Potentially buying a sailboat on Monday....

[Slartibartfass]

Catalina 22 Capri

Wish me luck (or condolences are in order for this money pit...).

 

[Billedis]

Get ready to spend the boat bucks.  A friend of mine has a 40' Morgan and he says a C-note is a boat buck!

Enjoy, I prefer the old terra firma.  Bill

 

[Slartibartfass]

"The hole in the water" so I heard....

But I gotta say I am hooked on sailing. And a good hobby to combine with wood working (not that I gonna get a wooden sailboat). I'm not suicidal....

 

[tjbnwi]

I was sailing once. 32' footer, it was on Lake Michigan in some very bad weather. I got to learn something about the operation of the boat and sails. All in all we (wife and I) had a blast. Good thing the people we were with knew what they were doing.

The reason we went out in the bad weather is the boat was a time share, it was their night to take it out.

Tom

 

[Slartibartfass]

Gotta respect the weather...

I am certainly getting obsessed with weather forecasts...

 

[Kev]

You'll love it [wink]

 

[tjbnwi]

Gotta respect the weather...

I am certainly getting obsessed with weather forecasts...

I had confidence in the skipper and her mate. She was the Commodore of the sailing club and had been a captain and trainer for years. He is also a captain.

A couple of the pictures from the trip looking southwest towards downtown Chicago. The pictures were taken on August 7th around 7 PM.

Tom

 

[Cheese]

A friend of mine has a 40' Morgan and he says a C-note is a boat buck!

We rented/leased/hired/stole a 40' Morgan for 3 weeks in the Virgin Islands with a couple of buddies many years ago. What a blast.

Decided to graduate from sailing on 30' plus boats on the great lakes to something larger on the ocean. Did that for a number of years but as Malte suggests, ya gotta respect the weather. A big storm on a 30' boat on the great lakes is nothing...repeat that nothing...compared to a very small storm on a 40' boat on the ocean. I've never seen that many green faces in my life before.  [eek]

Interestingly enough, what got me interested in sailing was when I offered to help a friend of mine restore a 23' all wooden Scandanavian sailboat with a single cylinder, 10 hp diesel engine. We sanded everything down with a couple of my nasty vibrating Milwaukee sanders (this was almost 40 years ago) and then applied multiple coats of spar varnish. Wish I had Festool sanders back then...

Malte, one last word of advice if needed...if feeling squeemish always stare at the horizon and don't go below decks!

 

[Slartibartfass]

Here is a picture from the listing:

[attachimg=1]

Contract is executed. Next is survey.

 

[Billedis]

Nice looking boat!

 

[Slartibartfass]

Yeah, I love her already....

New name is going to be an interesting family contest...

How about "Heinrich der Loewe"... based on where I grew up in Germany....

 

[Cheese]

That name should get a few heads to turn. [big grin]

 

[Slartibartfass]

That name should get a few heads to turn. [big grin]

Especially if I do in old font style.....

 

[Slartibartfass]

Example:

[attachimg=1]

 

[Peter_C]

Aren't you superstitious about changing the name?  [eek]  [tongue]

I spent years sailing the San Francisco Bay. One of my friends still has a Catalina sailboat. His is a wet ride when pushing it, since it is without a dodger. Get a drysuit or at least good foul weather gear.

 

[Slartibartfass]

Not really. That makes it our boat. The current name sounds like an atomic particle.... Not going to get stuck with that....

 

[teocaf]

A big storm on a 30' boat on the great lakes is nothing...repeat that nothing...compared to a very small storm on a 40' boat on the ocean.

[member=44099]Cheese[/member]
Sorry dude, but I must disagree with you on this.  While that may be true on other inland lakes, the Great Lakes, in particular, Lake Michigan, is the exception.  Storms there develop so quickly and with such ferocity that it's best to treat that body of water like it's offshore.  There are a number of reasons for this, but if you look at the evidence, you can see the results.  Particularly around Death's Door by Green Bay where if you look at a nautical chart you see many shipwrecks.  There is a well documented story from 1970 when Ted Turner showed up for the Chicago Mackinac race in his 12 meter American Eagle to do a tuneup for the America's Cup.  Before the race, the famous "Mouth of the South" declared Lake Michigan as "nothing but a mill pond".  One of the ferocious storms turned up that year taking out or hobbling many of the competitors and he had to publicly retract his statement--pretty rare for him.
In 1995 during the Chicago Mackinac Race I witnessed one of these fierce storms firsthand.  I was foredeck on a fairly fast Soverel 30 (which had won its class in a previous year).  Not too long into the race, a storm developed extremely quickly and wiped out our reefed mainsail.  I was clearing the jib off the deck while facing backwards and a wave hit me so hard in the back that it felt like a ton of bricks--luckily I was tethered in but it still knocked the breath out of me.  Not long after we had to retire and motor back to Chicago.  One of the 70 footers which was a record holder in previous years, actually got dismasted.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1995-07-17/sports/9507170175_1_small-jib-sails-intense-storm

[member=32690]Slartibartfass[/member]
Congratulations on the Catalina.  I chartered one on Puget Sound to take my sister and her friends out for the day and found it very user friendly.  In racing circles too, there are so many of those out there, you can easily find friendly sailors to give you advice about them.  They're also the most fun crowd to hang out with back at the bar...

 

[Cheese]

[member=2205]teocaf[/member]
All I can go by is my life's experiences and that's the source of my post, that's not to say I'm right or to say I'm wrong, just my exposure to the reality of the moment. I've never sailed on lake Michigan but have sailed for years on lake Superior. Hey man...it's close and it's in the hood... [thumbs up]

However, having sailed for many years in the Virgin Islands, and with the same group of people that I've sailed with on Superior, I can unequivically state that when the ocean swelled up in the BVI on a 40' Morgan it was total panic The same people that were white in complexion on Superior in a 32" Endeavor, suddenly turned Festool green on the 40' Morgan. And the only thing the Morgan had going for it at the time was 2 bathrooms.  [eek]

And with 8 people aboard, 2 bathrooms were not enough. Thank God for the open ocean...

 

[teocaf]

If you look at the orientation of Lake Michigan, you can see that if you get a strong norther, the fetch (distance over which the wind travels over the open water) is more than twice that of Lake Superior when the storm winds travel from north to south. Even though in area, Lake Superior is bigger, the layout of Lake Michigan allows for much greater waves to develop.  There are other factors as well, but all I'm saying is that Lake Michigan is notorious for massive sudden storms that rival some of those found offshore.  Which does not always make for a bad sailboat ride, as you can surf down 15 foot regular rollers in 50 knot winds.  Whereas if you get confused seas from winds half as strong but is switching direction constantly and you're falling off each wave because you can't predict the wave sets--that requires some serious dramamine.  There's also a difference if you're cruising and you're caught in the occasional storm, but have options sometimes to sit others out, versus racing where you battle the weather and the other boats and you don't have the luxury of getting out of nature's way in a multi day race.  All you can do then is make the best of it and start a contest rating each others' projectile vomit on distance, frequency, texture, color, etc...ahhh, the memories...

 

[Slartibartfass]

When I studied geography in school lakes the size of Lake Michigan etc or the Lake Bodensee in Germany were considered ocean like body of waters due to their size.

In fact you need a special license to sail on the Lake Bodensee due to extraordinary gust potential from the Alps at the south side of the lake that can wipe the smile of your face in a heart beat.....

I appreciate both of you sharing your past sailing experiences!