I suppose this shouldn’t come as a shock to people who know us well, but Jason and I bought a boat! (he’s a Naval Architect, I think they just like to collect boats?) This one is different though… In 8 months or so we should be ready to cast away the dock lines for good and head towards the Bahamas and begin our new lives as classy unemployed homeless people! Next thursday is our last day at our fancy cubicle jobs and a few days after that we will be hurdling down the highway with our truck and trailer on the way South!
The trailer is 5’x8′ and contains everything we own. We’ve been downsizing for a while (sorry to everyone I tried to talk into buying my stuff…#sorrynotsorry) and last October we took the final step and listed our house on the market. When it sold in 3 days we moved into our friend Carly’s basement to watch her house for her when she was in Japan! The sudden shrinkage in storage space made us go through all the rest of our crap even quicker! It’s hard to figure out what to keep and what to get rid of… I sold so much shit on craigslist. The rest got distributed between friends and Goodwill. We really kept only things that we would need on the boat (like kitchen stuff and clothes and camera gear…) and my parents are storing a few small boxes for us. So for the first time in many many years we have NO 2-wheels contraptions of any kind! 😮 It’s taken some getting used to, but it’s nice to have that part out of the way!
The boat itself is an Island Packet 420. She’s 42′ long with a sturdy full keel, two front sails (maximum redundancy!), and a pretty nice interior layout. Do you know how hard it is for two engineers to pick the “perfect” boat? Hella. It’s hella hard. There are so many variable that go into it. We’ve owned a few boats before this one: a handful of fishing boats, a 32′ sailboat, and a 49′ power boat. And because I think it would make an interesting blog post, here are a few details on the boat’s we’ve owned before!
Here is our first non-fishing boat. A cute little Aloha 32 sailboat.
she was a great little boat. We had some good times! Most notably eating delicious Nanaimo bars in Nanaimo, Canada.. (also the place where we had to emergency replace the toilet because it broke. Welcome to boating!). Unfortunately this one was just too small. At 32′ there’s only really one room, nooks to sleep in, and no storage so your shit just gets tossed everywhere every time you switch directions.
Our next boat was a 1972 Grand Banks Alaskan 49 Pilothouse. She was all wood (more on that later) with twin 120hp diesel engines. She will probably be the prettiest boat we’ll ever own and also probably (hopefully) the most high maintenance.
She was a great boat for the Northwest for sure, but not without some drama. The boat had some faulty electrical installations and other issues from her refit in 2012. We had the Port Townsend Shipwright Co-op haul her out and start fixing things. The cool thing about the Co-op is that they allow owners to help! Jason and I built the scaffolding around the boat, painted the entire exterior, and learned how to cut and install planks!
After this, Jason and I decided that we both absolutely HATE listening to engines run all the time. So we were back to a sailboat. We had a few in mind and we had chartered quite a few different examples from modern sailboats to catamarans, but a local company up in Anacortes has one of the boats we were looking at come up in their charter fleet and we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try it out for a week!
This one was in excellent shape. The owners had put her into the charter fleet after finishing a trip around the south pacific!
That trip pretty much sealed the deal. We loved this boat. It was the perfect size: big enough for 4 people to be comfortable, but small enough that 1-2 people can easily handle it underway and around the docks. The interior layout is really nice with 2 staterooms and 2 heads and a real sized galley! Jason and I spent the next few weeks obsessively hunting for one.
While I was down in Florida visiting a friend, this boat came up on the market. Jason told me I needed to drive up to Jacksonville and look at it…so I rented a car and did just that! Luckily his sister lives up there so I even had a sofa to crash on! So without further ado.. here is our new boat! She’s a 2001 Island Packet 420.
The above photos were actually from the survey when they dropped her into the water to test the engine. She’s currently sitting up on blocks at a little boatyard in Green Cove Springs, just outside Jax.
We decided to go with this model because they’re known to be extremely sturdy and safe boats. She’s fully ocean capable (anything except icebergs I guess)! This particular boat hasn’t had the easiest life and needs a lot of work and updating. I can’t wait to get down to Florida and get started on her!