It's your job

-It's your job to be excited, I said.  It's my job to be nervous.

-Good, said Alisa.  I am excited.

-Well, perfect, I said.  I'm nervous.

~~~

So, the big news: we have an initial purchase agreement on the California steel boat.  That was the one that we initially ruled out after we learned the headroom, then ruled back in after Alisa measured me and found that I'm 5/8" shorter than previously advertised.  To refresh your memory, this is the beast:

We always knew that we would have to make some big compromises on whatever boat we got...  It's just taking me a bit to get used to the actual compromises that we see in this boat.  She's bigger than we want (45 feet).  She's steel, which I've not quite resigned myself to.  And she's a one-off, which I never wanted.  But there appears to be some good to go along with all that.  And at a certain point, if you want to stop dreaming and start sailing, you've got to go out an put your money down on one particular, imperfect, boat.  I fly over on January 11th to see her for myself.

~~~

This is a boat with a bit of a history:

Stay tuned.

It's All Good

Well, no boat in the offing and our latest short-term housing situation will end in about three weeks, with nothing secured to take its place.  Oh, the joys!  Alisa and I have agreed that if we ever swap boats again we'll do everything we can to buy the new boat before we move off the old.  Of course, we could move back onto Pelagic, but at this point that feels like a lot of effort to take a step backwards, so we're going to try to hold out for a while before we play that card.

I'm reminded of hunting deer in the mountains of Kodiak - on those days when I spent hours tramping around in the tall wet grass, seeing nothing, I'd remind myself that it just took one second for everything to change...

I also told Alisa today that I sure never thought our boat swap would put the family through such a long spell of uncertainty.

Through all this uncertainty, though, things continue to be generally great for us in Hobart.

We celebrated Thanskgiving for the first time in Oz... the last two times we just went to the beach for a barbie.  But this time we invited over two North American friends (and an Australian significant other).  Alisa baked two chickens and two pumpkin pies and the friends brought salad and ice cream and we had a great time.

And our friends Robb and Emma invited us out for a sail on their 40-footer, Aratika.  We had a great time sailing, and Elias always has a great time with their girls.

AND, my dad dropped in for a just-under-a-day visit, part of a whirlwind visit to all the Australian family over nine days or so.  Check out how sick Elias was.

Actually we've all been sick.  Right now it's my turn, and it's been going on for almost two weeks, and I missed a very very fun barbie today as a result, and I'm just about fed up with it.  Anyway, Alisa got a great "three generations of blokes" shot with my Dad.

It's all good.

Chalk and Cheese (and a bit of a revelation)

This boat search will come to an end.... I'm sure it will.

As of three or four days ago, we were onto two candidates, neither of them metal.  They were the proverbial chalk and cheese - it would be hard for two boats to be more different.  Here are pics of each:

The underbody of the top boat is very similar to that of Pelagic.  A deep, modified fin keel, skeg hung rudder and a deep hull sections.  The bottom boat is completely different: twin rudders, a very flat bottom and a centerboard.  The only thing that unites the two is that they each appear to well kitted-out with reasonably new gear, and ready to start crossing oceans on short notice.  This has always been our top criterion in the search.

But then, predictably, after we got excited about each, they both seemed to go pear shaped.  The listing broker for the top one is in the hospital, and he works for a large brokerage that is apparently so disorganized that no one else has any info about the boat, not even the seller's contact details, so no one can tell us if the boat is even still for sale.  And while there's a lot to like about the bottom boat, it is very very light indeed - as near as I can figure, she displaces 8400 kg half loaded, on a 12.8 m waterline, for a displacement/length ratio of 112(!), which, if I'm figuring it correctly, is about half of the D/L of an OVNI 43.

Our friend John, who may have more first-hand knowledge of boats than anyone else we know, said, "Mate, she's too light.  You'll feel every pothole in the road.  You'll wake up every time you go over a ripple."

We tend to agree.

Which brought about a low point in group morale - "When will we ever find a boat?" I wailed.  So many of the boats that we are interested in don't have the required 1.95 m headroom, and that seems to be making a tough search much tougher.

So, today, on a whim, Alisa measured me.

My height is something that I've always known about myself - 6' 3 3/8".  But I have no memory of ever measuring myself - the last time must have been in high school.

Alisa made my height at 189.5 cm, or a hair under 6' 2 1/4".  So either I've been wrong all this time, or I've lost an inch.  Either way, it's a bit embarrassing to have been ruling out so many boats because of a faulty piece of information.

Hopefully this revelation will breathe a little life into our search.