A Winter Sleigh Ride on "Dark Star"

The Winter Vashon Island Race is always held on the first Saturday in December. It is a simple course with the start/finish line just off Tacoma Yacht Club by Point Defiance and then clockwise around Vashon Island. This year I was fortunate to be invited on Jonathan and Libby Mckee's Dark Star, a custom built Riptide 44. It is the only one in existance today, and is essentially a 44 foot International 14, but this one has a galley, a furnace, beautiful wood accents throughout, but it is also almost all carbon fiber, it draws about 10 feet, has water ballast tanks on either side of the boat, and is a rocket ship to sail!

We had a great race and led around the island most of the way, but the smaller boats enjoyed a building afternoon breeze after we finished which helped most of them beat us on corrected time after an adjustment on handicap. A couple of my observations from this unique experience included: 1) An amazing crew with an even better attitude. Everyone on board was the true model of a good shipmate. I think I could sail across an ocean with all of them and I had only sailed previously with a couple of the 10 guys on board. We had some adversity (engine trouble, hit a log at night, fog in the morning, a headsail that would not come down, and more) but most of it was shrugged off, dealt with and solved. 2) The start was at 9am in Tacoma, WA. The crew got on the boat at 5am at Shilshole and delivered the boat down there in the cold, dark night. We finished at sunset and delivered the boat home in the cold dark night. The race was fun, but many on board enjoyed the deliveries just as much or more. 3) With all the talent and experience on board this unique boat, we still had a practice sail prior to the event. 4) Jonathan Mckee doesn't drive the boat that much despite having numerous World Champion titles as a skipper and two Olympic Medals. He coaches the crew and manages the boat, and gets the best out of everybody on board.

You can learn more about this super cool boat and more of the Paul Bieker designs at http://biekerboats.com/Bieker_Boats/Riptide_44.html

Cruising Done Right in Mexico

I met this nice young couple a few years back and they had just finished taking their ASA Certification Sailing/Boating lessons and were looking for a boat to further their interest in Sailing. With a limited budget and it all being really new, they settled on a Catalina 27. The next weekend they were in Sucia with that little boat! Octavia and Petter were ready to go and always seemed to have the right attitude about boating. This is them pictured to the right.

About a year later after looking for houses in overpriced Seattle, they started thinking that they could get a big boat and maybe live on that. They decided on a Hunter 44Deck Saloon which makes a great liveaboard. It also a ton of boat for the money and modestly priced compared to most houses in Seattle. They found an endtie slip on Lake Union, and this became their view:

About two years later I heard that they were provisioning and outfitting the boat to go down the coast to Mexico. I guess it occurred to them that their home was a boat and it might be nice in Mexico for the winter. It can't be that hard to sail a boat down the coast? Right? And it isn't. Check their awesome blog http://svbellamarina.blogspot.com/ for the whole dang thing. They are chillin down some place south of Mazatlan, while us Seattleites are really chillin down with sub freezing temperatures for over a week!

I think their plan is to put the boat on a ship bound for Seattle sometime in the spring. Good On Ya Octavia and Petter!

Grand Prix Racing in Beneteau First 36.7s

Seattle Yacht Club's Annual Grand Prix Regatta is an invite only affair with the best boats in the region qualifying for the event. It is always run in the fall with the hopes of good winds and challenging conditions. This year was no exception and I was lucky enough to participate in class 4 with Three BeneteauFirst 36.7s on the line with a bunch of other really good boats, like a Soverel 33, a Dash 34, a Peterson 40, a J33 and Charles Hill's beautiful Wauquiez Centurion 40.

The Dash 34 won the event handily but the 36.7s had a good showing placing 2nd, 4th, and 8th. In these pictures by Jan's Marine Photography, you can see Carl Freund's Veloce, winning the start of race 1 with their beautiful port tack approach, and then Dave Steffen's Vitesse a moment later on Starboard. Notes the reefs in both of our mainsails. It was blowing a solid 22-25 knots at the start. On the run we saw 32 knots on the wind gauge, and promptly took our kite down.


The rest of the weekend was light and fluky, where we had to wait until Sunday to get 4 good races off in a funky easterly breeze that was blowing straight out of the locks. For me it was great fun to see three of these Beneteau race boats out on the water, having fun and rounding marks together. It would be great to get a few more out together and have one-design racing. PHRF is really fun also, but in this regatta we owed all of the boats time on handicap and you really had to sail very solidly to beat a 40 footer like "Shoot the Moon" and the rocket ship "Karma", that Dash 34 that was first to finish in every race.

