The end of a dream

My friend Paul Caouette emailed me this surprising message a few days ago:

John,

How are you doing?

Progress on the boat?

We are in Curacao. Have been for a month now. Sailed from Trinidad through the islands off the coast of Venezuela. (Way off to avoid any close encounters with pirates). Had a mate aboard with us to help with the passages. He was a great sailor and a welcomed addition. I honestly don't know how couples do the long passages without succumbing to complete exhaustion.

We are taking care of this's and that's while at anchor her in Spanish Waters. Stripped the exterior varnish and will recoat with Cetol. Also redoing the deck. Lots of small blisters that are actually older blisters that weren't repaired correctly (body filling rather than epoxy). Lots and lots of them.

But the real news is that Honey and I have decided in yet another change of lifestyles. This decision precipitated, in part, by my recurring sciatica. Long passages without exercise take their toll. Numbness and weakness in my left leg does not make me a happy, or safe sailor.

In conversations with Stan Dabney about how best to list her.

I sure would like to know how much you paid for your boat and some measure of the money you've spent so far. I want to fairly represent what one can expect when purchasing an older Valiant.

Best to you and Nan.

PS

We have no idea when we'll be back in Colorado..Perhaps by mid June.....hope for an opportunity to visit then.
--
Paul Caouette
sv Wild Iris (V40-133)

Paul has been having problems with his back for at least the last few years. Back in the spring of 2009, his back issues prevented him from sailing across the Atlantic to Europe. Instead, he and Honey have been sailing through the Caribbean, slowly circumnavigating the sea in a clockwise direction. Now it appears that even that dream is coming to an end.

I feel badly for Paul. He has sailed most of his life, and he has put everything he has into his boat. It is a sad reality that the complications of advancing age have interfered with his plans, but Paul just turned 63 in February so health issues should not be unexpected.

I will turn 53 in June, which means that I am not exactly a young man either. Paul's situation makes me think that I should be trying to fulfill my sailing dreams sooner rather than later. I would hate to wait too long and then live with the regret I am sure Paul is feeling.

Boat Quest, Part 14

It has been well over a year since I last wrote a Boat Quest post. The most recent one, Part 13, was about Otter II, the Valiant 40 I looked at with Stan Dabney while I was in Miami in January 2009 helping the Caouettes prepare their Valiant 40, Wild Iris, for a transatlantic crossing. Otter II sold several months later, much to my disappointment, before I could get anywhere close to making an offer. I went back occasionally to YachtWorld.com to check the Valiant 40 listings, but there were no other affordable boats worth considering.

Late last fall, I was checking the listings and noticed a 1980 Valiant located in Baltimore. As I looked at the photos in the listing's slideshow, I had the feeling that I had seen the boat before. I dug through my computer's photo archive and found the set of photos I had taken of Little Walk (Boat Quest, Part 10 and Part 11) back in May 2008 when I was in the Washington, D.C. area for an Internet conference. There was no question about it. It was the same boat, just located in a new place and listed with a new broker. I had not been able to get adequate answers from the previous broker to my questions about the boat's condition, so I had given up on it and assumed when it disappeared out of the listings that it had been sold. Apparently not. It was still priced higher than I thought it should have been but not as high as the previous broker said it would be based on some improvements the owner was putting into place.

I studied the description and the photos in the listing, and I studied the many photos I had taken myself. In addition to the basic design of the Valiant 40, which I had decided several years ago was the perfect boat for us, there were many features to like about this particular boat. Some Valiants have been almost excessively customized to meet the needs and desires of their owners, but not this one. It was close to stock, looking very much like it must have when it left the Uniflite factory in Bellingham, Washington back in 1980. The distinctive wooden hatchcovers, the fold-down saloon table, the tapered mast, the port-side pilot berth, the original electrical panel--it was all there.

I watched the listing compulsively through the winter, hoping for the right combination of factors that would make my dream of owning a Valiant 40 come true. The first factor was, of course, my wife Nan. If she was not in agreement, then that would be the end of it. But then, during her charmed birthday weekend in Denver back in January, Nan proposed the idea of living in Isla Mujeres, Mexico for a year. We could rent an apartment at Color de Verano on Laguna Macax. And since there is a pier right out back, we could maybe have a sailboat there to sail on weekends in order to help build Nan's confidence for more ambitious trips. Since I can work from anywhere that I can get a high-speed Internet connection, as I did last fall when we spent a month in Isla Mujeres, I was thrilled with the idea.

