New Boat Owner

Oh, and for those of you on the edge of your seats, I gave a verbal on the boat. I have officially promoted myself from BN to BO.

Sticker Shock

Every hurricane season I swear I’m going to replace my windows and sliding glass doors before the next one. Yesterday we actually had a guy out to measure and give us a quote.

The company this guy is from only does high-impact work, which is the way I’d like to go. I don’t want to have to worry about putting up shutters and stuff every time a storm gets near. I’ve already learned that by the time you wish you had something on your windows it’s too late to do anything about.

I have six windows, seven sliding glass doors (3 openings, 28 linear feet), and another patio door that I think warrant high-impact. The other six windows are on the sides of the house and relatively well-protected. I’m planning to replace those myself using a wind-rated product, but I’ll skip the impact-resistance.

Now I knew this was going to be expensive. I’ve heard that folks generally spend $10K to have their windows replaced. Assuming much of this to be labor, I’ve been planning to do a lot of the work myself. I bought a hammer drill, (which has become one of my favorite tools) and I watched carefully when our contractor replaced a window during a recent bathroom remodel. Looks easy enough.

But I was really clueless about how much these doors would cost. We’re probably going to replace the sliders with French doors. We wanted to put two sets of doors in the 12-foot space, but I couldn’t convince the sales guy that it would be just as strong as having large glass sidelights on either side of a single set. Code shmode.

So he took his measurements and then sat down with his calculator. He made some grunting sounds and mumbled a little while my wife and I glanced at each other expectantly. When he finished he hemmed and hawed a bit, which I took to be a bad sign, before turning his notebook around to show us... $24,000 for the whole job; 7 for the windows, 17 for the doors. Holy crap.

They manufacture locally, which is primarily why I chose to have them out first. Supporting the local economy and all that. I also mistakenly thought it might also help with delivery time. Not. They set customer expectations for 6-7 months. The sales guy says they custom build everything and don’t have an inventory of standard sizes. I have a hard time believing this.

He also says they are less expensive than Simonton and Stanek (both of whom do manufacture standard sizes). We’ll see about that. Home Depot sells Simonton. My previously-mentioned-contractor also said he would get me Simonton stuff at his cost.

Assuming quotes from HD are even in the same Zip Code, I’m going to have a tough time justifying dropping that much coin on some stupid doors. My guesstimates for the windows were pretty much on target, but I was off on the doors by over $10k.

I’m not under any illusions that spending that much money on windows will make my house hurricane-proof. I don’t think mine has the straps that tie the roof down to the block walls like they’re requiring on new homes. I also have two large oak liabilities that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. I may not have a roof, but dammit I’ll have nice windows.

While new windows improve the value of the house, I doubt the quality of the windows make much difference. If you’re gonna upgrade before you sell your house you should use medium-quality stuff. The new buyer isn’t going to appreciate your bulletproof windows any more than your new $10K air-conditioner with humidity control, variable speed fan, and two-stage furnace. The corollary of course is never to buy a house that has been recently upgraded. Live and learn.

That said, I tend not to do stuff half-assed and am usually very considerate of the next owners. That’s why all my crown moulding has high-grade speaker wire running behind it even though I don’t have any speakers and don’t even have a TV.

If I don’t do this it is guaranteed that in about 6-9 months when the next storm is headed this way and I’m trying to decide if I need to get out the plywood, I’ll be cussing myself for being cheap and indecisive and swearing that this year I’m going to replace those windows.

From Omaha With Love

My brother got me a package of meat from Omaha Steaks for Christmas. It arrived yesterday in a Styrofoam cooler packed with dry ice.

I’ve never done the mail order meat thing, but have always been curious. It seems to me that the portions are exceedingly small. The filets are 5oz, the strip steaks are 8oz, and the burgers are 4oz. That’s about half my preferred portion size. I’ve eaten at an Omaha Steaks restaurant in Orlando and recall the quality being good and the portion size normal.

I don’t think I’m likely to become an Omaha customer. I’m pretty happy with the meat we get at Costco and I’ve already got the external freezer and vacuum sealer action going. But I like the gift of food. Big improvement over the time he gave me that book of Theodore Geisel’s political cartoons.

And as often happens, we found occasion for an impromptu science lesson.

Test Drive

So I had the boat out yesterday.

It was a nice day with 10-15 kts from the south. The wind was a bit light for discovering flaws, but the boat felt good. The Dacron main is a little baggy and the 135 has a protective luff tape like it was made for a roller furling headstay.

I didn’t detect anything that might make me suspicious of the keel. The boat is stiff and handles well. I was impressed with how it points. Especially given the light wind, the main’s condition, and the haphazard jib trim. There was a slight chop in the bay but only the foredeck got wet.