The last photo is a Wauquiez Centurion 40 with teak decks and a gorgeous interior.

Links to photos are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/75869001@N00/sets/72157622655798004/show/

Are boats only for the elite and wealthy? I think not!

I'm constantly amazed by the assumptions that some people make about the boating lifestyle. When I tell people that I am off sailing, or racing, or selling sailboats, people always say things about cost, the wealth of owners, and other thoughts about us "yachties".

Certainly we all fantasize and think about the truly over the top yachts like this: (Daedulus, Ice Bear & Odessa) but the more time I spend in this sport/lifestyle the more convinced I am that anyone can do it. I walked down our dock today at Signature Yachts and found Five boats that could sail around Vancouver Island, and be purchased for less money than my International 14 foot dinghy. (See post "Extreme Sailing in a River")

A 1985 Elite 30 for $29,900. A nicely built french boat offering high performance and a cool interior.

A 1979 Dufour 31 at $26,900. Another nice French boat, with a big interior for a 31 footer.

A 1975 Ranger 33 at $19,750. A Gary Mull Design, nice sailing boat, big interior & big cockpit.

1980 Yamaha 30 at $19,750. These are great little sailing boats, built well and sail beautifully!

A 1977 C&C 29 at $29,000. Built in Canada, with a solid reputation, let's go racing or cruising!

If you are thinking of getting into the sport you do not need a boat you can host Thanksgiving dinner on or sail around the world. Get a little boat and get exploring all the wonderful places you can reach around here on a boat. Then as your needs change, you can change boats.

A good friend of mine who owns a 44 foot pilothouse sailboat recently purchased a Thunderbird, 26 foot sloop sailboat for around $7,000. When I asked him why he did such a thing when he owned such a cool cruising boat, he responded by saying: "My fondest memories are of sailing small boats, and I wanted to get back to that!"

Life is short, Go Sailing!

Beneteau 40 Cruising in the San Juan Islands

If you want to go far up north in your boat, maybe Desolation, maybe the Broughtons, maybe Barkley consider having someone you trust with your boat to do a delivery to or from your destination. It is a neat, convenient way for you to spend more time in the islands and a nice opportunity for your delivery crew.

This was the scenario in which I was entrusted with an almost new Beneteau 40. Le Reve, (the dream) is the name of the boat and owners had two glamorous weeks in Desolation Sound (87 degree water in Teakerne Arm!) and then we met in Nanaimo, where they took my car and jumped the ferry as I readied the boat for a trip through Dodd Narrows.

My crew was my lovely wife Sharon and our 3.5 year old son Axel. This was our second cruise as a family, the first being when Axel was 10 months old. The first cruise was a little shaky with an infant, but we either had forgot about it, or thought we were all a little older and ready for life on a boat. Our first order of preparation was to hire a babysitter for Axel's brother Dean, and we left him at home. We wanted a crew who was ready to do their part and take care of themselves for the most part. We wanted a nice, relaxing vacation. Fortunately, the crew adopted to life aboard straight away and it sure made me proud to have my son so eager to drive, navigate, coil lines, strike the ensign and all those things you do when cruising.

We had a nice journey through the islands and tried to make the passages short with the time on shore long. The Beneteau 40 is perfectly suited to island cruising. A big, safe cockpit protected by a dodger makes for a place in which you spend most of your time. The twin wheels allowed Axel to drive, while I could make sure we stayed on course. The boat is outfitted with the latest charting electronics, a furling main, and a purring Yanmar diesel engine. The boat is easy to handle and is comfortable everywhere. It even had a digital TV and DVD player that the whole crew loved because Axel could watch videos at the end of a crossing or at cocktail hour, and we could enjoy the solitude of a sunset.

A couple of items on the boat that were very nice in addition to the TV, were the Webasto furnace that we used several times, )even though it was August) and the hard-bottomed inflatable dinghy on the Sea-Wise Davits. Many people commented on this configuration and were envious of how simple it was to deploy and retrieve the dinghy. In the pictures above you can see the dinghy stowed on the transom, and the picture below is with it deployed and in the water, but not yet released from the davits. Axel could row his heart out, and I could cook the Halibut on the Magma Barbecue. If you can, go cruising now! You will be better for doing so. -allan

Extreme Sailing in a River

Extreme sailing in a river may seem like an oxymoron but it aptly describes racing an International 14 dinghy in the Columbia River Gorge. This July I took 4 days and competed in the International 14 National Championships sailed out of Cascade Locks, Oregon. This location has long been one of my favorite places to sail a dinghy. A hot, windy, natural environment with beautiful scenery and freshwater combine to make for some excellent sailing.

