In the last post here I had to Leapfrog ahead because our travels have been moving so fast I hadn't kept up.
In fact I started this post a while back but I didn't get very far before everything turned to chaos again, so I'll just carry on with it for any who might be interested in the USA part of our hunt...
So to the USA.
It's hard to believe we've been here for nearly 4 weeks. Recording what we've been doing so long after the events is like double vision... focusing on past activity while living with the present.
I can't help but borrow the words of a great American philosopher. Looking at boats, "... is like a box of chocolates. You're never quite sure what you're gonna get".
The rush to America was primarily to confirm that Flying Cloud was as good a boat as she looks.
She is the boat that we coincidentally picked for the front page of this website. We had been in discussion with the owner and all but agreed on a deal, which looked to be an incredible opportunity. We almost flew there directly from Australia, but we'd already made so many plans for looking at boats in Europe that we felt it would be wise to look at the top 2 there before going to the US. It turns out it was a good decision.
We flew into Seattle international airport late in the evening and picked up our prebooked hire car. It always amazes me how a bargain deal, $161 per week, turns out to be $440 by the time you drive away.
We had a weekend to kill before seeing the boat, so took the opportunity to drive to Mount Rainier.
It was a good day and our first taste of American country life. The mountain is high, over 14,000 ft and it claims a couple of lives every year. It's volcanic and a sister to Mt St Helens a few hundred miles away.
In no time we were surrounded by high snow. It turns out Sandy has a good eye for game spotting. Not only did we see deer as we headed up the mountain, but she spotted a bobcat in a meadow on the way back. A jeep coming the other way stopped too and they were quite excited. It's rare to see a bobcat around here these days.
We also saw something catlike run across the road in the distance. Not at all sure what it was. Probably a racoon, but I suspect a new, as yet undiscoverer species of panther..!
Nice folk, and we were given a quick tour of the boat highlighting it's good points... spotless engine compartment, overall layout, comfortable main berth etc. The fact that bits of trim came away in her hand as she opened lockers was a little disconcerting, but nothing that a bit of glue couldn't fix.
Without actually saying anything to each other, I had the feeling that this boat's layout was a little more cramped than Bon Accord. It had more guest cabins but some saloon area was sacrificed. Sandy was feeling exactly the same thing. Still, she was such a beautiful boat, no doubt we'd get used to it.
It's an awfull feeling when high expectations are met with crumbling reality. This was going to be our boat. Neither of us had really doubted it for a moment.
Time and again we opened a locker, or moved a cushion and found flakey, rotten timber. Over time it could all be replaced, but first the source of the leaks had to be found and stopped or there would be no point.
We were about 90% sure where the problem would lie and it wouldn't be easily or cheaply fixed.
As we headed out into the cold wind to inspect the decks I was already just going through the motions. In a couple of minutes we'd confirmed the problem. The teak decking was in a bad way. It was lifting in places, warped in others, caulking missing...
The decks are teak strips overlaying a sandwich construction of fibreglass, some kind of timber as a core and fibreglass again. If the decks aren't looked after, the wood shrinks and the thousands of screws into the fibreglass top layer start leaking water into the core. If that hasn't been properly saturated with resin during construction, it rots and becomes a mush. The water can travel for many feet in any number of directions before it finds it's way into the living area below and starts to rot the timber there.
With 12 to 18 months and $40,000 minimum the teak can be lifted, the top layer of fibreglass cut off, the mush removed, the area cleaned, dried, new core material put down, glassed in, and the 'lid' glassed back into place and finished off.
A very big disappointment, but time for the next boat.
Of course now we were wishing we had looked at a few more boats in europe before flying to the US. On the other hand, if we already had the boat in our sights, why bother?
The USA has the highest concentration of the kind of boats we're looking for, so we decided to go through the different models and narrow down our preferrences.
The first was Angelique, a boat we've admired for a long time. We already knew it was short on guest accomodation and doesn't have the pilothouse plus lower saloon layout that suits a full time home situation so well. But, she has a brilliant aft cabin and engine room.
We met the owners, Doug and Ruth, were totally up front about what we were looking for and where Angelique probably wouldn't suit, and made instant friends.
From Tacoma we made a detour to Pasco to visit one of the most inspiring people I know.
I haven't seen Dorothy for at least 20 years. Not only is she family, but also a dear friend and an absolute dynamo.
At 91 her mind is razor sharp and she bundled us into her car and took us out to lunch. The time together was way too short but just wonderful. She took an instant liking to Sandy and when she heard we were heading for southern California, she made a few phone calls and opened the way for us to spend a week in their condo (flat) on the beach at Oceanside, just north of San Diego.