I was not impressed with the control layout. The jib halyard is on the mast. The winches are out of reach. I’m not real fond of the traveler location. It is only a few inches beyond the end of the tiller so the helmsman is trapped in a little corner of the cockpit. Yesterday I chose to step over the tiller and duck under the boom during tacks; probably not the best way to do it.

We were out for about an hour and then had to head in so the owner could get to work. I blatantly skipped my daily client conference call.

Back at the dock, I went to see the general manager. He confirmed that if the boat changed hands I would have to sign a new 12-month lease. The boat is in his smallest slip at 30 ft. The slip fees include water and basic cable (my wife thinks this is funny). It also includes a $5/month fee for electricity, on top of which they bill for usage. Total with sales tax comes to $405/month.

Tenants get free use of the facilities: bathrooms, showers, laundry, and pool. None of which I’d use. There is a nice little pub next door. The pub I think I would use.

Rules are pretty basic. No paint or fiberglass work at the dock. No storing junk on the dock except in the slip’s dock box. Boats have to be insured for $300K liability. They are well protected and if a hurricane is coming they only ask that boats double-up the docklines. There are 5 or 6 marinas nearby where a sailboat can be hauled out for more extensive work.

When I got home there was an email from the previous owner waiting. I had asked to get in touch with him about his experiences with the boat. Specifically the keel. He had the boat for six years. When he got it there was a Cal 22 shoal draft keel on the bottom. He hated it, so being an engineering type, he designed a new one. He says he’s very pleased with the results. If anything, he thinks the boat outperforms the standard rating. I suspect these posts may have to come down if I start racing.

He also says the hull is pristine, without a single blister. He said there were no hidden maintenance items that he was aware of. He says the Kevlar main is in good shape, but the genoa probably only has one racing season left before it should be retired.

All sounding good.

Blue Bear

I am contemplating the purchase of my first boat.

I want something small enough that I can sail it myself, but big enough to accommodate the family for a night or two. I’m pretty performance-oriented so I’d like it to have some zip. I’d like to be able to race it someday, but am realistic enough to know that I probably won’t. One of my goals is to get acquainted with boat maintenance and repairs, so I’m not necessarily looking for it to be pristine, but I don’t have the time or skill for major projects. I’d like not to spend a bunch of money. Boats are often called holes in the water that you throw money into. I’d like my first hole to be as small as possible and filling it optional.

I’ve had a J/24 in mind to fit this bill for a long time. They’ve been in production for about 30 years so there are tons of them out there. Their numbers make them real easy to race one-design, which I find a lot more enjoyable than handicap racing. Since lots of folks have them and they’re still in production there is plenty of help out there for parts and maintenance. For all these reasons they seem to be a tad more expensive than they’re actually worth. In theory you can take a 30-year-old hull, spruce it up a little, and win the World’s. The cheap ones are generally beyond help. UsedBoats.com shows two in my area: a 1979 for $4K and a 1977 for $6K.

So when a 1986 Ranger 22 popped up on Craigslist the other day for $2,000 I decided to go have a look at it. The Ranger was built to race so it has that late 70’s/early 80’s sex appeal, but it is also pretty spacious below with a v-berth and two good sized quarter berths. It is a very simple boat, which should make it easy to sail myself and teach my wife. It would be better if it had an asymmetrical spinnaker, but I’m not going to find a sportboat like that that meets my other criteria.

It stinks inside, the plumbing and electrical are shot, the headliner is nasty, and the port side window leaks when it rains. It’s perfect.

The hull and deck appear to be in good shape. The mast and standing rigging are only two years old. I’m told the previous owner put a bend in the old mast and then creased it while trying to get the bend out.

The deck layout is not ideal. All the winches are up on the cabintop which will be a problem for singlehanding. I’d probably want to put some self-tailers on the cockpit coaming so I can trim the jib from the helm.

The bottom is getting some growth on it and the current owner says it hasn’t been cleaned in 3 months. I’m not sure what is normal, but it seems a bottom job with some fresh anti-fouling might be in order.

It has two sets of sails, a cruising set and a racing set. I haven’t had the boat out yet so I don’t know how they look.

The boat does not have a motor included in the $2K price, but the owner has a new Nissan 4HP 4-stroke outboard that he’d throw in with some other stuff for an extra thousand. Probably worth it. I like the Nissan because it can take an external fuel tank and can also put off 12V for charging batteries.

The current owner has only had the boat for 3 months. He’s 23 and has decided he wants to buy a house and doesn’t want the overhead of the boat. Why is such a small boat so much overhead? Because he signed a lease to keep it at a very expensive marina.

