Best Part of Christmas!

Since Scott and I don’t have kids, our Christmas present exchange isn’t overly exciting, but we make sure to give each other things we love and that always includes gifts about boating, islands, etc. This year surely didn’t disappoint!

Every year I give him a page a day calendar for his desk from Islands Magazine. It’s a great way to learn about different tropical islands around the world.

I always ask for books and this year I got 3 new books! Aren’t a a lucky gal?! I got two books from author, Jonathan White about his adventures sailing and also traveling the world. His first book was Everyone Said I Should Write a Book: The Travels and Adventure of a Sailor and Explorer and his second book was Everyone Said I Should Write Another Book: More Travels and Adventures of a Sailor and Explorer .

Then another favorite author of mine is Ed Robinson who wrote “Leap of Faith. Quit Your Job & Live on a Boat”. Well, he wrote another book from a different perspective, called Poop, Booze, and Bikinis….all things you have to deal with while living on a boat. We take some of them for granted living on land.

 

No one can say we didn’t read enough books, that’s for sure! This is also the season of boat shows and typically when you buy your tickets online, you get a free subscription to boating magazines. This year we picked:

 

Normally, they offer Cruising World, but not this year. So guess we are all set with our reading materials. We have two boat shows scheduled in the next month, including the Seattle Show & the Miami Boat Show. So stay tuned for all of the details!

Anacortes Boat Show!

What a great weekend we just had! Last year we were supposed to go up to Anacortes for the Fall Boat Show, but with 40mph squalls, we stayed home. This weekend was the exact opposite! The weather was warm and sunny! Anacortes is a great location / marina due to it’s proximity to the San Juan Islands.

We stayed at the Islands Inn on Commercial Avenue. Not a fancy place, but very clean and a nice complimentary breakfast in the morning. Plus, they accept dogs, so it was a win win!

The great thing about the boat show, is it’s FREE! Plus dogs are welcomed, but we didn’t know that, so we left Mac back at the room. They had about 40 boats to view, ranging from weekend cruisers to trawlers. One of the favorite boats we liked, along with our friends Nick & Michelle, was the 2003 Silverton 330 Sport Bridge Yacht. 

One of the biggest treats we experienced was viewing at 64′ Northern Marine Pilothouse Trawler. Though trawlers are not our type of boat, this one was amazing! Should be for $1,590,000!

Going to a boat show, really makes you want a boat (now!). Luckily, my sister & her husband moor their boat in Anacortes, so we enjoyed a fantastic evening with her enjoying wine & cheese amongst the sea lions.

A great ending to a wonderful weekend. Soon this is how we will end our days. Cheers!

Seattle Fall Lake Union Boat Show

Every year we attend two shows in Seattle. One is in the Fall that is held on Lake Union and the other is in January, which is at our Convention Center and Lake Union. This year, the Lake Union “Boats Alfloat Show” was a warm and sunny day!

While, there never are catamarans, except one Lagoon 39, it is great to get ideas for storage and utilities on the boats. We originally fell in love with Lagoon, but the more we spend time on one, we realize how small the cabin is and wouldn’t work for us.

We have also considered living aboard a power boat in Seattle first, to make sure we like it. This show, had a lot of Pilothouses, which is not our style. We prefer Sedans, and Meridian has the perfect layout for us, in the 2004 and 2005 years.


The idea would be to rent out our house and buy a used Meridian, saving us money on a monthly basis, so we can eventually buy the Cat of our dreams. Only time will tell!!!

New Reads

Back in March, we started following another sailing blogger, Kimberly on Lahowind. She and her fiance Jereme left Florida and are working their way through the Caribbean. She is a fantastic photographer and tells a story very well. If you enjoy blogs, this one is one to subscribe to!

I started a new book called “Seasoned by Salt“, by Jerry L. Mashaw. I’m only half way through, but it’s an interesting and very detailed account of their voyage from CT to Grenada. Just dealing with the Gulf and upcoming hurricanes has been very eye opening.


We subscribe to many sailing & yachting magazines, but two that have been very informative have been “Blue Water Sailing”  and “Sailing Magazine“. Not sure how we plan on saving the articles of importance, maybe the old fashion way, in a binder!

 
With everything we read, we’re just absorbing all of the information and taking our time to research , research and research. Too often, big purchases are impulse buys and we can tell you that years of thought and research will go into our ultimate dream. Happy reading!


Another 6 months into the year & that much closer to our dream!

Well, not exactly. People keep asking us when will all this happen? We don’t know right now. As long as we own a business and are still working hard everyday, no time soon. BUT, it will happen and hopefully within 10 years!