In this excellent picture from Sean Trew, you will see me in the blue hat with Kris Henderson on the helm. My hat is on backward because it was getting blown off. Here we are going upwind in a 25 knot puff, fully hiked and going about 9 knots. You might take notice of the fact that the crew (forward hand) plays the mainsheet directly from the boom and there is not a mainsheet cleat. The beautiful scenery of the Columbia River Gorge can be seen in the background.

For this National Championship we had 13 boats show up from as far away as Alberta, CA and Southern California. Among the rules for an International 14 National Championship is the requirement of a long distance race. So after 4 good buoy races in the morning, they set us off on a downwind start for a temporary mark 7 miles up river and back. It is a simple course but a seriously difficult challenge when the wind is up. We ended up capsizing at the start because we were a little to aggressive with our full-on, kite up, twin wire, going 17 knots at the line, 5 seconds late start, because there were 5 boats right in front of us going slow as they hoisted their kites. It was one of the more memorable moments of the regatta and was executed exactly as we had planned, except the capsize. We righted the boat and by the time we got to that mark way down the river we were in fourth place, we passed one boat on the way upwind and finished the long distance race in Third Place. Here is some neat video of some friends of mine sailing (and capsizing) their 14 in "The Gorge"! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0R74mpPQKM

Hiram M. Chittenden Locks

The image to the left is down deep in the lock on the puget sound side of the lock. The image to the right is at the top of the lock just prior to the gates opening and letting us into the freshwater of Salmon Bay and Lake Washington.

The "Locks" are an interesting place and I find myself going through them about twice a month. During this transit we had no incidents aboard a beautiful Beneteau 44 Center Cockpit, and none of our lockmates had much trouble either. As I like to say: "The locks are not to be taken lightly, but they are pretty simple and straightforward." My tips include having three people aboard, two 50 foot lines and six fenders, 3 to a side. For recreational traffic, a red and green light will tell whether to enter or not and the lockmaster will tell you where to tie. If you want more tips on locking through, email me at allan@signature-yachts.com and I will be happy to help. Sailboaters need to be careful of the current flowing Westbound and the Railroad Bridge that gives priority to trains, not sailboats. You can learn more about the locks at http://www.nws.usace.army.mil/PublicMenu/Menu.cfm?sitename=lwsc&pagename=mainpage

Beneteau First 36.7 Racing

The Windermere Cup is a great regatta put on by Anacortes Yacht Club and Andy Schwenk. This was my first year that I was able to participate and I recommend the event highly to any sailboat racer who wants to do some fun around the buoys racing.

There was about 40 boats this year and I was fortunate to trim the main on Dave Steffen's brand new Beneteau First 36.7 "Vitesse". This boat has been expertly prepared and sports a beautiful set of Doyle Sails. This was their first regatta and they finished a respectable fourth out of nine boats.

I had an excellent time on the boat and the rest of the crew was fun to sail (and party) with. Everyone on board seemed to have a good time and we had some moments of greatness, like in the picture above where we are just slightly ahead of Carl Freund's "Veloce", another Beneteau First 36.7 that sailed a great regatta and won the event.

You can learn more about these boats at http://beneteaufirst367.org

Sabre 38 Sailing

Today I had the pleasure of sailing a 28 year old Sabre 38. This is a very nice boat that almost all sailors would admire. As we sailed along smartly at 4 knots in 5 knots of wind, I was reminded of the joy that can be had in a nicely crafted sailing vessel. This particular boat is uncommon in the Pacific Northwest, but quite popular on the East Coast, particularly the northern parts as the boats are built in Maine.

I have done some great cruising on a slightly larger Sabre 42 and have sold several Sabre 386s recently. All of the Sabres are superbly crafted and feature nice design elements like wide side decks, a sailor's cockpit and just enough teak to give the boats a higher level of elegance. You can learn more about them athttp://www.sabreyachts.com

Summer Solstice 2009

I figured this was as good a day as any to start a blog about sailing in the Seattle Area. This has always been one of my favorite days of the year, as the sun sets tonight at 9:11pm in the Seattle area and it won't be dark until after 10pm. A great night for sailing, drifting or doing some sort of activity on the water.

This year's solstice happens to fall on Father's Day and what fun for me to have my two boys all excited about the WeedEater they got for me. Admittedly, I'm all excited about it too!

I'm going to attempt to post some things in this blog that I find interested in the sailing and sailboat world in and around Seattle. I will also profile some of the boats for sale and interesting offerings that I see in my work as a broker at Signature Yachts.

Let's see where the wind will take us. -Allan