Rollin' on the river again! - Vallejo to Napa

  It has been a long time since we have been on the rivers of central California on a boat of ours. Not since the Shine Shack (our house boat we lived on in Tower Park)have I had such a desire to sing some Credence Clearwater while under way. I wanted to squeeze in a post from the last trip down before we head down again this weekend for things that Bunkmate touched on and will be put in a following post.

 After some haggling with Lee about where we wanted to dry dock the boat we got our way and made plans to put her up in Napa Valley Marina. They have a non-work yard and and a work yard with about a $200 a month price difference so we are putting her in the non work yard until she is paid off next year. We can still do some work inside and remove things that will come home with us to get worked on here but no sanding, varnishing, painting, or anything that resembles work from the outside but we can do quite a bit down below as long as we do it discretely. This meant that anything that needed to be done topside that involved these things needed to be done this weekend so we had to work quickly. All of the teak on the topside and a little caulking needed to be done to get it protected from the sun and rain so that it didn't get any worse before we could get into the major refit that will involve unstepping the mast and completely stripping the topside and a fresh coat of paint and nonskid which will come after moving her to the work yard next year.
  She was to be hauled out on Monday and it is a pretty good trip from Alameda to Napa so Lee moved her to Vallejo on Thursday with his friend Gordon and we would meet up with the boat there about midnight to 1:00 AM because we couldn't leave until Heather got off around 7:00 PM. We would then take the boat the rest of the leg with him Friday morning. It took them about 7 hours to get to Vallejo and we needed the key to get into the harbor when we rolled in after hours. In a quite comical message from Lee who was pretty exhausted, we got the message that he would leave the key on a big yellow crane, behind the control box of the big yellow crane, to just look for the big yellow crane ... I think big yellow crane was said about 4 more times in the message. After arriving at 1:30 AM we did indeed find the big yellow crane and had a nightcap and crashed.

  Friday morning we drove to Napa and met Lee there to shuttle him back to Vallejo so that we had a vehicle at the other end when we got there. We wandered the yard waiting for Lee and were happy with our decision to move her here. A very nice yard outside the bay area to get her ready to go cruising. We headed back to the boat and got ready to get under way when we realized that Lee had been looking at a date in 1996 for the tidal information and we were in fact at the peak of a mean low tide with a -1 low. It was now already noon and we weren't going anywhere right now. So we got some paper out and started sanding the teak to make use of the time. At around 2:30 after talking to a nice bloke from OZ(New Zealand) that has made this trip

several times before and gave us some navigation tips we were confident in departing. A nice uneventful trip up the river brought back memories of the Delta days. We arrived safely and grabbed a piece of guest dock and immediately went back to work sanding with supervisor Lee watching to make sure I knew how to put on a coat of varnish. If you know anything about men you know we all have a little different way of doing things than the other and of course our way is just a little bit better. Sooo with tongue in cheek we sanded and varnished until we appeased him. Heather made a nice plate of fruit we snacked on while we finalized signing the contract and we sent him on his way after he gave me a ride back to the car on his Spyder(a three wheeled BMW motorcycle). It now felt really good to be on our new boat and at her new home but after only a few hours sleep we were spent and my pink eye was the proof. A couple of sundowners and some supper and to the aft cabin we went. It is pretty roomy but with too many weenies in the bed (the dogs silly) it does get smaller, at least for me. Never the less Saturday we went to work and while very busy, we got everything accomplished and had fun doing it. We wrapped up Sunday and got out around 4:00 for an eta of 10:30 at the barn. The adventure has officially begun!

Well as you have noticed, She has definitely found us. We have found a way to get her, and it wasn't easy either. But Captain Carey made sure we weren't walking away without her. She is beautiful, full of possibilities. She is full of spare parts, and full of exciting stuff, that we don't even know yet. We are still learning all the stuff that comes with her, Lee (the guy we are buying her from) has a storage shed in his backyard, full of stuff that goes with her, that we don't even know is in there. We are going to Napa this coming weekend to get on her and pull the sails off, do a bunch of measuring, bring home as much stuff as we can, to try to get an idea of what kinda stuff we are looking at. We live in Medford, Or. and she is in Napa Ca. Kind of a long drive, so we have to make the best of every trip.

