Syzygy Sailing

Our first day in the work yard, we met a fellow gringo-boat-owner named Richard. He’d just recently bought his 10th boat, a trawler, and was busy painting it. She’s not nearly as elegant as Syzygy, but she’s definitely cleaner and shinier.

Richard asked us if Syzygy was our first boat. We told him it was. His reply: “Wow, you guys went big.”

You could say that made us proud. Continue reading “Good vs. Better”

Let’s start with some basics: Like most sailboats, Syzygy has a whole bunch of holes in her hull below the waterline. Syzygy has 8 of ’em. Two of em hold instruments that measure depth and speed. One of ’em lets exhaust out of the engine. The remaining five have seacocks (aka valves) on them, so that we can let water in or out of certain pipes and go about our lives like normal civilized people. One lets water into the galley sink. One lets water out of the galley sink. One lets water (as coolant) into the engine. One lets water into the toilet (so we can flush it). And then there’s the last one, the most glorious seacock. It lets shit out of the holding tank. Continue reading “Getting our hands dirty”

So two weeks ago, when we were down in San Carlos, taking Syzygy for a little spin, we got ourselves into a funny little situation.

We’d just returned from the sea trial, and had put Syzygy in a slip at the marina. The then-owners and broker had gone about their day, leaving us to poke around the boat more, measuring and tinkering and such. With the sun out, Matt, Jon and I put our feet up, congratulated each other, and had a few nibbles of lunch: some prepackaged Mexican cookies and swigs of bottled water (you can tell that I did the shopping that morning.) Then, as typically happens after lunch, the urge to piss arose. Continue reading “the search for a yellow waterbottle”

She was parked in this slip after we finished the sea trial, waiting to be hauled back out of the water the next day. Even though she was only sitting there for a night, I still worried and had momentary nightmares of her sinking right there in the marina (there are some old hoses!), and even asked our neighbors if they would watch over her. Our neighbors had been living on their boat for years, and I think they had a laugh at my expense when I explained in detail where the manual bilge pump was. Continue reading “post sea trial”

I took this photo while measuring the rigging for replacement purposes. The yellow thing is my tape measure. It rarely rains in San Carlos, but it was raining hard this day–hardest just when I decided to go up the mast.

We bought the boat, and I am pleased to be in the happy excited phase of ownership. It feels really good to be able to tell people that we bought a boat. It gives legitimacy to our plan. I don’t get those infuriatingly skeptical looks anymore, and people actually pay attention when I tell them we’re going to sail around the world. Continue reading “Bought and Paid For”

Here it is, the big moment. She’s been on the hard for a few years, and finally, at long last, she gets a little splash in the Sea of Cortez, in San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico.

Matt, Jon and I returned to Mexico to take Sunshine for a sea trial (aka test drive) before buying her last week. While there, it rained like gangbusters in Sonora, so the whole experience felt tinged with a sort of foreboding element. In those two dreary days we had to fix ‘er up and get ‘er seaworthy (since she hadn’t been in the water for 7 months), we had a small part of her keel re-fiberglassed and her engine taken apart, while we scuttled to figure out why there was water sloshing around in her bilge and why the bilge pumps wouldn’t pump it overboard. (We found a very leaky hose and a disconnected Y-valve, and also found out that we’d need to replace those bilge pumps.) Welcome to boat-ownership, right? Continue reading “the adventure is ON!”