A Labor Day Trip to Edmonds

Working full-time as the only person in an accounting office, my days off are limited to the weekends.  So with a Friday off and a Monday holiday, trip planning got underway for our first "official" voyage.  Where to go?  We wanted one day of travel, one day of enjoying where we went, and one day of travel returning, with one extra day in the mix in case of bad weather.  Should we take Cloud Nine to the San Juans and join the flotilla of all the other boats doing the same?  Or should we head to Edmonds to show her off to Jerry's son.  Showing off won handidly, and we made plans to make our way to either Kingston or Edmonds for the long weekend.  We had hoped to leave Friday, but changing the engine oil and other "servicing" took up our day and we headed out early Saturday.  A beautiful, clear day for cruising, albeit a little hazy due to the warm weather we finally were enjoying in NW Washington.  

  

East of Sequim is Protection Island, a National Wildlife Refuge.  This juvenile eagle was proof positive of the "wildlife" in abundance around the island.  We giggled that even with our binoculars, it was tough to read the "stay 200 yds away" sign until we were well within the 200 yards.   So we took some pictures and got back out of the way.  

 

Seals were very vocal about our infringing on their sunbathing.  They, too, were enjoying summer finally arriving in the Puget Sound. 



We we made our way east down the Strait of Juan de Fuca, boats were aplenty, all out enjoying the amazing weather.  Days like this are the exception in the Puget Sound, so many were taking advantage, including this wooden sail boat out of Port Townsend, with a large group out on a tour.  Mt. Baker in all his glory standing out.  I wish it had not been so hazy that day.  This would have been a great picture.

We made our way down the Admiralty Inlet and across the shipping lanes just in time to watch two cruise ships making their way north out of Seattle.

As Kingston was fully booked, we called into Edmonds marina and found we could moor in the space of one of their tenants who had vacated for the weekend.  At $60+ per night, we knew this would not become a "regular" in our list of marinas to visit, but instead a special treat.  "Active" is the understatement for this marina.  The guest moorage was filled with small pleasure craft, rafted together, and out early in the morning to gather their haul of fish.  Watching the boats maneuvering through the marina and out the breakwater was sometimes like cars merging on a busy freeway.  Add to this the ferry traveling back and forth between Edmonds and Kingston, we enjoyed all of the activity. 


The marina facilities are quite nice with each dock locked and their bathrooms and showers clean.  Having an Anthony's Restaurant at the marina was a plus for us, as we always enjoy partaking in a platter of their famous fish and chips!

On our return trip back to Sequim, we found out the hard way about the Point Wilson rips.  While we had ventured through this area three times before without incidence, this day we learned to respect all the warnings posted in many a cruising book about the dangers of this area. In the early pages of the Waggoner Cruising Guide they warn of the Point Wilson rips with a passage that reads:

One of the more frustrating pieces of water we face in

the Northwest is the infamous Point Wilson tide rip just

off Port Townsend.  The rip usually (but not always)

forms on an ebb tide.  The patch of rough water

can extend several miles north and west of Point Wilson....

They watched a white power boat enter the far side of the rip.  

The boat was about 40 feet long.  Once in it was trapped.  

It rolled and plunged taking water up to the flybridge.  

The longer it was in the rip the bigger the rip became.  

Rolling and crashing, the boat had no choice but to carry on.  

The bow lifted out of the crest and disappeared in the troughs, 

burying in the waves ahead.  Eventually, the boat got through.   

It was as if this passage was written while watching Cloud Nine roll and plunge that day through these waters, for reading this section after we returned, it described exactly how it felt going through these waters that day.  We had ignored the Coast Guard warnings of gale force winds in the east Strait because we could neither feel nor observe the evidence of winds.  We even stopped in Port Townsend to check at the marina for reports of bad weather around the corner in the strait.   There were none.  We also ignored the fact that we were going to be more than two hours past slack tide when we reached the area, and the tide would be on an ebb.  Nevertheless, we were in bad water that we hadn't seen and no way out but to continue through it.  While our nerves suffered greatly that day, it became clear that Cloud Nine had not suffered at all.  Returning to the Sequim Bay, and calmer waters, we idled in the Bay for a minute to survey the damage, which we found to be non-existent.  She had come through far better than us, and our confidence grew in her ability to take us safely on our passages to come.

