Finally a C-Brat

M

mathias999us

New member
Woohoo! After years of looking into getting a C Dory, and trolling on this site, and after a 2600 mile round trip journey, the new-to-us 2009 Venture 26, now to be named Venture Bound, is safe in our driveway, and we are now officially C-Brats! Great community here, we're very happy to be a part of it.

Mathias and Tammy

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Guess I need an album to share photos, as I think this site is filtering out URLs with unrecognized image extensions?

Anyway, that's a pic of my wife and I with the new boat in our driveway yesterday after towing it up north of Minneapolis from Texas.
 
Congratulations! Fine looking boat and happy looking C-Brats :D What a great feeling to have her home in your driveway. Woo-hoo!

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(Since you don't have an album yet, I went to your photo and saved it into my album so I could display it here. You can usually display photos that are on the web somewhere already by copying the image location over, but I couldn't get it to work with this photo, so I just saved it to my album. With your own album, that's a nice way to do it anyway, as then others can see your photos by going to your album here.)

Again, welcome!

(From a fellow Minnesotan, although I don't live there now. Driving through Forest Lake was always the sign that we were now up north (vs. still being in The Cities :D)

Sunbeam :hot

PS: If you PM either DaNag or Tyboo to request an album, they'll get you set up.
 
mathias999us":2vn2p129 said:
Woohoo! After years of looking into getting a C Dory, and trolling on this site, and after a 2600 mile round trip journey, the new-to-us 2009 Venture 26, now to be named Venture Bound, is safe in our driveway, and we are now officially C-Brats! Great community here, we're very happy to be a part of it.

Mathias and Tammy

view
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Mathias, Tammy: very nice boat! Welcome to the gang!
 
Congrats on your new boat (to you), she's a beauty. Curious, is that the boat from Texas? If so, I've been eyeing that boat for awhile. Way to go.
 
Congrats on the "New-to-You" and the safe return home. Nice pix. Glad to have you here. You will love that boat and enjoy the C-BRATS. Welcome.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon

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Congrats on buying a great boat and getting it home safe! Now comes the fun part... go get it wet! Be ready to hear someone say "Hey, nice boat!" and want to start a conversation almost every time you stop at a gas station. You're really going to enjoy being part of the C-Brat family! Making new boating friends has been the best part for us so hope to meet you sometime. Be sure to check out the Mississippi River C-Brat gathering in September. We haven't decided if we are driving or boating down yet, but we are definitely planning on going.
 
Thanks everyone! This is a happy time for us. :)

Sunbeam - thanks for the tip on the album. I'm trying to get one set up now. Yes, we moved to Minnesota from San Diego in 2006 for my job, and we chose the north side of the cities for exactly that reason - we're right on the edge of vacation/adventure country up here. We're taking this boat up to Voyageurs in June, can't wait.

Bob - thanks. I've got the DF9.9 arriving via fedex freight within the next 30 minutes. Will post some pics of that project.

Larry - yeah, it was quite a haul. There really weren't any local options though. Most of the C-Dory's I see are around the coast somwhere, and I'm about as far away from an ocean as it gets.

Jazzmaniac - yes, this is the boat that was listed in Kemah, TX. I had overlooked it for a while, but then they dropped the price and I jumped on it.

Blue Rose - thanks yeah, we've had it out a couple times already. First day after a good rest we took it out on Forest Lake which is about 3500 acres and just a few blocks from us. We took it there for a trial run because we are very familiar with that lake and its ramps. Everything went well, so yesterday we put it in at Stillwater on the St Croix River, and we went all the way down to the confluence of the Mississippi and then up the Mississippi a few miles, and then back. A little over 50 miles round trip. Everything went great, and the kids and little dogs had a blast. I will post some pics when I get the album set up.
 
mathias999us":1e2rfrbf said:
We're taking this boat up to Voyageurs in June, can't wait.
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That should be a fantastic trip. I haven't quite decided where to head with the boat later this summer, but the two main contenders are Salish Sea (Washington/BC) and/or Voyageurs or Lake of the Woods. Like the old Boundary Waters days but in the lap of luxury!

