Boats
Our current boat, Cool Change, at the Port Canaveral Yacht Club
One thing that’s consistent in our family is boats. We’ve owned and sailed a variety of them all over the East Coast. Two of our previous boats, the Anonymous and the Calypso, were larger cruising boats that afforded us minor adventures and major memories. Before that we had a smaller Phillip Rhodes designed cruising sloop called the Tawhiri (polynesian god of wind) in which we sailed the waters of the Chesapeake Bay.
To quote a long-time friend of ours (Steve Morton to be specific)….”life’s better with a boat.” Indeed it is. We know the sand-bars, sounds and shoals of the eastern seaboard.
Our current ‘big’ boat is the Cool Change, a ‘39 Beneteau, capable of sailing anywhere on the planet, but will be our ‘east coast’ home from Maine to the Keys with trips to the Bahamas and when it opens up, Cuba. Until both girls are in college, she’ll be Don’s studio, our guest house and our weekend escape out to sea.
We also have a 23′ pilot cutter we’ve restored and use to ply the local waters. This is the girl’s boat. Any day the girls can take this boat out and set into the ocean or into the intracoastal waterway.
In addition to that, we have one canoe, a kayak, three sailboards, one 10′ rigid dinghy, one 9.2′ rigid inflatable dinghy (RIB), one 9′ inflatable dinghy, and three outboard motors - oh, and a surf board!
We’ve also rebuilt a small trailer to take any of our small fleet wherever we want. The back of our Ford Explorer is permanently set up to be a small boat outfitter’s paradise, with all the gear that we need for anything from kayaking the thousand islands, making a dinghy run to Ski Island to wear out the dogs or heading out to sea on the Osprey.
Cool Change a Beneteau Oceanis 390 underway in the Barge Canal
The Calypso, a 34′ Gemini 105 Catamaran, shown here on the Delaware Bay. This was our liveaboard boat during our year at sea.
The Anonymous, a 34′ Beneteau Oceanis 350, shown here off Fort Matanzas, Florida
The schematic of our first big boat, Tawhiri, a 1961 Rhodes Ranger 28′. We owned it in the pre-digital photo age so we have to dig around in storage to find a photo of her.
Our small boat rack
We’ve built a rack for the small boats in the backyard. Since this photo we’ve added one more sailboard, a longboard surfboard and an RIB dinghy and made a new rack for three outboard motors. Time to update the photo! Note the mortise and tendon joining on the rack! We use these boats (mostly the canoe and kayak) to explore the shallow waters around the island. The cats use it as their ‘hangout’.
Our Avon Dingy
When you’re cruising, your dinghy is your car. You use it for everything. While we have two dinghies, we love our RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat), an Avon 9.2. She’s kept on a small trailer and we can have her hooked up to our Explorer and go off on minor adventures in a moment’s notice. We often use her to scout photo shoots on local waters. We also have a set of removable wheels that attach to her transom (shown here), so if we can’t find a boat ramp we can get her into the water pretty much anywhere. We can use any of our outboards on her, but our favorite is a small 2.5 HP, which doesn’t make much noise, uses almost no fuel and just keeps running.
The Osprey, our little pilot cutter
We restored a Venture of Newport to sail in the local waters. Her swing keel and kick-up rudder are perfect for the shallow waters of the Banana and Indian rivers, as well as light ocean sailing off the cape.
Here’s a link to our renovation. At the moment the exterior is done and she’s a fine sailing vessel. Now we’ll be working on the interior to make her a solid “weekender” boat.