My "Prelude"

As the weather warms and the lows pass through at greater intervals, lives take a quickened pace. We seem to want to do everything at once - kindly observe the pace of drivers in the passing lane! For a boater in the northeast and on the Great Lakes, these are particularly desperate times given the length of our season. The projects must be concluded; the boat must get launched; the gear hunted down and stowed aboard; and, the shakedown cruise planned and executed. Most certainly crucial deadlines are involved.

I was fortunate in spending my youth working in boatyards beginning at age 16. There were many more wooden boats back then and there seemed to be many more "characters" wandering the waterfront. At some point during these early years, I decided to make a career of working on boats. I realized that to make a go of it, I would need training since these summer jobs only gave me experience in blocking up boats, washing bottoms, and rigging masts. I began researching various options in the marine field and began studying yacht design. This gave me solid information in hydrodynamics, calculations, and endless amounts of technical information. This correspondence course forced me to draw a full set of lines in ink which required a natural skill I did not possess; and, a desk job was not going to cut it. Eventually, an epiphany occured as I strolled through the San Francisco Maritime Museum: I would build a boat and go to sea.

Up to this point, my carpentry experience consisted of building a crude table. In the Northwest during the early 70's, ferro-cement construction for the amatuer builder was commonplace. I had applied to a boatbuilding course at the local vocational school in Tacoma, WA for which there was a waiting list. My choice was not difficult: I would begin building the hull immediately. Within a week I had purchased a set of plans for a replica Friendship sloop and rented a portion of a covered shed at the end of a pier on Commencement Bay.

The year was 1972 and the armature for the hull was assembled and plastered in roughly 6 months. At this point, I began attending school full time with Joe Trumbly as my instructor. Early on we spent most of the time in the classroom learning design, lofting, and patternmaking. Once this was out of the way, the class could begin their individual boatbuilding projects. For me this would be taking my gaff rigged sloop from a bare hull to a finished sailboat. As with most novice builders, I had my share of problems and bad days. My louvered door frames comes to mind: as I neared the point of launching the first set across the room with the appropriate amount of profanity, Trumbly stepped in and simply said, "no you're not!" He was a first rate instructor who had an unbelievable amount of talent and patience. The boat eventually got built within the 2 year time frame of the boatbuilding course. This included hollow spruce spars, deadeyes and lanyards, vertically staved teak cabin trunk, an interior with a V-berth forward, a seat to port, and coal burning stove, sink and counter to starboard, a sliding teak hatch, louvered doors, and a cockpit with an outboard motor well, teak decked seats, toerails forward and rail caps aft. She was christened "Prelude."

Our maiden voyage in early March was in typical Puget Sound fashion. For a New Englander, the weather in the Northwest always seems mild. However, the waters are ice cold. In the Gig Harbor area, the winds always funnel through the Narrows making for unpredictable gusts. What seems the perfect breeze at one moment will unaccountably scream bloody murder in an instant. This is how we were knocked down on our very first sail in the middle of the Narrows. Fortunately, only the cockpit flooded and I was thankful for large cockpit drains and companionway doors that were closed. That was my last ferro-cement boat and my last sailing experience in the Northwest. My wife and I were soon to become parents for the first time and we agonized many nights as to should we stay or should we go (back east). I had a full time job finishing out fiberglass bare hulls for the Alaskan fisheries in the town of Puyallup, WA. We loved the area and were making some very close friends. But we missed our families and that is a very strong pull. So it was decided: we would move east before the baby was born.

However, where exactly was still unknown.

A Boater's Life, Part 1

There are countless resources for the boatowner in this day and age. There are hundreds of books dealing with all sorts of minutia on the subject matter, workshops, videos, classes, websites, and on and on. Yet, nothing substitutes for the experience gained by casting off from the dock or mooring in a sound and readied boat, and heading out. Believe me, there is no better way to learn.

For many of us, boating is a generational thing; ie, our parents had boats and often our children will have boats when they come of age. My first boating memory was on Lake Erie: a huge cardboard box arriving from the Alcort factory in Waterbury, CT containing all the parts and pieces for a plywood Sailfish, the predecessor to the ever popular Sunfish. At the time, my Dad was a young man; and, over the course of his life five boats followed, including his last, a Luders 36. On each of those boats I have fond memories, snapshots of my youth, and I enjoyed many wonderful sails aboard each. When I eventually became a young man, I owned and lived aboard "Halcyon" with my wife and infant daughter. Other boats were to follow. Similarly, my son has recently purchased his first boat, a vintage wooden sloop we both are busy getting ready for the coming season.

For me, boating is a family affair. Boatowners have many reasons for making their first purchase though my favorite reason is that it is something the whole family can participate in together. And, taken to the extreme as was in my case, the boat became our liveaboard home for many years. A home with a simple, cozy interior - tied to the dock in the winter and on a mooring during the summer months, sometimes with 3 dingys hanging off the stern. And we took cruises - weeks and sometimes months at a time. Our family was young enough to know any better - before kids grew old enough for summer jobs. It was an experience they will take with them for all of their lives. And then, just maybe, pass this cruising life along to their children.

During our liveaboard experience, we had the good fortune of meeting other cruisers, some with small children aboard. Many have become lifelong friends, and to this day, some of us still sail together. This points to another grand reason why people choose a boater's life - the enjoyment of meeting other cruisers and liveaboards. Many of the great yachtsmen that have gone before us - Eric and Susan Hiscock, Irving and Exy Johnson, Hal and Margaret Roth, Lin and Larry Pardey, all seem to agree, the most wonderful part of cruising are the friendships made along the way. These folks, among others, are the great ones - the pioneers of small boat cruising, bravely crossing oceans before the days of GPS and other modern conveniences of navigation. Their cruises and writings have inspired a generation of sailors and influenced small boat safety and seamanship as we know it today.


Many will not find the inclination to take heroic offshore passages and be thoroughly content with cruises in local waters - an overnighter or a weeks worth of day trips can be just as exhilarating and gratifying. The important thing to remember - just go. You won't regret it!