Sadly, I was sick in Jamaica, so we didn’t get to go on our sailing trip. Now that summer has arrived in the Pacific Northwest, we hope to spend some time on my sister’s trawler and enjoy the great waters of the Puget Sound.

Currently, I’m reading yet ANOTHER great book about sailors from Seattle. It’s amazing how many people / authors are from here. It’s called: Sailing the Dream.

I’m almost done with this one and have another one to start soon after called: Seasoned by Salt: A Voyage in Search of the Caribbean. This is a book about sailing the Caribbean, which is what we ultimately plan to do.

So for now, we’ll just keep reading our books and magazines and staying up to date on the newest & greatest. All along trying to learn from all of the tips out there.

Jamaica here we come!

Every year, Scott and I travel to the Caribbean for the first week of January. We’ve worked every day since mid-November and since our wine shop is virtually dead that first week, we close up shop. This year we are returning to Jamaica and staying the first part of our trip at Sandals Whitehouse. They have a fantastic lagoon where we will try and Hobie Cat sail every day!

In addition, we’re booked again on a catamaran cruise to Pelican Bar, which is handmade out of driftwood. The crew is one of our favorites and definitely worth every penny.

We love taking a sailing trip during our vacation as the water is so blue and beautiful. The Caribbean sea is amazing!

For Christmas Scott bought me a new book Leap of Faith: Quit Your Job and Live on a Boatabout quitting your day job and living on a boat. After we go on vacation, that’s all I ever have on my mind. Some day……

So now we just count the days before we leave, which is 5! Good bye 2013 and I look forward to a fabulous 2014 and getting closer to seeing our dream come true.

Annapolis Boat Show!

Well, we got into Annapolis on Sunday morning about 11:00am. We took the circulator (trolly car) down to the show, but in reality we could have walked the 5 blocks from the parking garage. The weather on Sunday was grey, cool and cloudy (just like Seattle!). Apparently the previous days of the boat show, they had torrential down pours, so we felt lucky to have dry weather.
This was probably one of the most fun shows we’ve been to. We were starving when we arrived, so we grabbed a quick bite to eat at Pusser’s Restaurant in the Marriott hotel. Outside, on the water side they had bars set up with a band playing Caribbean music. It was very festive for a boat show!

They had so many sailboats and a great selection of Catamarans. Ironically, we came to this boat show after falling in love with the Lagoon cat, but after viewing so many others, we realized that it is no longer one of our favorite boats. It’s really designed more for chartering, than live aboard. We did get to visit quite a few cats for charter as well. For some of the big cats, we had to make an appointment, including a 90 footer that rented for $40k / week. The operators of the boat were also named Scott & Allison, so they got a kick out of showing us their cat.
They had all kinds of boats, including this tiny sailboat that actually had a miniature galley, a 4′ bed & a portapotty. If you look inside, you’ll see the stovetop.  I joked that I found our boat!

Everywhere you looked, there were flags, flags and more flags. Yep, we’re attending a big show!

Being we were so exhausted on Sunday, we planned on really spending quality time on Monday viewing the boats, some of which we went back and revisited. At home, we only attend the show one day, so it was actually great to go back and review what we had been on already.
Immediately, one of our favorite cats was the Leopard. They had the 41, 44 and 49 at the show. The 44 was perfect for us and it was designed perfectly. Things we looked for were railings to grab onto while walking around the boat (you’d be surprised, but many of the cats didn’t have those and you would have to grab the bbq or the bimini), comfort of the stairs, width of the hall ways, etc. Here is the Leopard 44:


Big galley and it’s nice an bright. Tons of storage too.

This is the guest quarters – nice wide hall ways.

 This is the owners suite. There is a couch outside the bedroom, which could be replaced with storage cupboards.

This is the owner’s head and the shower was nice and tall for Scott. The washer & dryer was in the large cupboard on the right.
 Our 2nd favorite cat was the Antares 44i. We met the owner, Gordon Moon of the Bella Luna from Toronto. He was so kind and spent a good amount of time telling us about the boat and his experience sailing in the Caribbean from Argentina. 

This cat had a huge salon and their galley is down below.
 

They put their washer/dryer upstairs, since it gets so warm down below.

The only “catch” with having the galley down below, is Scott is in one bedroom and on the other side of the galley is another bedroom and head. So the folks staying in the room he’s in, have to to thru the galley to use the head. But if you don’t have that many visitors, this wouldn’t be an issue.
Our next favorite was the Maverick 440. A little smaller than we were thinking we’d like, but it actually felt really roomy inside.