Which brings us to the first sticking point. The contingency for getting the boat at $2-3K is that the buyer has to take over the $400/month lease which has 9 months remaining. In talking to the Dockmaster, it seems that a new 12-month lease will be required if the boat changes hands (which I’m not going to contest at this point). So that’s $5K/year to dock a $2-3K boat. Most cheaper marinas have a waiting list and the places that don’t generally have other problems. I have to keep the boat somewhere. I don’t have a trailer or a vehicle to pull the trailer, and I’m not knowledgeable about local marinas, so I’m inclined to accept this situation. If I factor in the extra $200/month over what I think dockage should cost, the boat becomes $4-5K which is still reasonable. The racing sails and motor are probably worth $2K by themselves.

Besides, this is a really nice marina with some really nice boats. I wouldn’t mind hanging out here and meeting the folks on some of these boats. When I was there yesterday I saw a woman doing her laundry at the marina’s facilities. Cool.

The second problem is that this boat is a 1986 and Ranger went out of business in 1985. The hull number starts with “FLZ”, which means that legally it is what is affectionately called a “backyard boat”. The hull is obviously a Ranger 22 and I suspect it was sold unfinished in a fire sale when the company went under. On one hand it might be cool to have the last Ranger 22 ever built, but on the other hand I can see it being a problem that it isn’t technically a Ranger. A valid PHRF (Performance Handicap Rating Formula) certificate comes to mind as a potential problem.

My real problem with the backyard situation is that I’ve seen a picture of the boat when it was out of the water last and it doesn’t have the correct keel. I suspect that in whatever state it was originally sold, the sale did not include a keel. Who the heck knows what kind of keel that is or how it changes the performance of the boat. I can rationalize that I probably won’t ever be competitive with the boat, or that there’s a chance that this keel is better than the original, but I am rather obsessive compulsive about these types of things and that keel is going to bother me.

Oh and forget about getting a standard rating, this thing will have to go through a full measurement and new polars to get a valid certificate. The boat currently has a certificate under the previous owner, so he either is unaware or neglected to mention the keel situation. Before going to see the boat I had pulled the certificate up online and was surprised to see that it didn’t show the hull number. Now I know why.

I ran this all by my dad when he was in town for Christmas. It was very gratifying that he knew the boat right away. “Oh yeah, fractional rig, swept spreaders, low coachhouse, reverse transom, nice looking boat.” When I was whining about the keel, he had the crucial question, “How does it feel?” I don’t know yet, but I’m taking her out tomorrow.

Portable Proboscis

I lingered in bed too long yesterday morning. It was a late night of sushi and wine and I wanted a few extra winks to help me recover. Somehow I drew the attention of the kids and eventually I had 3 pairs of icy feet under the covers with me. Well, one wiggle led to another and within a few minutes there was a full-blown wrestling match on my bed. I am accustomed to receiving at least one unintentional blow to a certain sensitive area during these occasions (Aaron calls them the “daddy apples”), so I was intent on defending that part of my body. I may have even had my eyes closed in a foolish attempt to rest, but I definitely did not see the back of Aaron’s head flying toward my unprotected face.

I realized that my nose was crooked sometime during high school. I don’t know the exact cause. Could have been from football, a fight, or any one of thousands of games of “grab ass” (as my dad used to call it). Heck, it could have been the day my front teeth were knocked in and I just never noticed the nose. But something at some point happened to cause me to have more nose on the right side of my face than the left.

When Aaron’s head hit me hard on the right side of my nose there was a sickening crack, and the pain was intense. I groaned and writhed for a few minutes while Aaron apologized profusely and probably wondered if he should run. It didn’t bleed, which seemed to be a good sign. I lay there for awhile longer feeling miserable until my wife brought me an ice pack. When I finally worked up the nerve to get up and look in the mirror… my nose was straight.

It didn’t really swell any, but it still hurts like a mother and now I breathe with a slight whistle, which is real annoying. Hopefully when the tenderness dies down I’ll be able to give it a good blow to clear that whistle up. It sure could have been a lot worse. All things considered, I didn’t mind the nose being crooked all that much.

Save the Fishes

My family eats a fair amount of fish. I probably have a fish meal of some type or another every three weeks or so. And I hope that some day my lifestyle will be such that fish will become a significant part of my diet.

So I am frequently flustered by the fearsome fish facts and figures that I find. Between commercial overfishing, by-catch, and toxic pollutants it is enough to ruin my appetite. It seems that at the rate we’re going, someday the fish either won’t be there or won’t be safe to eat.

I try to take these things with a pound of salt. I most cases I feel the environmental whackos are blowing this doom and gloom stuff way out of proportion. I’m highly suspicious of anybody pushing a global warming threat. Last I heard we were still between Ice Ages. But it’s hard to argue about cod no longer being found in the Grand Banks, or mercury levels in tuna and salmon.

We had tilapia for dinner last night and my wife and I were discussing the fish fear. I told her I favored farmed fish because while the flavor isn’t what you’d find in a feral fish, the fact that the fish was farmed implies it is free of fish flaws. Today I see in the news that this isn’t the case at all. Apparently farmed fish are loaded with toxins too.