THE WORK BEGINS

Agreeing on a price to buy CLOUD NINE was just the start.  She had to be surveyed before the sale would go through.  We needed to drive her from Sequim to Port Townsend for the survey.  

Rounding Point Wilson

My worries kicked in a little at the prospect of driving a boat we knew almost nothing about the 4 hours to Port Townsend.  Jerry's experience was what I had to depend upon and I trusted his knowledge to get us, and CLOUD NINE, safely there.  Weather was overcast, but seas fairly calm and we made the passage in less than 4 hours thanks to an incoming tide.  (NOTE:  Respect all the warnings in all of the books about the rips and tides at Point Wilson.  While this passage was uneventful, we found ourselves  in dangerous waters a couple of months later.)

Once in Port Townsend, she was hauled out and put on the hard.  NOTE:  The crew at the Port Townsend Boat Yard know their stuff, were professional, and always willing to answer the silly questions we asked.  





We met the surveyor who started his inspection on the bottom of the boat.  He met with us after finishing the bottom and had some discouraging news.  She had some rotten planks that would need to be replaced, along with some other issues he was concerned about and felt should be looked at.  Let's say we were glad with who we had chosen to survey the boat.  Not only was he familiar with the boat, as he had surveyed it for the previous owner, but he was also familiar with Steven, one of the owners of Haven Boat Works, who had done work on the boat previously.  We contacted Steven, who was gracious and came over to the boat to talk with our surveyor and us about what had been done in the past on the bottom and what work was needed to be completed at this time.  The initial work on her bottom we COULD afford, if her price came down.  Our surveyor suggested in excess of $60,000 would be needed to do all of the other cosmetic repairs on her, but that was based on a boat yard doing the work.  Being handy, Jerry was convinced we could do the work ourselves, keeping our costs to maybe one-third of the estimated cost.  If Cloud Nine had had more severe problems, outside our scope of experience to fix, the overall cost would have pushed her price into an area where buying a newer boat would have been a smarter move.  However, we contacted the seller, renegotiating the price downward, and a few days later, agreed on a price for the boat we felt was more reasonable now that we knew what needed to be accomplished.
 
CLOUD NINE was now officially ours, and we were hoping the surveyor had found the worse.  He finished surveying the remainder of the boat, and then the boat was transferred over to the crew at Haven Boat Works. We were impressed with their knowledge of wooden boats.  They got right to work pulling and replacing planks on her bottom and replacing some thru holes.

New planks on the hull with what they delicately called bear scat between the planks, a mixture of tar and cement.

 Haven Boat Works employee, Brad, did most of the work on the hull, along with camera-shy Miguel.



While CLOUD NINE was in Haven Boat Works yard, Jerry was allowed to work  on the boat scraping the loose paint off her hull, working on the opposite side from the crew. 

                                                                     Every weekend I joined him

                                                                     in Port Townsend where we 

                                                                     spent our days scraping 

                                                                     and sanding the hull. 

The crew took 3 weeks to get everything done and then the race was on to get her bottom painted and as far up her sides as we could before she had to go back into the water.

We got two coats of bottom paint on her and then started working up her hull, changing her color from white to sandstone.


We got one coat of the sandstone on her, up to her cap rails, before our date with the Port Townsend boat yard crew to put her back in the water.

