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NEW TO NORTHWEST BOATING
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May 27, 2004. When they retire, Dick and Jo Curtis, from Denver, Colorado, are planning to move to the Portland area and take up Northwest boating. They bought a Waggoner and wrote a brief note, saying they were looking at something in the 44-50-foot range, possibly a Tollycraft 44, and asked if I could add any advice. I didn't want to face my desk so I piled in. Here is the correspondence.
--Bob Hale
Dick and Jo,
Thanks for your Waggoner Cruising Guide order May 20. If you haven't received your copy yet you will very soon. We don't sit on these orders. In answer to your request for information or thoughts, I'll just ramble on for a bit and see what we end up with.
Your desire for a CPMY [cockpit motoryacht] in the 44-50' range is pretty much bang-on for Northwest cruising. I've been a longtime admirer of the Tolly 44 (or 45, depends on the year), and if we could see our way clear to get one we probably would. We also like the Tolly 48. It's a different boat, heavier, with a slower hull, but oh, what a boat.
Ocean Alexander has built a number of good models in the 42-50' range, although I don't know my Ocean Alexanders the way I know my Tollys. Either way, we'd be getting an Ed Monk hull and styling, and I like that.
Tollycraft had a good dealer in Portland, and you might find one there. Of course, there are a ton of Tollys in Puget Sound, and another good selection in British Columbia. To me, the approach is to figure out which one(s) I would be happy with, then take my time learning what to look for, and more importantly, what to look out for. That would apply to any boat.
When we look for a boat, we look for the hull first, a good sea-keeping hull that will perform when the wind comes up. We are willing to give up some interior accommodations to get a good hull. Then we look for a boat that is popular in the area. This gives us a better chance of selling the boat when the time comes.
We had long hankered to move up from our Tolly 26 to a 37, and had gone through the mental exercise of buying a gas boat, repowering with diesels, adding radar, autopilot, 5kw diesel generator -- you know, all the stuff -- when I happened upon a 37 one afternoon. The owner said the boat was for sale, and I replied that we really weren't ready. "Come aboard anyway," the owner said, and showed me through.
Well, over his 16 years of ownership he had built our boat: 600 hours on the diesels, Furuno radar, depth sounder and loran, Magellan GPS, Icom radios, Comnav autopilot, 5kw Northern Lights generator, 2000 watt Trace inverter/smart charger, new windows, new carpet, excellent galley remodel, beautiful condition, and we could buy it for less, a lot less, than doing it ourselves.
As I drove home in the car I called my wife Marilynn and told her we were in trouble. "What do you mean by trouble?" she asked. I went down the list and when I was finished, Marilynn said, "We're in trouble." Two weeks later the boat was ours. We're in our seventh year of ownership, and we still love it. Yet, a 44 or 48. . . .
Many Portland residents keep their boats in Puget Sound, either at Olympia or on Hood Canal, at Pleasant Harbor. This puts them only a couple hours by freeway from protected Inside Passage cruising, and it works very well for them. You
certainly could keep the boat in Portland and take it down the river, across the bar and up the Washington coast, but there isn't much protection along that coast, and the idea doesn't appeal to me.
I see I have indeed rambled on. I hope I've given you some of the information you were looking for. I think you'll enjoy the Waggoner. And I'm sure you'll enjoy Northwest cruising.
Regards,
Bob Hale
Response
Dear Bob,
Did you say ramble on? My wife and I clung to every word and found information we are desperate for.
Your ramblings, as you call them, were pertinent and to the point, and confirm what we thought was the correct direction to go. The Tolly really does appear to be an excellent choice. We will definitely looking into the Ocean Alexander along with the Carver, Bertram, Hatteras and Wellcraft.
The most important consideration in your letter was the hull design to the sea conditions. I'm a hospital administrator and I'm knowledgable in many areas, but hull design is not one of them. Do you or your publishing company have articles/books to help? We just want to make the right choice for us and the sea.
If I may say so, you write exceptionally well and we enjoyed every word.
Thanks so much for your time.
Dick & Jo (Soon to be mariners -- I hope)
P.S. We will have two large malamutes as cruising companions. Hence, adding to the decision process. (BIG BOAT)
Response
Dear Dick and Jo
Thanks for your compliment about my writing. I enjoy reading good writing, and I try to write as well as I'm capable of. I've been writing professionally for more than 30 years, and still I keep learning.
Now to important matters.