I spent a year or so in San Diego (combination of a couple of different multi-month periods), and you are probably now discovering the reverse of what I found. Basically, in Minnesota, every conversation starts with a mention of the weather, and it's a fail-safe starter for casual encounters. Without realizing this (since it was just automatic), I started doing it in San Diego, which of course results in blank looks. I mean, yeah, it's sunny and 72º (and will be tomorrow, and the next day, and next week).... so? :mrgreen:

I don't know how longer couple-week-treks fit into your life's schedule right now, but there is a really nifty C-Brat gathering every fall (late September) at Lake Powell. I really enjoy cruising there because it's so different from most places I have boated, and it takes such great advantage of the strengths of the C-Dory (easy beaching, go fast when you want to but putter slowly with ease, etc.). It's also an interesting combination of "way out there" hiking and camping, but yet there is a marina with ice, ice cream, and supplies every 50 miles or so. So kind of luxury/easy/wilderness. Plus of course generally sunny and dry.

Happy Cruising! Will be fun to see your album, once you get that going.
 
Sunbeam - yes, we can't wait to go to Voyageurs with our C Dory! We started going up there with canoes / kayaks a few years ago, but realized it's really a motor boat park. Then we took a small 14' aluminum fishing boat up there, and I nearly swamped it in some big waves. Two weeks later we bought a 23' Chris Craft cuddy cabin cruiser, and brought that right back up. We had many trips to Voyageurs with that boat, but the cuddy was really used as a large storage locker for all of our camping gear. NOW we can really sleep on the boat! Voyageurs is the perfect place to bring a C Dory.

It's so true about the weather out here. I went to Lake Powell a couple times as a child with my parents, and they rented a motor boat and we camped out on the lake somewhere. We've definitely been talking about bringing the C Dory down there - possibly next year. I have the type of job where I can work anywhere there is internet, although there won't be much/any cell service on Powell I believe. We homeschool our daughter, and our son is in college, so multi-week trips are definitely in the future for us.

We've had the boat out a few times now, once on the lake down the street from us for a trial run, and a couple times on the St. Croix river. The first time on the St. Croix we launched north of Stillwater, and went all the way down to the Mississippi and up the Mississippi a few miles and back. I believe it was a little over 50 miles round trip. The boat performed like a champ, not a single issue. TyBoo set me up with an album and I've added a few pics from our first outings with the boat:
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The C Dory is AWESOME! Everything I had hoped it would be. Such a comfortable and pleasant experience out on the water with this boat.
 
mathias999us":2cyzueg6 said:
I went to Lake Powell a couple times as a child with my parents, and they rented a motor boat and we camped out on the lake somewhere. We've definitely been talking about bringing the C Dory down there - possibly next year. I have the type of job where I can work anywhere there is internet, although there won't be much/any cell service on Powell I believe.
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Great to see the pics of your boat on MN waters :thup

Last fall I was solo on my Powell trip, so I "did" Internet more than I had in past trips. I found pretty decent Verizon service on the lake. It's quite predictable, too, because there is a big mountain (Navajo Mountain) and basically, if you can see the mountain, the cell tower can "see" you. Of course there are plenty of places you can't get Internet (or VHF reception); but there are also quite a few anchorages/spots where you can get very good Internet - enough that I think you could plan a trip around them if you wanted to (of course that one tower could malfunction, but with the speed of the C-Dory you could always head in if you had to).

Happy cruising! (And the new kicker looks great.)
 
Although there a plenty of places where you may get an instant message on Verizon, to get good solid internet or voice, you have to be able to see the cell towers, not just the mountain. I did a bit of looking and research on this during our month on the lake last Sept. IF you cannot see these towers with your binoculars, most likely you will not get a solid connection.

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That's a good point. I did get great (i.e. 4G, many bars) reception from quite a few places and anchorages where I could see the mountain. I guess I was just lucky in that most of the time I could see the mountain, I could also see the tower (it's reasonably centrally located on the mountain - or seemed to me to be).

One time I had to kayak out a bit from my anchorage (can't say as I've paddled a laptop-equipped kayak before :lol: ), and several times when I was anchored with no reception I was able to get it by hiking up to the top of the nearby rocks, and or I would just make a point to stop somewhere (afloat in C-Dory) where I could get reception on my way to someplace else.

In prior years I only got online (by choice) once or twice the whole time I was on the lake, but being solo this year I guess I wanted more connection time/more often, so I paid more attention and found more places.

Of course the night I "tried to cut my finger off" I had no cell reception and no VHF reception. Figures!
 
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