From Pasco we drove into Oregon and down the Columbia river to Portland. The scenery was gorgeous.
We inspecting 3 more boats on the way. All had features we loved, and things that just wouldn't work for us.
Our knowledge was growing rapidly.
Because were are on a boat hunting mission, we haven't been pausing much for touristy activities.
Hearst Castle was one we really didn't want to miss, so we pulled into San Simeon early in the evening and checked into a motel.
It's a place everyone visiting California should have near the top of their 'must see' list.
Briefly, if William Randolf Hearst invited you to the ranch, it was his million acre spread in Mexico. If he invited you to his castle, it was his 500 year old castle in Wales, but if he invited you to the little ranch, this 250,000 acre spread with the 'house' on the hill was where you ended up, probably flown in from San Francisco or Los Angeles in his DC 3 which flew in every day with a copy of every one of his newspapers.
His father made his fortune out of silver and became the richest man in the world. At age 10, young William's mother decided to take him on a cultural trip to europe for a year. The experience never left him and he developed a passion for collecting art and antiques, with the budget to indulge it.
Amongst his father's assets was not only the ranch at San Simeon, but a small, unsuccessful newspaper in San Francisco. He reluctantly let William take it over to try to turn it around. The rest is history. William created the greatest newspaper empire in the world at the time and his own fortune.
In his fifties he commissioned a female architect from San Francisco to build him a little place on the ranch, a project that continued for decades. At the end of world war 2 many monastries, convents and cities were selling off art, tapestries, ancient carved furniture, wall and ceiling panels etc to raise funds for restoration. Much of the better examples are to be found in Hearst Castle. There are 3,000 year old egyptian statues in the garden, grand fountains... Two swimming pools that defy discription... I could rave on... He had the biggest private zoo in the world with every kind of exotic animal. Today you can still see zebra, decendants of the originals, grazing with the cattle. The castle was donated to the state of California, but the family still owns and runs the ranch.
Here are a few pictures.
We eventually came to the conclusion that Bon Accord, way back in Holland, was probably the best candidate for the title of WindWanderer, if we could get her at a price that would enable us to get her cruising. It's a very big ' if '.
But there was one more opportunity we wanted to grab to speak to a couple who've been living on their CT54 for 12 years. They are big boats and we wanted to see just what kind of Herculian and Amazonian physiques we'd need to develop to tame such a monster.
The only snag was that they were in Mexico. We were on a special visa waiver program that lets us visit the USA provided we enter by a commercial carrier... airline or ship. Also, our hire car was only for use in half a dozen named US states... mmmmmmmm.
We decided to drive to the border and speak to the officials there to see if they would let us back in.
Well, it doesn't work like that. Before we knew it we had glided straight into Mexico! Not an official, not a border post... nothing.
We figured if we were going to be in trouble, we were already in it, so we kept going.
We also discovered that our GPS stopped working at the border and all road signs and destinations were in Spanish only, not the dual languages we'd seen in southern California.
It was extremely 3rd world and a real shock to Sandy. To me it was a bit like driving through the Transkei again.
Eventually we recognised 'Ensanada' on a road sign and we were on our way. Being stopped by men in military uniforms with automatic weapons a few times was a bit unnerving, but a quick look in the car, probably for drugs, and a total inability to understand their questions seems to have been acceptable...
The coastline was actually very beautiful and a few hours later we rolled into Ensanada.
We spent a few hours with Tom and Suzie and it was a relief to find they are totally normal. Over the years they have made many modifications so we picked up a lot of ideas. The original owner had had a flying eagle carved on the teak panels under the bowsprit. It makes Ariel quite unique and gives her a decided Harley Davidson look.
It's such a long established problem that there are street vendors roaming between the cars selling just about anything you can imagine. Food that looks like it would kill you with one bite, kids toys... clever... imagine trying to keep kids entertained for 3 hours with a toy seller outside the window.
But there were also pictures in frames that would take the whole back seat, and 6' crusafixes made of fence poles with badly painted Christs, all varnished... who buys this stuff??
Eventually we got to the front and the female attendant looked at our passports, which hadn't been stamped going in, and asked why we'd gone to Mexico for only a day.... ahhh, number plate recognition cameras! We said we'd just visited friends for lunch and she waived us through! Wheeew!
If you do have a few days to kill before a long drive back to Seattle, Oceanside is the place to do it. Even during the week it has a happy buzz about it.