A rep from the Boat Haven yard was with us as CLOUD NINE was placed back in the water.  The boat yard crew slowly lowered her back into the water, keeping her in the slings, ready to pull her back up should she sprout a leak.  A little water seeped in through her bottom, but nothing alarming.  She was back in the water and we would have to continue the renovation work once she was back in Sequim.  On our return trip to Sequim, we hit a fog bank just outside Port Townsend, and had to quickly get the radar and the GPS up and running.  With no more than 15-20 yards visibility, we slowed the boat's speed down to a crawl and I was on radar watch, pointing out all dots on the radar screen and the outlines of small boats in the fog.  I was surprised how many people were out fishing in a fog bank so thick.  We crawled along, depending on our radar and GPS to get us back to Sequim.  We stayed close to land and could see the top of the cliff and a little blue sky occasionally to our south (over land) but out in the water, our route back home was well socked in.  

Coming into the entrance of Sequim Bay is tricky and there is no forgiveness if you are not in the channel.  I was outside the pilothouse looking down into the water commenting on how close the bottom was, while also looking for the buoy that marks the channel.  It was not showing up on our radar and our GPS chose to stop working shortly before then.  As the bottom continued creeping closer, we spotted the buoy off our starboard side and we quickly made a 90 degree turn to get to the other side.  We were out of the channel and lucky we turned when we did.  The fog lifted a little further along and we saw the sand bar standing proudly in the center of the entrance--where we would have hit if we had not turned when we did.  At this point, my nerves were a little raw and I wondered how much luck has to do with traveling by boat.  After getting back to our permanent moorage (at least for the foreseeable future), I was determined to make sure all of our navigational equipment was in good working order before our next voyage; for the sake of my nerves, if nothing else.  Jerry just smiles at me and tells me "I'm cute" when I get this way.  He can be so annoying at times!  ;-)

OUR SEARCH

Our search for the perfect boat for us began more than 18 months before we found her.  We spent months and months browsing the internet, looking at boats for sale on yachtworld.com and boattrader.com.  We read articles on the different manufacturers.  We read blogs about people’s own experiences, and we read post after post of differing opinions on what kind of boat was “the best”.  We visited the Seattle Boat Show and every other boat show within a day’s drive.  We walked the docks at marinas; lots and lots of docks at lots and lots of marinas.  What we thought we wanted in the beginning changed as our search continued and changed a few more times before we found the "right" boat for us.  As we wanted to live aboard our boat, our needs differed from those people just wanting a boat for long weekend getaway or the two-to-three-week cruise in the summer.  We got on many boats at boat shows, imagining how we’d live aboard.  Jerry had the advantage here.  He had experience living aboard.  He knew what he didn’t want.  He didn’t want a tri-cabin with its small salon with only the dining settee for sitting.  No, he wanted more “living” space, and I joined him on this quest after my first visit on a tri-cabin.  I wanted more living space, too.  This was a must.  One of the other musts (we thought at the beginning) was a comfortable and non-claustrophobic master suite.  The final must?  Jerry insisted on a single engine due to numerous reasons; this narrowed our search down by quite a bit.

What would be our answer?  We read lots of magazine articles that said "New and Affordable!" and we asked ourselves "Affordable to whom?"  While $300,000 might be affordable to many people out there looking for a boat, we weren't one of them and pricing was a BIG issue for us.  We needed to find something truly affordable that also had good living space.

At one point we thought the Kadey Krogen 42's were the answer and decided we wouldn't settle for anything but a Krogen.  Those on the market ranged between $165,000 - $220,000 range, and were 20-25 years old.  How were we going to manage THIS?  We knew together we could maybe pull $170,000 together.  Could we put everything we owned into this boat? We ran the numbers again and again over the months of searching and each time convinced ourselves that we COULD live aboard, have a small loan each month, and still put away enough each month for fuel purchases and repair jobs.   And so we put our hopes into one day owning a Krogen 42' and waited for Jerry's house to sell.  We knew one thing:  we couldn't buy a boat until Jerry's house sold and, therefore, we were at the mercy of a real estate market that had yet to hit bottom.

