Ahoy C-Brats - Permission to Board?!!!!!

D

drbridge

New member
Hello All
We Have recently purchased a C-Dory 22 Cruiser and are looking forward to participation with the C-Brats. This is our first Cruising boat and we will be learning as we go. I have spent a lot of time on the water in my days. On the rivers in my drift boat and on the strait of Juan De Fuca in my Simmons Sea Skiff 18. Of course fishing has always been the main purpose with my previous boats and while I will be doing some fishing from this C-Dory We will be looking forward to cruising in our back yard "The Salish Sea".
We live In Sequim Washington and we feel privileged to have purchased "Da Nag". It is a great boat. It needs a couple little things, but very little.
We have changed the name of the boat. It is now the "Susan Marie"
After all, it was my dear wife Susan that talked me into buying it :wink:

Cheers to All
Doug & Susan
 
Ahoy, neighbor!

"Susan Marie" is far classier than the name replaced, and both wife and boat are worthy of the change.

Just keep that boat as pretty and shiny as your others, and she'll continue to turn heads.

Welcome, Doug and Susan! You are lurkers no more. :mrgreen:
 
Doug & Susan, Welcome! Great to have more Brats in Sunny Sequim. You'll find all the help you need right here in town and on this Site. I hope you start putting some hours on that nice 22 soon! PM me if I can help in any way.
 
Thanks to all for the warm welcome. We hope to get the boat on the water for a spin tomorrow. Susan did not get to go on the sea trial , so this will be her first time on the boat except for this evening we are sitting on the rear deck having a cocktail under the canopy and talking about voyages to come.
One of the fist things I want to get for this boat is a cover to protect it from the elements. Would like to get a building for it eventually but that may take a while, so a cover will be quick and is what we want to do for now. Any experience that any of you have had with Sunbrella covers will be helpful to us. I talked to the people at Angola and they sounded pretty good to me. Also have read some favorable posts about them on this forum. Next weekend I will be installing a mini jack for the kicker motor and a new surge brake actuator coupler on the trailer and after that should be ready to Rock!

Cheers
Doug & Susan
 
Welcome to C-Brats! We have been with the group for 5 years and love it! The people are great and the forums are the best!
The C-Brat family is really growing, especially in Sunny Sequim. Looking forward to meeting you guys.
 
A stellar day it was! We put in at John Wayne Marina with 6 gallons of standard pump fuel in the tank. We ran around the bay several times to make sure all systems were sound. We had hung our newly acquired Honda bf8d kicker motor directly to the transom just to try it out. It started and ran like a clock as did the Honda bf90a. We then pulled back into the marina and filled the starboard tank with the ethanol free fuel and headed for the outside. Had some mean currents going with the -2+ tide and a little bit of wind and chop. The boat handled and ran great and trimmed out well with three of us in the boat. We headed out to Becket point and up to the Cape George Marina and then took a long route to the north and around Protection Island. It got a bit rough at that point , but the boat handled it well. We Put about 3.5 hours on the boat for a grand total of 113.7 hours. We drifted for a while and ran the kicker for a while to make a full afternoon of it and were completely satisfied with this wonderful boat. I do need to study all the Raymarine manuals some more to get the full use of the electronics, but that will come. Thanks Bill for the square dealing you did with us on this boat and also Thanks to Sunbeam for the Same on our kicker!
Have to work next weekend. That gives me a couple of weeks to get her ready for the first fishing trip. We were really glad that we were able to get out today.
Cheers to all!
Doug & Susan
 
So cool! :thup :beer

Really glad to hear you had such a wonderful day, and that everything (including the Honda kicker :smile) ran like clockwork. That's interesting that you were able to run with it mounted directly on the transom - I was no longer able to do that once I added trim tabs, but I guess it is just that the Bennett tabs are more squared off in the after corners that the Lencos.

I've been working out a good way to hang my new Mercury kicker :D It's so much less deep fore-and-aft that I need to shim at aft a bit on the Mini Jacker, so cutting a few pads for that.

I forget if it was this thread... I hope so... but you were asking about covers. My first thought is that if I were in a fixed location, there is no way I'd want a cover instead of a shelter. In a climate like this (no big snows, etc.), I'd much rather have even something like one of those Costco shelters. A cover is great when you can't have a shelter, but it sure is nice to just hitch up and pull out (from under the shelter) vs. having to wrestle a big, heavy cover off and then back on again when you get home (and what if it's raining/wet... ugh). Plus there is always some worry about chafe (although of course you try to alleviate it), and you can't work on the boat as easily (under the cover) as you can with a shelter.

I have a friend who lives near Portland, OR (so plenty of rain, but no snow and he's not out on the windy prairie or anything), who's been building a small boat for a couple of years, and bought one of the really cheap, gable-roofed Costco shelters back when he started. I think he might have stiffened it somewhat and made a little repair here and there, but nothing big or involved, and when I was there last month I spent some time helping on the boat and it was really pleasant. Plus nowhere near the cost of a garage or "real" shelter.

Okay, but if I haven't talked you out of a cover :wink, the one thing I would say is to make sure it comes down on the topsides far enough to at least cover the sheer stripe. I've saved lots of photos of covers from the albums here for reference (since I can't have a shelter/garage), and I noticed that most of the Angola ones stop just short of that. I did contact them last year about a possible cover, and they said there is no problem making it longer on the sides, but you have to ask.

Sunbeam
 
Welcome aboard. Congratulations of the purchase of a great boat! We hope to meet you when we are in Sequim for much of the month of August. Maybe a dinner or breakfast with all of the C Dory owners in the immediate area!
 
Thanks "Thataway" and hope we do meet. And Sunbeam, I know you are right about the storage. This whole thing happened so fast that my mind has been overloaded and I have gone back and fourth on this a number of times and I think probably a few more times before I'm done. The cover sounds good because it is quick and easy, but a steel roof is what I really want in the long run and I should probably put the money for a cover into a building and bite the bullet and put up with the hassle of doing it now. I don't want to do any tarp buildings. I have had those in the past and they are just no fun at all when it snows. If I put one up there would probably be two feet this winter. Thanks for your input on that!
The Honda with my smaller Lenco tabs actually did fit with all necessary clearances by no more than 1/2" in any direction. It will definitely need the mini Jack if I widen the tabs. I just felt better having an alternate power source along and that is the main reason we put it on.
Cheers
Doug & Susan
 
Doug and Susan,

My apologies for such a late "welcome and com on board" reply to fellows of the Sequim Contingent. My participation here is much more sporadic than I would like, --- ah work related. You might know a thing or two about that.

As to the cover. Sunbeam is right, Be sure it comes down past the shear stripe by a few inches at least. AND, be sure it covers the splashwell, and (I think) should include the Outboard heads as well.

I have a cover, and use it over the winters, even though the boat is stored indoors. I highly recommend that if possible, an there are places in Sequim to do that for reasonable, or at least for a while.

Glad you enjoyed you run out to Protection Island. (Captain Charles would have charged you $195 for that trip and it would have been less time), so you are already getting your money's worth. :lol: :thup :thup

Enjoy, and we will have to chat, later,

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
 
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