02/20/2010

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Scott
02/17/2010, Leeward Islands: St Martin & St. Barts

The following link is to the movie from our recent test sail of a Privelege 494 in the Leeward Islands

Click Here to Watch the Video Below in Full Size

Searching for "The" Boat

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01/31/2010, Redondo Beach, CA

That was the subject line from a message sent to me from a college fraternity buddy. The body of the message read:

"I went over your plan for the sail. I can barely get my wife to Catalina on our boat so I am very excited for your trip. What type have boat are you taking? I did transpac on a Cal 40 and it took 15 days to get to Hawaii - we had very light winds and days where we went 60 miles. This is very exciting stuff."

I decided to blog this comment and my reply as this is not a totally uncommon type of comment for many hard core sailors. My reply:

M******, Transpac, now that is exciting. The plan is to be on a 50 foot catamaran. Not sure if you have had your wife on a big cat, but it is a totally difference experience than a monohull, not to mention a Cal 40. What most racers hate about a big cat is what your wife will love, the boats provide zero feedback relative the wind and waves; mainly that they don't heel. A couple other points relative to the Transpac, if the wind is too light, we turn on the motor. 60 miles in a day - 2.5 knots!! I think proper, gentleman cruising rules have the engines on at anything under 4 to 5 knots. J Also, in the planned 3 years of the trip, there is probably only 3 times were we would be at sea for 15 days or more. There is probably less than 15 times where we would sail over two nights. So, is it the sail that you wife does not like, or the whole experience? I find the sailing very relaxing, as does Mandi. Our boys get bored on the sail over to Catalina but they love being there. Our estimate is that 85% to 90% of the time the boat will be at anchor in some comfortable place.

Check out this link to a video I put together of one of the boats we tested for our trip. Nutmeg in the BVI

The photo is from the fly bridge of a Lagoon 500. Big, flat and stable.

Charter Trips

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Scott
01/10/2010

Since we are not going to get the new boat tax break for 2009, we are really starting to look toward the used market. Always a smart choice, but I think I was letting the tax tail wag the dog a little and getting excited about being able to do a semi custom, new boat.

So, now our options become even more limited. For the used boat choices we have the St Francis 50, Privilege 495, Lagoon 500 and the Lagoon 570. It is time to do another test sail. Poor us, I know. The boys are still all Gold status on American airlines. It is funny that our 3 year old fly's over 25,000 miles a year. (As a side note, coming home from Hawaii in October only Mandi and I got the upgrade. So the three boys all rode in "second class," as they call it. Pretty funny seeing Luke in his car seat with just his brothers. But the kids did great.)

Ideally, we can test two boats in one trip. We would like to charter the Privilege 495 and a Lagoon 570, both have to be galley up, over the same 10 to 12 day period in the Caribbean. It is really hard to find a galley up in these two models, especially for charter, in the same week, in close proximity. We have our friend Captain Dare, who was the captain on the Lagoon 500 we test sailed a while back, working on this for us. He has moved back to the states and owns and operates Sojourn Sailing, which is a yacht charter company for the Caribbean - great resource.

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Scott
09/05/2009, Zhuhai, China

Since I found myself on the rant about my visit to China, great experience by the way, I am doing a separate post about the Prout factory. Bottom line, they will not be able to have a new boat completed for us by 2009, which was a goal relative to the special tax incentives. So for now, they are back down on the list until they have a few boats in the water and are proven.

This is a new factory for Prout in China, and many working there are not experienced catamaran builders. We were very impressed by the workmanship. The labor costs are so low, they really can spend a great deal of time on all the custom, hand completed type work. The owner, Jack, has an aerospace background, and some of the advances they are doing to make the boat light while still high end are impressive. And example is granite countertops, but with a very thin cut of stone on a honeycomb core, just like on high end private airplanes. We also liked the ability to do a semi-custom boat.

The final analysis is that we want a proven blue water boat. As this is a brand new boat, with brand new staff, in a brand new factory, we decided it was best to wait. If we were putting the boat in our marina and just taking short trips to Catalina, we would have jumped at the opportunity.

Searching for "The" Boat

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Scott
09/04/2009

So we just return from China to visit the new Prout factory. We have been talking with them about building us a new boat this year. (see new equipment business tax break post.)

Although everyone says China's is crowded, and when visiting you expect it will be, you can't appreciate the full meaning of the word until you are immersed in it. On our last day, a Sunday which is the only day off in China, we decided to go to Macow before we headed over the bay to Hong Kong for the flight home. We ended up spending 3 hours clearing customs to leave China, then clear customs again to get into Macow - which is still China. There is no reason to this. Everyone is in a huge building that looks like an aircraft hanger, pushing and shoving. Lines don't really form. And there is no concept of personal space. Add to that I am 6'4" and Mandi is a 5'8" red head, we really stood out. And if I left enough space between me and the person in front of me so I could fold my arms, someone tried to squeeze in. To help kill the time, I pulled out my iPhone. Now I became very popular. People would actually pull my arm so they could get a better look at my personal digital assistant (PDA.)

By the time we finally got to the Venetian in Macow, all I could think was lets find the most empty restaurant in the place. We did, and ordered hamburgers.

Some observations of the Venetian:
1) Women don't gamble in Macow
2) People don't drink when they gamble. (I am used to the free drinks in Vegas)
3) There is no such think as personal space
4) It is always okay to stare at the freaky tall foreigner

Searching for "The" Boat

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