For a general sense about boats, seakeeping ability, and cruising, I suggest that you subscribe to PassageMaker Magazine. I think it's one of the best boating magazines available, and it's packed with information. Bill Parlatore, the founder, is the editor-in-chief and he's deeply committed to the magazine. You can tell the difference between a hired editor and one who's created the magazine.
Your list of boat brands includes East Coast boats, Midwest boats and Northwest boats. I would choose a boat that is popular in the Northwest, which would leave out many models from outside the area. We tend to be cold, meaning you'll need cabin heat, and we tend to be rainy, meaning you'll want comfortable inside areas and ample windows. With so many wonderful anchorages, you'll want a foredeck you can work on, sidedecks you can walk on, a good anchor windlass, and probably an anchor washdown system. You'll want a good dinghy and a way to carry it. Many designs from outside the area fall short in some or all of these requirements. Boats built for the Great Lakes or Florida often don't work well here.
The bigger the boat, the slower you'll go. A 50-footer capable of 20+ knots will have you mortgaging your house to pay for the fuel used at 20 knots. So plan to spend most of your time in the 8-10 knot range. Forget about the aerial photos of the boats screaming through the water and decorated with nubile young ladies dressed in the niftiest little outfits you ever saw. Guess what? They'd freeze to death out here.
Besides, the people with the boats don't look like that in the first place. They're middle-age to older, paunchy, gray-haired or dyed, with several sets of eyeglasses and often hearing aids. My god, they look like my wife and I look (well, like I look).
Many of our seas are a short, dirty, 3-5-foot chop, made shorter and higher when wind and current are against each other and smoothed out somewhat when wind and current are going the same way. I favor a hull with an entry fine enough to knife into the seas, and enough rudder to steer the boat when running with the seas.
Our Tolly 37 has a wonderfully fine entry that amazes us when we're caught in Strait of Georgia 4-5-foot rollers. The Tolly 48 will do the same thing. The Tolly 44 a little less so, but it's so good looking and comfortable that it makes the cut easily. Grand Banks 42s are very popular out here, although with no flare forward they tend to be wet when they're punching into the waves. They compensate by having wide sidedecks and high bulwarks, and fabulous resale appeal.
I think a boat should be graceful, nicely proportioned, and sweet. When we're sitting on the restaurant deck overlooking the little tree-lined bay, I want my boat to be the handsomest ship in the harbor. There she rides, swinging on the hook, showing us her bow, her side profile and her stern as the breeze eddies through, and oh, she is lovely. All the lines are right. The antennas are even and the radar arch or mast is angled just so. The house looks appropriate. The hull looks like it's ready to go to sea. She's a happy, well-found ship with delighted owners.
The great naval architect Bill Garden describes one particular kind of powerboat as a "pushwater." His designs definitely aren't pushwaters -- they sit beautifully whether at rest or at speed, and they look like they were born to the task.
Walk the docks when you're out here. Chat people up (everybody likes to talk about his boat), and listen, listen, listen. You'll find that people have differing and strongly held ideas about a perfect boat. One person's ideal definitely will not be another person's ideal. Who knows what you'll decide? What you've heard from me are just my ideas.
Since these are my ideas, one way I would cut through the noise, confusion and myriad of boats for sale would be to find people who understand the wilderness waters of the northern B.C. coast, the cruising grounds north of Vancouver Island. Which boats work well up there? Which boats are seldom seen there? The boats that work well on the northern B.C. coast are the ones I would be after.
--Bob Hale
Book suggestion:
Dear Bob,
I enjoyed your response(s) to Dick and Jo Curtis in 'New to Northwest Boating'. I am continually amazed at how many boaters are out on our waters in boats so totally inappropriate to local conditions. The results of these mismatches range from the inconvenient and uncomfortable to the outright dangerous. It is a great service to the boating community -- especially potential new boaters -- to provide some guidance in selecting a good boat.
This brings to mind the book, "The Nature of Boats," by Dave Gerr. It is subtitled "Insights and Esoterica for the Nautically Obsessed." Dave Gerr is a naval architect with a wide-ranging design portfolio. He is also a columnist and writer of some skill and humour. Normally, I am not a great fan of nautical books as a genre, but I learned more about boats from this book than I thought possible, and I really enjoyed reading every bit of it. I keep a copy for reference, and I've given three as gifts -- the recipients enjoyed them as well.
Dave Helland v
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