Our boat – Page 2 – Interested in Learning How to Find, Select and Eventually Live On Board Your Own Sailboat? You're in the Right Place….

Things we fixed (aka broke) along the way….

Things we fixed…..(the last few things on this list were more like upgrades)

Both heads (toilets)…..rebuilt the pumps, replaced the intake and output lines, replaced the water intake strainers, siphon breaks..rebuilt the forward head pump multiple times before finally replacing the entire housing…

Diesel—adjusted the Valve lash, oil changes, used high dose diesel cleaning solution treatment four times due to contamination of our injector pump…(this wasn’t an issue we caused, it was caused by a boat yards poor work in NC)

Patch the Genoa Sail sunbrella sacrificial cover

Racor filter / housing rebuild and filter change

Galley Faucet….this began to leak and reached a critical point while moored in Key West…..the faucet was so old that the owner of a plumbing supply warehouse, who was in the family business for 50 years said he hadn’t seen one of these in 35 or 40 years!!!

Galley Sink….at some point in our boat’s history….someone (possibly a sadist) used 3M 5200 to seal the sink to the countertop…..for those of you unfamiliar with 5200, it’s a great product for installing things you want to be bulletproof…..it’s not so great for something you might want to remove….ever……even employees at boatyards groan audibly when they learn they have to remove something installed with 5200….it has been nicknamed by some “death paste”. The upside is, since the edge of our sink was so severely damaged during removal, we had a custom single bowl sink fabricated and installed …..if anyone needs such a replacement let us know we have a great source for these sinks !!!

Drinking water inline filters (x3)

Aft head cold water faucet replacement

Power switch for VHF radio….which completely deteriorated and fell apart in my hand when we went to switch on the radio to check the weather in the Dry Tortugas…..

Zinc replacement x2

Remove lines from props ….five times….one with a crab trap on it….no bonus crabs though….

Tune up, recommission the diving air compressor and change the breathing air filter

Replace outboard prop and kill switch

Refrigerator coolant line unclogging

Replace Aft cabin fan….then replace defective blade….then fan died…again…ugh

Unclog Lazarette drains

Unclog sink drain x2

Fix aft head intake leaking seacock

Replace steering sheave and pins

Replace Hatch solar fans

Replace / upgrade anchor to a Mantus 85lb galvanized anchor

Upgrade Battery cables, install battery bank monitors, replace underrated/melted battery selector switch and install a main fuse for battery banks

Install new Wind instruments and displays

Painted the salon and V-berth interior

Repair salon sole soft spots

Shower stall refinish……

This all added up to about $12k for the year in boat upkeep….they say to anticipate 10% per year of your boat’s value for upkeep so we are a little high but fingers crossed that goes down next year……

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Key West…..Part One

When we arrived in Key West, after our overnight stay at Looe Key Reef,… (See that post here …. https://learntoliveaboard.com/2016/07/scenes-from-along-the-way-to-dry-tortugas-via-key-west/ ) we spent about 90 minutes navigating the entrance to Key West from the South. There was no shortage of small and large traffic including a departing cruise ship. We had called ahead and arranged for a mooring ball in the Garrison Bight Mooring Field.

We made our way around Fleming Key, which is the home of the U.S. Army Special Forces Undwerwater Training Center which is located at it’s north tip. The island also has a waste water treatment system and a Dolphin Training Center !! You do see a conspicuous number of dolphins cruising between the boats anchored on the west side of the island. There are A LOT of boats anchored on either side of the channel in the area between Key West proper and the channel on the west side. There are a great many people who find it cheaper to buy a boat and live at anchor than to rent an apartment or commute from the upper keys when working in Key West.

This was the first time we tried our tactic of picking up a mooring ball from the stern swim platform (Kim’s idea). I have to say, it worked really well and avoided all the extra stress and strain of leaning over the bow to snag the pennant. The bow of Kitty Hawk is about 5′ above the water line. Our initial concern was that the weight of the boat would make getting the pennant from the stern to the bow impractical. We used our “Grab-n-Go” (a special spring loaded, gated, stainless steel hook that attaches to an extendable boat hook) to grab the pennant and lead it forward to our lines. Here’s a diagram for anyone unfamiliar with a mooring ball….

The 2′ to 3′ white, floating ball, usually has a blue line running horizontally around it, is attached to the bottom by a piece of heavy chain. A steel rod or chain runs through the ball to the chain that leads to the bottom. At the top, is a steel loop or large eyebolt that attaches to the pennant. On the bottom of the body of water there might be a large concrete anchor or really anything heavy, sometimes there is a helix style pin screwed directly into the sea or lake bottom. The pennant is the (normally) yellow tether, usually a heavy nylon rope with a loop covered by chafe guard on the free end.

The mooring ball was about $300 for a month, as opposed to $1700 a month for a dock in Key West. If you plan to stay on a ball more than 17 days it is actually more affordable to just pay for a month on the ball. The downside is that the mooring field is a 15-20 minute (sometimes pretty wet) dinghy ride in to the city dock and about a mile walk to downtown. We didn’t find that too bad most days since we counted the walking as our exercise for the day.

We spent just over three weeks in Key West not counting our small break for our trip to Dry Tortugas.

Here’s some shots from Key West…..I took these with my iPhone 4S….I either need a new phone or a dedicated camera…..

Kim in front of the Kapok tree aka Ceiba Tree considered sacred by the Mayans

I would have liked to enlarge these remaining photos but the software for the blog seems to be wiping out the rest of the post every time I try to do so. Sorry…I’m afraid you’ll have to click on them to see greater detail…..

