Last trip on the sailboat for a while & winterization

We have gone back and fourth on what to do with our sail boat.  We have really enjoyed this boat for the last 4 years and feel like we still have a lot of adventuring to do with it.  But having two boats is dumb and I don't have enough time to keep both up.  After spending a couple weeks on a tug its boring compared to sailing where there is always something to trim or mess with while underway but it is comfortable.  We have decided to keep both for now and figure out what we want to do after some extended time on the tug.  We both think the tug is perfect for traveling but not very exciting for day or weekend trips both of which we would rather do by sail boat.  I guess after this trip if we decide we want to continue traveling by boat to do the Maine loop or even take it for a trip up to Alaska the tug is surely the way to go.  Both trips are on our long term to do list as is possibly a circumnavigation that may require something else yet, though I'm sure our sail boat would work fine for this trip it would require quite a few upgrades and it would be nice to not have to be healing all the time while underway.  Anyway we decided to put the sail boat into storage  while we decide what we want to do next.  A lot of this will depend on how Max feels about this trip and if he wants to go back to a traditional school or keep home schooling into high school.

Anyway we took the sail boat over to Put-in-Bay for the weekend.  It was really our first time to be there this year where we could enjoy the island vs working some sailing event, being a chaperone at the hotel, or attending a team dinner with the kids.  We had a good time and it proved to be a good distraction from boat projects and everything we have had going on with our lives.

After we got back it was time to start getting the boat ready for the winter and to figure out how to pull the mast (something I've never done on this boat).  The girls had something to do at home so Max and I stayed and worked on the boat.  Drained the water, cleaned, took the boom off, folded up the sails, and all the general stuff involved in winterization.  We treated this like the last time we might see this boat and took everything off and prepped it should we decide to list it for sale this spring.  I was amazed how much stuff we took off the boat.  It filled my entire truck and the water line came up at least an inch.  Compared to most in our boat club we really don't have much on our boat.

I pulled the boat up to the well at Sandusky Harbor.  They meet us with 5 guys to pull the mast & within two hours they had it down and ready to start prepping for winter.  About an hour after that they had the boat pulled and parked in their storage barn.  After a bit more work the boat was ready for winter.  Hopefully it will rest well and maybe we will be back to sailing next summer.

Our sailboat does not like to be ignored

Well is now late July and I have yet to really go sailing.  So far we only have the main sail on the boat and the roller furling car is still stuck at the top of the mast.  We sent Max up the mast a job he is getting quite comfortable with as he got to go up two other boats masts during our one week summer cruise to help out with various issues.  We ran a line up from the anchor roller attached it to the car and then proceed to pull the car down.  This took a ton of effort but it finally came down.  If you recall from a previous post we had a set screw back out inside the car last year sometime which would not allow the car to come down.  I had to go up the mast prior to pulling the boat to release the head sail for the winter.  I attempted to pay someone to fix it but they wanted to take the mast down to work on it and that felt a bit unnecessary and something told me I would end up loosing much of the sailing season if we did this.  So I went the DIY route.  Alas it didn't work out the car is now stuck at the bottom of the mast with the set screw still in the car.  I still have no idea what the fix is and may now end up having to replace the entire roller furling unit and possibly the foil the dumb car slides on due to my scraping up the foil while pulling the car down.  I will say that at first it seemed like this idea had worked and the car was moving freely for about 5 min of playing with it before it froze up some how at the bottom.  I'm guessing the set screw got wedged in some where again.  I ended up calling the riggers and asked them to fix this when we take the mast down to put the boat in storage in August.  We'll see if anything actually happens?

We bought a Beneteau 473

We have had our 1980 Allmand 31 for a few years now.  We all really enjoyed this boat, it was safe, forgiving, roomy, easy to handle, and always got us home.  We learned a lot about boats with it but had decided that we wanted a few more creature comforts then it offered and that meant looking for a bigger boat.  We had attended the 2016 Annapolis boat show and after looking at all shapes and sizes of sail boats were thinking something in the 36-38ft range was what we should be looking at and that we would start looking for our next diamond in the rough during the winter of 2018 after one more summer with the Allmand.  Going in we had 4 things we really wanted our Allmand did not provide:

1.  Swim platform, personally I never liked climbing up that ladder but it also made it really hard to get the dog on board should she decide to go swimming. 
2. A bed we would not have to climb over each other to get in or out of as we never go to sleep at the same time its always awkward when the second person is stepping on the others head climbing into bed at night. 
3. Three cabins (one for each kid and one for us) 
4. We really wanted a much newer fresh water only boat.  Salt water can be hard on things and we figured it would be worth the extra premium a fresh water only boat usually gets.