We continued to visit and talk with boat owners every chance we got and continued to visit marinas and walk the docks.  We also attended boat shows and got on every boat we could, each time convincing ourselves that we had indeed found the boat we wanted.  Then our interest waned as we met owners of older Krogens and found out that some had issues with water getting into the core of the hull.  One couple had just had their boat out on the hard for two years trying to dry it out.  Another couple was just heading for the hard for removal of the water and repairs.  We knew our limited budget could not swing paying more than $160,000 for a boat and then face enormous expenses if something was wrong, too.  We loved the Krogen 42's, but reality was we didn't have unlimited funds to dump into the boat, and so we needed to find something that we could afford that would allow us to put some of our funds away for needed repairs.

We returned to our nightly checks at yachtworld.com to see what else was available similar to the Krogen. We loved the Pacific Trawlers and the newer North Pacific trawlers for their living space, but both pushed our budget.  One thing became clear and that was that we NOW could not settle for anything but a pilothouse trawler; we just didn't know which model.  We visited a 40' Bluewater pilothouse in Portland, overpriced and in need of a lot of work.  We returned from our trip, however, very clearly in our minds that a pilothouse trawler was indeed the only style of boat that would work for us living aboard.

We live near the John Wayne Marina in Sequim and it was where we always turned when we needed to be around the water and boats.  Many days we spent time eating our lunch overlooking the marina.  After our trip to Portland to see the Bluewater, we went walking the docks at the marina, saying hello to people we'd met many times before.  One stopped to ask how our search was going and we told him that until the house sold we were stuck, unable to afford anything on the market.  "Maybe not!" he quickly responded, as he pointed to a boat with a FSBO sign, which had recently come to the docks.  She was a pilothouse trawler, single engine, with attractive lines.  There was cosmetic work needed, that was clear, but overall a nice-looking boat.  We called the number on the sign and were told the boat's doors were unlocked.  

 

She had an ample covered back deck for sitting with the glass of wine at night or fishing away the day or even eating a meal.

We jumped at the chance to climb aboard her and entering the back, we saw this huge salon.

 Jerry and I look at each other, stunned.  This was the largest salon we had ever seen on a boat this size.  We continued to explore her, finding a nice size bathroom with a stall shower larger than any we had seen.  The kitchen was small, but workable.  Stepping up into the pilothouse was, for me, the time I knew we had found our boat.  All the windows let in great light, and a comfortable bench seat had me imaging where I would spend hours reading or crocheting.

A look down into her bow lead to the v-berth sleeping quarters with a closet, ample storage, and behind a door another head and sink.  Here's where we hesitated.  We had wanted a center-island queen and had dismissed any boat we had seen on the internet that had a v-berth for the master, and yet, here we were falling very quickly in love with this boat and it didn't have the center-island queen we thought was so important.  What was clear, however, was the "living" space on this boat was the largest we had seen on any other boat in our budget and we could see ourselves living on her.  We found out the owner had passed away and his widow was wanting to sell the boat.  Negotiations began and we found out another at the marina was also bidding on her.  Competition has a way of making you ask yourself, "Just how badly do I want her?"  We weren't going to be stupid; we knew she needed a lot of work, but that was something both of us had no problem doing ourselves.  Her exterior was pretty and we could see some cosmetic things that needed to be taken care of, but with her age we suspected we'd be working on fixing her up for at least the next year.

Needless to say, we finally came to an agreeable price (otherwise, there would be no need for this blog).  Her name?  Cloud Nine.  

We talked about her name, do we change it, do we keep it.  I had called my 87-year-old father to tell him we had found a boat.  He asked all about her and I was excited sharing the news and describing her to my dad.  At the end of my description, my dad said, "Jerry must be on cloud nine!"  I laughed and said, "Dad!  That's the name of the boat!"  My father laughed a deep, full-bellied laugh, that I had rarely heard come out of him.  At that moment I knew we could not change her name.  It was perfect.  We were on CLOUD NINE!

Back of Salon looking out to back deck