The second factor fell into place at the beginning of April: the listed price came down by $10K. At the previous price, the boat might never have sold, but at the new price, I was afraid it would sell quickly, so I called the broker to find out what it would take to put in an offer. He emailed me a form that I completed and faxed back to him, and I mailed him a deposit check for ten percent of the listed price--I didn't want to lose the boat to a better offer. I had been saving money in a "boat fund" for just this day since giving up on Sea Hawk back in November 2007. The offer was contingent on the results of a marine survey, so there was no risk of losing my deposit if the boat proved to be unseaworthy. I was able to coordinate getting the survey conducted before Nan and I left for our Central America sailing trip, but I wasn't able to get the results until we arrived in Roatan.

Boat Quest, Part 13

On the Saturday while I was in Miami, I drove up to Fort Pierce to meet with Stan Dabney and take a look at a Valiant 40 sailboat he had listed through his brokerage, Offshore Atlantic Yachts, Inc. Stan is one of the founders of Valiant Yachts, and no one knows that boat or its history better than he does. The boat we looked at was Otter II, a 1979 centerboard model that is currently owned by Bruce and Phyllis from Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. They had just spent thirty days sailing up from Panama, and Phyllis, who was on hand to show the boat, said they had taken a pounding beating upwind in heavy seas. You wouldn't have known it to look at the boat, which was in immaculate condition. I had studied the listing on YachtWorld.com carefully, but text and photos didn't do her justice.

Coming directly from the Caouettes' Valiant 40, which is crammed to the gills with stuff, Otter II looked almost austere. In place of the standard teak, there was light-colored Formica on most of the vertical surfaces, which brightened the interior dramatically. The original plastic hatches had been replaced with steel ones and the woodwork was freshly varnished, making the boat shine all the more. The navigation station was nicely laid out and well organized. There was an SSB radio but Phyllis said they had not had success with getting it set up for use with email. The radar screen could be viewed easily from both the station and the cockpit.

One feature I was curious about but couldn't figure out from the listing was the centerboard's workings. The Valiant 40's off-center companionway allows the cable that raises and lowers the centerboard to run through the boat's centerline, making it relatively unobtrusive. There is a separate steel pipe next to the one that acts to connect the deck to the hull just aft of the mast. Where that pipe meets the cabin ceiling, there is a teak box containing a block which redirects the cable coming through the pipe to a winch located at the cockpit bulkhead. According to Phyllis, it takes exactly thirty turns of the winch handle to completely raise or lower the centerboard; there is no easy way to gauge its intermediate positions. The listing showed photos of the boat hauled out, with the centerboard partially lowered, but in the boatyard where she is now sitting, the boat is resting on her keel with the centerboard fully raised.

There were several nice features topsides. The mast-furled mainsail is operated electrically, making reefing as simple as pushing a button. There is a small crane for raising and lowering the heavy dinghy outboard and for moving heavy items like fuel tanks and batteries in and out of the boat. The cockpit has a nicely designed folding binnacle table, a propane barbecue on the stern rail and a booster step behind the wheel for extra height when looking over the dodger.

The only negative aspect of Otter II is that she is a "blister boat," one of the Valiant 40s built by Uniflite between 1976 and 1981 that have a blistering problem in the fiberglass laminates. Stan pointed out the many small blisters on the hull and even chipped off a few with his thumbnail. They are more cosmetic than structural and can be repaired by stripping off and replacing the outer layers of fiberglass. Stan said that this is an expensive and unpredictable process in the United States but that when President Obama loosens restrictions with Cuba, it could probably be done there for about $5000, with a higher quality result. In addition to the blisters on their hulls, blister boats usually have blisters on their decks but there were none visible, so it is possible that the decks had been repaired at some point but I didn't get a chance to ask Phyllis for the details.

All in all, Otter II is an excellent boat and an excellent value at an asking price of $95,000. These current economic conditions favor the buyer over the seller, but Stan says that sales have been especially slow in the last few months as people wait to see if the recession has bottomed out or if it will continue into the foreseeable future. If things turn around before too long and Otter II is still available, who knows what might happen?

Sharing the Dream

On Thursday morning, I received an email message from reader Ted Johnson in response to my Boat Quest series. It was a great story by a fellow dreamer and it contained some excellent advice, so I thought I would share it with other readers, along with my response:

Good luck in your quest!

Just stumbled on your blog. Enjoyed reading it. I have a couple out there--not nearly as well-developed.

http://pontianum.blogspot.com/

http://basicmazecraft.blogspot.com/

I've returned last fall from living on a sailboat in Seattle for 2 years. It was the realization of a dream. The dream's still there but is on hold.