Our Beneteau 473 soon to be named Escape Plan B

Well we nearly made it.  After a fun summer of mainly long weekend trips we were on what had become our traditional end of summer adventure.  This usually involved a 30 mile evening sail from Gibraltar, MI to an anchorage near Put-in-Bay, then on to Sandusky the next morning for a couple nights at Cedar Point.  All had gone well but the day we wanted to leave the weather was not in our favor so we decided to spend an extra night.  While the kids were enjoying early ride times I wondered down to check out the boats they were bringing in for the boat show that weekend.  One of the dealers had brought over a Catalina 35 I was interested in as I had been looking at Yacht World most the summer and was really starting to focus my search on the Catalina 38's.  Another dealer had brought over a couple of Jeanneau's with duel helms that had a ton a cockpit space that were beautiful but no where near our price range.  Lunch time rolled around and I brought Amy over to walk by them knowing we were not in the market for something new.  While we were there another dealer brought in a large Beneteau, being a lover of all boats I of course had to walk down and check it out.  Turns out the salesman was there and invited us on board to see it, I think to avoid having to work on the booth for a bit :).  Seemed they were a power boat dealer that had taken it in on trade, not really knowing anything about sail boats they simply hoped to flip it quickly.  This was the cleanest used boat I have ever seen, it showed like a new, the sails had been recently replaced, heck even the anchor locker had been scrubbed perfectly clean.  Once on board we saw it had a similar  layout as our Allmand we loved just bigger.  It had duel helms which provided a huge cockpit. Did I say boat showed well?  The AC felt great and it had lots of gadgets that our older boat didn't like refrigeration, wind instruments, invertor, and more but was huge.  Who the heck needed a 47ft boat in the Great Lakes.  It was nice to see and we walked away.

After going back to the park for some more rides it was still sticking in our head so we took the kids back to see it that afternoon where the dealer gave us a buy it now price hoping to get it out the door before the show which would allow him to fit in several other power boats in its place.

This price put it a bit over the top of our price range but really only a bit more then our overall purchase budget (price of the boat, survey, transportation or trip back, and fixing/replacing some stuff) making it only a bit more then some of the nicer used 38's I had been scoping out.  Additionally they had already repaired or replaced everything identified in a recent survey (battery, invertor, lights, etc).  We decided to sleep on it and in the morning after lots of googling boats like it that night for known issues, slip fees, maintenance costs and everything else I could think of we both looked at each other and decided to pull the trigger.  The dealer immediately sent us out on a sea trail which happened to be a near perfect sailing day and we were instantly in love with this enormous boat after getting the sails up.

Under sail

After motoring it out into Sandusky bay, Amy quickly pulled the sails out, killed the motor and attempted to burry the rail in the water.  While the captain attempted to smile, I think it was his first time under sail and he really was not ready for a boat to heel :).  Amy was so in love that she wanted to leave our Allmand there and finish rest the trip with this one.  Turned out paper work takes some time so we left a deposit with plans to pick the boat up the next weekend.  We were now the proud owners of a Beneteau 473.  We headed back down the dock to our old boat and off to Put-in-Bay to finish the rest of our vacation on our much smaller, less shinny, gadget free Allmand 31.  It was a nice sail over and we enjoyed rest the weekend as well as the return trip home with the excitement of a new adventure on the horizon all while scratching our head over what we had just done realizing we were now fleet owners.

Turns out selling the Allmand was pretty easy.  I priced it fairly, provided pictures that showed it in its best light, listed it on a few free sites like Craigslist and sailboatlistings and it sold within a month or so.  I had been worried about selling it in the fall but seems like lots of folks are going to boat shows around that time and are excited to buy a boat or want the winter to work on a project or two.  Its still in our local boat yard for the winter before the new owner takes her to Lake St Clair this spring. I have driven by it a few times to see how she is holding up and fondly think of all the good times our family had on her but so far no regrets.