuthing. The stainless steel tank was glassed in, so the first step was to cut it out of the glass. We then drained the tank completely and prayed to the goddesses that the tank would lift out and clear the anchor cabinet, which it did by a hair. Then it was clean up time, removing the rest of the glassed in housing which thankfully came out without much of a struggle. Once we got her clean up we spotted the hairline crack down one of the welded seams.

I was supposed to go back over and clean up the rest of the dust and paint over the spots, but I instead volunteered to do work on my friend’s boat as we prepare for the bay race this weekend. The next steps will be to get bladders to put below and run hosing to them. Until then, I don’t have any water on the boat.

At this point I see boat work as part of sailing. I had the opportunity to enter the Hawaii race in a faster boat and it was then that I realized how much of my confidence in the race comes from knowing my boat so well. Knowing every inch of her, she can’t surprise me too badly out there. One of the requirements of the race is to build a map of where all the safety equipment has been put. I can’t imagine having things go sideways and then need to refer to a map. My map is in my head-it has all been memorized through repetition and familiarity which gives me one less thing to think about when I am jamming a potato into a busted seacock. Sailing is the fun of course, but there is a certain pleasure in boat work that also instills confidence and clears the mind. Especially living so close to the frenetic city, just coming out to the boat and letting the nervous system ease up makes the trip worth it.