Ultimately, our dream boat would be the Leopard 49! Maybe if we win the lottery we can splurge on a new one of these!

Ironically this week on one of our local radio stations, they were talking about making wishes come true. The message was if you simply have a wish, it won’t come true. But if you have a wish and you put it out there and share with the world, eventually it will happen. That’s the reason behind this blog. To remind us everyday, that dreams are not that far out of reach and with determination we will do it some day.

Annapolis here we come!

Well, my last post talked about how we were looking forward to going to the Annacortes Boat Show and boating the afternoon on my sister’s trawler, but the weather turned NASTY and we bailed. We have 50-60 mph guests and it rained almost 4″ in one day.
So I spent that day, reading and reading magazine after magazine! They are certainly piling up. Just this week I bought 4 new ones for our upcoming trip. Multihull Quarterly, Multihulls, Bluewater Sailing & Passage Maker. Great stories this month. Plus, many of them got us psyched up for this weekend’s trip to Annapolis, MD! This is the US Sailboat Show.

  

We fly out on a red-eye Saturday night and get into Annapolis Sunday morning. We’ll tour the show both Sunday and Monday. We’ll take lots of photos & videos of some of our favorite catamarans. One thing any boater has to be good at, is understanding weather forecasts. Over the years, I have become obsessed with weather and have every possible weather app on my phone. One of my favorite apps is Weatherspark.com as it runs off of NOAA’s data and is very accurate. Unfortunately the forecast for Annapolis is 65 & cloudy on Sunday and 65 & partly cloudy on Monday. But the weather forecast keeps changing every day, so I will have to wait to pack on Friday night, when we get closer.

Stay tuned for our posts and videos of the show!! 


Jamaica & a new Year 2013!

Every January, we take a week off for vacation. For the past few years, we’ve been vacationing in Jamaica (mainly because the airfare is much cheaper than the other islands). This year we went to Ocho Rios on the northwest side of the island. It wasn’t really our favorite. The water was a bit rough every day and we did go to Dunn’s River Falls on a catamaran and again the water wasn’t very tropical. But the cruise was a blast! Rain or shine, they know how to have a good time! Plus, this was a huge catamaran – 65 feet. The captain took us on a tour of the engine room, where it had two Cummins 250hp engines.

Back in Seattle in the middle of January and we are excited about the Boat Show. Our boat show is in two locations: Century Link Convention Center and down at Lake Union. At the big show, they mostly have weekend cruising boats and a few 40+ SeaRays, but that was about it. Down at Lake Union they had a good selection of yachts and sailing boats. They had a Lagoon 35 there again, along with a Fontaine Power Cat. The power cat was not our style at all.

What we did start to look at was power boats 45-60′ that we could possibly live on. At least the style of them, but we would have to buy a much older and less expensive boat than the ones in the show. If we lived on a boat here in Seattle first (and rented our home), we could make sure we enjoyed living on one before we invest too much money.

Marine West knows me well now, because each month I stock up on about 6 magazines and one of my new favorites is Cruising Outpost.  It’s a bit of a quirky publication, but I love all of the cruiser’s stories. It’s a whole another world that most of us don’t know about.

This summer we bought a groupon for a day sailing trip on Elliott Bay. It was a big boat, about 75 feet long. It was a gorgeous sunny day, but not a windy one. Great views, but not much sailing – hey, at least we were on the water!

Last weekend was the Lake Union Boat Show (they do 2 a year) and it’s nice because it’s normally warm and sunny. Our objective was to find a liveaboard and really look at them and see if we could actually live on one. We actually found a boat that would be ideal, (if only we were ready to buy) which was a Meridian  38 foot Sedan. It had a nice salon, big galley and two big staterooms for only $179k. Maybe down the road it will still be for sale?

We’re looking forward to the Anacortes Boat Show in a week and we’re also going boating with my sister and her husband on their trawler!

We’ve booked our trip to Annapolis, MD for the US Sailboat Show in October! We’re so excited and we’ll finally be able to see a variety of catamarans and talk to some charter companies for our trip in 2015. We’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and share them.

So for now, it’s back to reading our magazines. We lucked out this month, because SAIL magazine put out their first issue of Multihull Sailor, which was fantastic! Two other great magazines for following cruisers and their stories are Cruising World and Passage Maker. As you can see, we read a lot and are absorbing as much information as we possibly can. Good thing we have boaters in the family that also like the magazines, so we can recycle them to them.