This must be an FAQ or something...just point me in the right direction.
Anyway, here's the executive summary, for you executives:
I need to take my wife out on a C-Dory 22 Cruiser so she can see what the heck I'm going to spend my money on.
A bit of introduction:
I grew up in Portland, OR, and every summer when I was a kid, we would trail our FiberForm 20' cabin cruiser up to Anacortes and spend two or three weeks cruising. Not to put too fine a point on it, but...those are some of the absolute happiest childhood memories I possess.
Now I have young children of my own, age 6 and 3. It's time. I live in Seattle now...the cruising ground starts right here in my backyard, and extends north and south for mile upon mile, and I have no boat. It's time.
My marine resume looks like this:
Power: I was just a kid in the 1970s, but I paid attention on our little cruiser. So I entered adulthood with some notion of the basics of navigation and small boat handling, along with lots of experience with (summertime) cruising in the San Juans. Otherwise, our home water was the Columbia River, and honestly, other than a couple of overnights up the river, we mostly just ran across to Government Island and played in the sand.
Fast forward a decade...
I moved to Seattle in 1992, and discovered sailing that spring. I was deeply into bicycling, and the idea of crossing stretches of water without burning any petroleum enchanted me. I took lessons. I made friends. I crewed on several racing boats on Lake Washington and Puget Sound. J/24s, J/35s, trimarans, larger boats, and my own Laser. Decided to try ocean passagemaking, and have accumulated something like 4,500 bluewater miles over three trips, on three different boats. One delivery home from Hawaii, and two trips down the coast from Port Angeles, to San Francisco and San Diego, respectively. So I like to think I know SOMETHING about boats and the water.
And now it's time for me to get a boat I can take my family cruising in. A pocket cruiser, along the lines of the little 20-footer we had when I was a kid. A power boat, because these kids will be ready to go home by the time I get a sailboat rigged. I'm a big believer in small boats. I love exploring the tiny places you just can't get to with a larger boat. I've seen many of my sailing friends over-buy, ending up with large, expensive boats they don't end up using as much as they thought they would. Then I see these boats go up for sale a few years later. I don't want to do that; I don't want "too much boat". I want "just enough boat".
The C-Dories are essentially the only boats I've seen that really appeal to me and seem well-suited to my intended use. Well, the C-Dories and those other Toland-designed boats whose name starts with C (I've been lurking here long enough to know when to play it coooool :smiled ). But I just don't want to buy new. I know enough about boats, see, to know that I'm going to learn a lot from my first boat of this type, and that I am too inexperienced, at this point, to make all the right decisions if I were outfitting a brand new boat. So I want a nice, recent-model used boat, and I'll live with the previous owner's decisions, and maybe those are just fine for me. If and when I decide they aren't, THEN I can have my own "perfect" boat built.
Meanwhile, my wife is a landlubber, and she gets seasick pretty easily. But she enjoys boats and she enjoys camping...as long as the weather's good, she gets a shower periodically, and there's a place to go potty. The CD 22 Cruiser seems to me to be the minimum boat that we and our small kids could use and enjoy the way I envision.
So now, back to the request for assistance: Is anybody willing to take me and my wife out on their CD22 cruiser sometime this fall? I know, you don't know me from Adam. I'm not Adam, though. I'm Tim. Hi. It's very nice to meet you.
Tim Flanagan
Anyway, here's the executive summary, for you executives:
I need to take my wife out on a C-Dory 22 Cruiser so she can see what the heck I'm going to spend my money on.
A bit of introduction:
I grew up in Portland, OR, and every summer when I was a kid, we would trail our FiberForm 20' cabin cruiser up to Anacortes and spend two or three weeks cruising. Not to put too fine a point on it, but...those are some of the absolute happiest childhood memories I possess.
Now I have young children of my own, age 6 and 3. It's time. I live in Seattle now...the cruising ground starts right here in my backyard, and extends north and south for mile upon mile, and I have no boat. It's time.
My marine resume looks like this:
Power: I was just a kid in the 1970s, but I paid attention on our little cruiser. So I entered adulthood with some notion of the basics of navigation and small boat handling, along with lots of experience with (summertime) cruising in the San Juans. Otherwise, our home water was the Columbia River, and honestly, other than a couple of overnights up the river, we mostly just ran across to Government Island and played in the sand.
Fast forward a decade...
I moved to Seattle in 1992, and discovered sailing that spring. I was deeply into bicycling, and the idea of crossing stretches of water without burning any petroleum enchanted me. I took lessons. I made friends. I crewed on several racing boats on Lake Washington and Puget Sound. J/24s, J/35s, trimarans, larger boats, and my own Laser. Decided to try ocean passagemaking, and have accumulated something like 4,500 bluewater miles over three trips, on three different boats. One delivery home from Hawaii, and two trips down the coast from Port Angeles, to San Francisco and San Diego, respectively. So I like to think I know SOMETHING about boats and the water.
And now it's time for me to get a boat I can take my family cruising in. A pocket cruiser, along the lines of the little 20-footer we had when I was a kid. A power boat, because these kids will be ready to go home by the time I get a sailboat rigged. I'm a big believer in small boats. I love exploring the tiny places you just can't get to with a larger boat. I've seen many of my sailing friends over-buy, ending up with large, expensive boats they don't end up using as much as they thought they would. Then I see these boats go up for sale a few years later. I don't want to do that; I don't want "too much boat". I want "just enough boat".
The C-Dories are essentially the only boats I've seen that really appeal to me and seem well-suited to my intended use. Well, the C-Dories and those other Toland-designed boats whose name starts with C (I've been lurking here long enough to know when to play it coooool :smiled ). But I just don't want to buy new. I know enough about boats, see, to know that I'm going to learn a lot from my first boat of this type, and that I am too inexperienced, at this point, to make all the right decisions if I were outfitting a brand new boat. So I want a nice, recent-model used boat, and I'll live with the previous owner's decisions, and maybe those are just fine for me. If and when I decide they aren't, THEN I can have my own "perfect" boat built.
Meanwhile, my wife is a landlubber, and she gets seasick pretty easily. But she enjoys boats and she enjoys camping...as long as the weather's good, she gets a shower periodically, and there's a place to go potty. The CD 22 Cruiser seems to me to be the minimum boat that we and our small kids could use and enjoy the way I envision.
So now, back to the request for assistance: Is anybody willing to take me and my wife out on their CD22 cruiser sometime this fall? I know, you don't know me from Adam. I'm not Adam, though. I'm Tim. Hi. It's very nice to meet you.
Tim Flanagan