A Farewell to the Catalina 25 Wing
10 January 2016
• Marina San Carlos, Marina Seca
by Keith, chilly at night, nice, but windy, during the day
I done went and did it. Again. We bought another sailboat. Cascade 36. The gentleman who commissioned it years ago and then brought it down to San Carlos from Portland became too old and it sat on the market long enough for the price to become very reasonable. We found nothing else remotely like it within our budget, which was triple that of Boker Tov, but still pretty meager for a solid sailboat. I think what we found is pretty freaking solid and as big as I would want to solo. Triple the displacement of Boker Tov. More interior space. Standing headroom throughout. The hull and deck are supposedly thicker and better built than pretty much anything else out there. I walked the deck and it is very, very beefy. It comes with a new diesal engine. Just 30 hours. New transmission, cutlass bearing. Full suite of sails, Profurl for the foresails, separate storm staysail track on the mast, mast steps, oversized winches, radar, GPS, proximity detector, freezer and fridge, insulated hull, fans throughout, a Hydrovane of all things, and on and on. People have circumnavigated on these sailboats. This is a fully factory built specimen, which was rare. I just want to adventure safely, comfortably, and by sail, with and likely also without my wife and kids, in and around the Sea of Cortez and eventually down to the Mexican Riviera and back. It will be like real cruising, only much shorter in duration, like a week or two at a time. Still keeping a relatively regular life going with work and family. While I was down there for one night checking out the new sailboat, I stayed on Boker Tov at the work yard one final night. It may not actually be my last, but it is soon to be. I brought the space heater and ran it by extension cord to an outlet in the yard. Kept it on all night on the companion way stairs while I slept comfortably in the forepeak on a very chilly night. New boat has heaters built in and two kerosene lamps as it came from the Pacific Northwest. I finally got Boker Tov in pretty much perfect shape. Her new owner, whoever that may be, will be very lucky indeed. I'm sad to move on from her. We had a lot of successful voyages. My wife and kids were introduced to sailboat cruising on the Catalina 25 Wing. She served us faithfully. My personal and, more importantly, the mini-cruising aspirations I have for my family, require the services of something more like OzBorne. Stay tuned.
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