Saturday, March 26, 2011

What a piece of junk!




I'm finally down in Tampa, so I can start looking for boats! Today I looked at Lauren Gail, a Columbia 26. Although 26 feet is smaller than I've been looking for, it is a shoal draft boat and looked good in the pictures. Plus, it was cheap. The owner was a typical Florida nutcase. Met him at a marina where he already had a bud light or 5 going. I followed the fellow to what must have been the worlds most dodgy boat yard. He didn't put his beer down while driving. I could see right away the boat had been repainted poorly, but I did like the shoal/wing keel. There was minimal deck hardware, but it is a pretty simple boat. I walked the decks and noticed some spongyness near the mast tabernacle. This is not a good thing. The interior was a bit nasty, decked out in green upholstery. It is not a beamy boat, but there was nice standing headroom in the main cabin. What shocked me is that there is no access to the bilge. I guess that's how they are, but it didn't seem like a good idea to me. The worst part was finding a aluminum contraption below the mast tabernacle. This boat had some obvious cabin top issues at some point - you can count me out. It was a nice trip up to Palm Harbor anyways, but I won't be going to the stupidly cheap CL boats any time soon again.





Sunday, March 20, 2011

2 Old boats.

Excellent sailing on "Sunnyside Up"/"Mean Mr. Mustard Yesterday". Dead air, except for a nice breeze in the last hour. It has been 16 years since I was at the tiller of that boat, and she was worn out back then. I'm happy to say that John and Walter have done a great job turning that old boat into a really nice, modern racer. Helming the old J was pretty odd after a few thousand miles on the Santana 25. It was weird getting used to a boat that is much less tender, a good bit faster, and a bit less weatherly. Also I think the amount of bullshit that had to be dealt with on "Allez!" made that boat a real pain in the ass to sail. I'm going to check out a Parker-Dawson 26 on my way back down to TPA next week - If anyone has a line on nice 28-32 foot shallow draft cruiser in the Gulf, let me know.