     Captain Carey has his own little workroom. And is pretty excited about getting to play/work in there. he has a lot of plans for the 'Shinalizing' that needs to be done, before she is ready to go with us through the places we want to go, and the things we want to do,,, so stay tuned for more excitement, we are ready to go, and only have a couple of obstacles in front of us, but they are small ones, we have already done the hard stuff, , ,  its time to buckle down for a little over a year, then we are off to , , , , , whatever we want, wherever we wanna go, , , ,   bunkmate

The little vessel that could

 Since Bunkmate is kind of snoozing at the blogging wheel, I thought I should probably recap the last month as it has been a pretty substantial and extremely busy one.  We have sold our Simplicity and have bought (or are the process of buying) a new to us boat. She is a 1976 Fantasia 35 MKII Hull#58 named Reunion that we bought in Alameda California. She is a sturdy full keel 22,000 lb boat with a 1/2" hand laid glass hull. She will not be the first one to the finish line, but she will always get us there for the after party. She does not really fit all of the perimeters that we had initially set for our cruising boat, but it is always a compromise with boats, and we chose a little more comfort and security in place of sailing performance, and I don't think we will ever regret it. We feel she will take extremely good care of us and we intend to repay the favor.
  We were not really ready to be in the market yet but just as Simplicity had, she kind of just squeezed her way into our hearts and we had no choice but to make it happen. We went to the Strictly Sail boat show in Oakland to drool over some sailing boats and stuff, plus to get our cruising juices rejuvinated and figured we would look at the listings to see if there were any boats in the area that warranted a look. The only one that materialized was this one and boy did it materialize! We cooberated a meeting with a friend of the owner since he was in Hawaii at his other house(geesh), and arranged to take a look immediately after pulling into town before going to the boat show. I won't get to much into the details but will say the boat show seemed to have a second priority after that. We had a great time and mingled with some fantastic cruising and dreaming folks just like us at the Cruisers Bash that only fueled the fire. It really is cool to be around other people that have the same dreams when the vast majority of people and family just don't understand what it is really about for us.
  The very day after returning we had come up with a proposal for purchase that we thought we could pull off and presented it to the owner. To our surprise he accepted it and now we had to put it in place. This involved pooling money from every place we could think including selling everything that had any value. well long boring story short we were off to Alameda 2 weeks later to meet the owner the very day he returned from Hawaii. After some hashing and talking about the boat we went to the Yacht Club for lunch to work out some details. We cancelled our second night reservation in our Hotel and got to spend the first night aboard our new boat Reunion soon to be Cerridwen, and will be referred to as such from this point on. What a fabulous night aboard our boat that would make all of our dreams a reality.

We got out for a sea trial and test sail Sunday afternoon and met up at the owners house in the evening to see all of the goodies (and there are many) that come with her. After getting out of the house with the incredible hostess from Sri Lanka that is his wife (and that was not easy) we were headed home with an eta from Shirley (our GPS) for  12:30 in the morning and both of us have to be to work in mere hours. Exhausted, overwhelmed, excited, drained, spent, ... you name an emotion and we were probably feeling it, we arrived back home with a return trip set for Thursday for the next leg which was only three days away, ...whew, the adventure has begun!

Is she just a boat?

  There are some things we buy or acquire through our life that bring us joy, many that add convenience, and some that are just fun to have, but mostly it is really just stuff. Once every so often though, something comes along or is purchased that is so much more and truly becomes a part of our life, and even alters our whole life and the way we live it. Our dreams, goals, desires, wants, expectations and even our spirits are lifted because of this piece of material object. Or if it affects us so deeply is it really just a material object, or something so much more, maybe even food for the soul.

  We are about to add to our life something I believe fits into this category. She will never bring near as much joy as being with family or friends as that is the most valuable thing we have in life. However she will become so deeply ingrained into our life, that we will put the safety of our lives themselves in her hands. We will laugh, cry, sweat, fear, curse and experience the adventure that is life together. We have been drawn into "Cerridwen's Spell", and we will be forever better because of it.