QWEST allowed me to transfer out there so i sold everything in Denver & arrived in Seattle with a small trailer filled with my "necessities". I have sailed small boats on inland waters all my life but was new to the ocean & living aboard.

i arrived in june & didn't want to lose the precious summer months searching for the perfect boat--a big project as you know. So i bought the third boat I looked at--a Cal 34. It turned out great--was in better than new condition--but it was too small & not what I wanted for a life of cruising. So for $500 I enlisted Bob Perry, the designer of the Valiant 40, to help me look for the next boat. I ended up with one of his designs--the Islander freeport 36. I bought it for the headroom, light from large portlights, large head & pullman berth. Unfortunately, the deferred maintenance was overwhelming, the surveyor missed a lot of faults, and the galley was at best awkward, and i learned that even with a full cockpit cover i was rarely warm enough out on the Sound. (Visibility was so poor from the cockpit all zipped up that it didn't really give me the protection I wanted to sail year-round.).

After arriving back in Denver to stay the winter, I got a message that the dock I was on was being leased out & i was losing my slip. i listed the boat with a broker & to my surprise she sold it right way.

I'm headed for MN in July to care for my parents for the summer, then hope to resume the cruising/sailing/liveaboard life. I'll be back where you are, trying to buy a boat long distance. it's very frustrating! And I want this to be a boat I can keep for a while!

i'd like to retire, but will be on a shoestring. (If I wait, i might never get back on a boat!)

I'm in love with (that's the worst of it --the emotional side) a boat in CA--a Challenger 42. It's well-outfitted & looks like the layout I want--but I face the same thing you do--a lot of expense to go look at it, knowing that pictures lie & with one glance I could discover it's not for me. It's a lot like computer dating!

I would encourage you to charter & sail with others a lot before you buy if at all possible. I belonged to a club in Seattle that met Monday nights. Skippers would line up & invite members to go on free trips every weekend. Club cost $15/meeting or $140 for the year. It was a great way to get rides on a variety of boats.

Having said that, I bought the Cal 34 based on reputation without ever having sailed one & it was a good boat for me. i didn't spend a lot on her & sold her for more than I paid. if it weren't for sales tax, I probably broke even. The Valiant 40 has the same kind of reputation. I think the owner's group is a better bet for finding a good boat than Yachtworld. But i scan Yachtworld every day. Problem is, most of the boats that are on Yachtworld forever are there for a reason. They're in bad shape or the owner is unrealistic about value.

After my experience with the Freeport, I'd recommend waiting for a well-maintained boat. Unless you can do all the work yourself, bringing a boat back from neglect can easily cost more than the initial purchase price. It's hard to find people that do good work. And a boat that needs work is a pain. You can't trust her to really go anywhere. You never recapture that money when you resell her. The guy on the east coast is not going to sell her for any more by installing radar & whatever else he's doing. I think letting the boat go on the east coast was a good choice.

Where do you plan to start from--whereever you find a boat?

Thought it might be interesting to stay in touch.

Ted

RE: Good luck in your quest!

Ted,

Thank you for contacting me. I enjoyed your message and all its good advice.

It sounds like we are sharing the same dream but that you have at least experienced some of it firsthand already. I, too, grew up sailing on inland lakes, mostly in Wisconsin, but dreamed of sailing the oceans and circumnavigating. I have taken the ASA classes, chartered in the BVI and gone on two of John Kretschmer’s trips (http://www.yayablues.com/ and Latitudes & Attitudes magazine), but I have never owned a boat other than the 1969 AMF Alcort Minifish that’s out in my garage.

After the disappointment with “Little Walk,” the boat I looked at in Virginia, I’m thinking I may have to do what you did and enlist the assistance of an expert to help me locate the right boat, maybe Stan Dabney (http://www.offshoreyachts.com/), the reputed Valiant 40 authority next to Bob Perry, the boat’s designer. I emailed Stan once and he was very helpful, so it might be worth a try. The one thing that looking at “Little Walk” did do was to confirm that the Valiant 40 is the right boat for what we have in mind, so I’m pretty set on it if I can find a well-maintained one at a decent price.

With the crummy economy and our landbound life in Colorado, my wife Nan and I (and our new dog Scout) may be a few years out yet, but it never hurts to keep looking. When we do finally find the right boat, the big trip will probably start from where the boat is located, at least to a certain extent. Having sailed in the Caribbean more than anywhere else, that would be my preferred starting spot. If I locate a boat on the west coast, like the two Valiants that are currently listed on YachtWorld.com in the Seattle area, I think I would sail south and then east through the Panama Canal, and then up around Florida and up the east coast at least as far as Savannah, where my parents have a vacation home on Skidaway Island, before thinking about backtracking by way of the Bahamas, the Caribbean Islands and the northern coast of South America to return to the Panama Canal.

I am a big fan of Robinson Crusoe and Mutiny on the Bounty, so it has been my dream to sail across the Pacific by starting at Valparaiso, Chile and making landfall at Alexander Selkirk Island (in the Juan Fernandez archipelago) and Pitcairn Island on the way to French Polynesia. From there, I have some route ideas that involve New Zealand, Australia, Madagascar, Africa and the Mediterranean, but they’re too much to list here. The biggest idea would be to undertake a circumnavigation in a discontinuous way, leaving the boat at desirable spots along the way during bad-weather seasons and flying home to take care of real-life responsibilities before returning to pick up where we left off. I met Jim Whittaker, the first American to summit Mt. Everest, about eight years ago, and this was how he and his family were working their way around the world. It might take quite a bit longer to do it this way, but I look at the dream as being an “until I die” kind of thing anyway, so there’s no need to rush through it.

Let’s stay in touch and see how the dream works out for the both of us.

Best wishes,

John

Boat Quest, Part 6

Here is a short piece from "The O List" section of the October, 2001 issue of Outside magazine:

The Aerodyne 47 sailing off Newport, Rhode Island

The Best Boat to Sail Around the World

A plucky Australian named Serge Testa once managed to get around the globe in a 12-footer, but if you prefer to go first class, the AERODYNE 47, a new passage-maker from innovative designer Rodger Martin, aspires to be the perfect ride. The 47-foot sloop thoroughly modernizes the art of cruising—it's strong enough to battle Cape Horn and light enough to reel off 250 miles on a good day. Oh, and it's easily handled by just two people. The secret is smart engineering (like a self-tacking jib) and maximum use of ultralight, ultrastrong composites such as Kevlar (the material of choice for bulletproof vests). And the performance pedigree does not come at the expense of serious cruising comfort. Any number of boats (like the venerable Valiant 40, which made its first circumnavigation in the 1970s) will take you around the world, but few will get you across the oceans as fast as the Aerodyne 47 while the off-watch does laundry, eats microwave popcorn, and freaks out to Dead Calm on the DVD. —Tim Zimmermann $430,000; 508-943-8776; http://www.aerodyneyachts.com/

I found this version in Outside's website archives. The original printed version included additional photos that showed a pilothouse, a washing machine, a flat-screen TV and even a workshop. I read it as a subscriber when it was published in 2001, while I was working for the Aspen School District and moonlighting as an Internet developer. The "Dot Bomb" stock market crash was already history but I believed I could still make it big with a vacation rentals website featuring "virtual walkthroughs." Big enough to throw $3000 a month at a sailboat for 25 years? Probably not. But dreaming about the Aerodyne 47 got me past my infatuation with the MacGregor 26.

After reading the piece many, many times, I finally looked seriously at the parenthetical, "(like the venerable Valiant 40, which made its first circumnavigation in the 1970s)." I had never heard of the Valiant 40, but if it was "venerable" and capable of making circumnavigations, then maybe it was worth checking out. I did a quick Google search, which returned thousands of results. Near the top was Offshore Atlantic Yachts, Inc. (http://www.offshoreyachts.com/), a yacht brokerage website run by a couple of the original founders of Valiant Yachts, Sylvia and Stanley Dabney. I read every page and then looked at all the associated YachtWorld.com sales listings. What I learned was that the Valiant was designed by naval architect Robert Perry in 1973 as the first high performance cruising sailboat with a fiberglass hull. It featured a cutter rig, fin keel, skeg-hung keel and tumble-home stern. Well-used Valiants from the late 1970s could be purchased for less than $100K, with some as low as $75K.

I made a habit of checking the OffshoreYachts.com listings a few times a week hoping that as our personal fortunes improved, I might find the right Valiant 40 at the right time in the right place. At one point, there was one available in not-too-far-away Mexico that I followed until the listing disappeared. I emailed Stan Dabney to ask what had happened and he responded that he had tried to close a sale, but the difficulty of doing business in Mexico had caused the deal to fall apart so he was no longer representing the boat. That got me thinking that there must be more to buying a brokered boat than I had thought, so I started paying greater attention to the terms of sale as I continued to study the listings.