While we were in Key West the “America 2.0” was in port making daily sunset cruises and short local charters. She’s a model of the original Schooner America that won the first America’s Cup in 1851. She’s 105′ overall with 3600’sq of sail. She also has freestanding carbon fiber masts.

Kim with “shot cannon” at the entrance to Fort Zachary Taylor.

A cannon restored and mounted inside the fort.

There’s a pretty cool story about the restoration of the fort in Key West. Construction for the fort was begun in 1845. It was originally constructed by the army and used heavily in 1898 in the Spanish American War. In 1947 the fort was turned over to the U.S. Navy and was used for storage. It was basically a dumping ground and most of the historical parts of the fort were buried. In 1968 a local named Howard England recruited volunteers to excavate the fort walls and restore the cannons. It was discovered that the fort contained the largest number of Civil War Cannons anywhere. England invested ten years restoring the fort. Thanks to his efforts and his volunteers nicknamed “sandhogs” the fort went from abandoned dumping ground to tourist attraction with a beach covering 87 acres.

Some photos from around the fort ……

Next time ….Key West Part Deux…..or part drunk?

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So,….How much does it cost to live and travel on a Sailboat ????

Aspiring cruisers frequently ask the question “What does it cost to do this?” …..that’s tough to answer unless you keep records for a few months, at least. Plus it can be difficult since boats and their systems come in various sizes and levels of complexity. The larger the boat and the more systems you have on board the greater the associated costs. We feel like we live pretty well on Kitty Hawk. She has a nice balance of systems and amenities without feeling like you are camping on the water.

For us, generally speaking, we run between $3,000 and $4,000 per month. Some months if we don’t have an upgrade or repair and we anchor out more, we are closer to that $3k number. Some of our friends who cruised in the 1980’s have told us they could get by on as little as $300 per month !!! Looking back, my first car in 1982 cost me $400 !!!

Kim, fortunately, is becoming meticulous when it comes to documenting our expenses on a daily basis. Now that we have a full year under our belts, I thought it was time to put all of her hard work together into a post. Since the process of categorizing expenses has taken some time to refine, I decided to limit this first accounting to the last six months. That should help to make this more understandable.

Unfortunately, the app we use to track these expenses can’t export the information. We have to use screen shots of the reports, so the resolution isn’t the best but you’ll be able to see how things break down percentage wise.

It seems like the first half of the year is always the most expensive. Since hurricane season starts on June 1, that tends to be the time when we get any professional assistance with any needed repairs started. We also pay for our annual hurricane haulout reservation in May, which adds between $250 and $500 to the budget. There was also about $2,000 of extra expenses, due to some poor work we had done in North Carolina in 2015, that not only required corrective repairs but caused some damages that needed repair also. There are some front loaded services for the year that come up and we are in the process of dividing these up over the whole year. The average for this last six month period was about $4,480.00 per month. Adjusting for the extra repairs this number should be more like $4,100.00. I feel safe in saying that this number will continue to go down as we move forward. Our rough numbers for the twelve month period was closer to $3,000 per month. I hope our upcoming years will be closer to that $3,000 mark, or less !!

Our largest category, Entertainment, covers anytime we eat out, away from the boat, or any other land based excursions (Parks, tours or the like).

The second largest, Monthly expenses, includes set, recurring expenses. Things like XM Radio subscriptions, cell phones, our MiFi hot spot, DAN insurance, Boat/car/life insurance, personal property taxes and membership fees fall into this category (our old sailing club dues, our current marina association, Elks club, etc).

In third place we have Miscellaneous, that includes things like income taxes, laundry, health/vision, other supplies, fishing gear, scuba gear, and hotels.

Transportation includes, taxis, buses and rental cars.

Fuel includes both the diesel for the boat and gasoline for any vehicles we use along the way, plus the gas for the dinghy and dive compressor.

“Lowes” is our catch all category for any hardware store expense.

The Marina category covers any docking expenses or other fees incurred while at a Marina or private dock (Wifi, water, electricity etc).

The Alcohol category covers wine, beer or liquor that we buy to keep on the boat. (That 2% is much lower than anyone anticipated, I bet !!)

We will compile another report like this in another six months and include both periods to see how the expenses shape up once we have all the categories locked in.

Never fear….the Key West Post is still coming…..it’s still in the draft phase….

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Upgrades…..then…..Southbound and Down…..

Well, it’s been a pretty eventful month, or so. We took advantage of our time in Oriental to upgrade our battery banks wiring and a few other things. Some of our battery bank cables were undersized, not properly crimped, our banks lacked a main fuse and our smaller bank had been wired in a slightly less than a fully efficient manner. We also installed two Bogart/Trimetric (Model TM-2030-RV) battery bank monitors which have made keeping tabs on our charging and battery bank status much, much easier. That’s one of the things about buying an older boat, she’s been through a few owners and while some were meticulous, some weren’t, and if a system is working one owner may never have had the need to address or investigate the status of the individual components that may not have been exactly “up to snuff” when installed by the prior owner, owners or contractors or the standards have changed over time in favor of better, safer or more efficient methods..

Now that’s a pretty bad crimping job…it was covered by electrical tape……

We also added a Blue Seas electrical master panel to our AC shore power system that has a 30 amp, dual pole, ELCI (Electrical Leak Circuit Interrupter, if your boat happens to develop a leak of AC current into the water while plugged into shore power, which is extraordinarily dangerous, it shuts off the AC power). The breaker itself has a sensor in it that measures the amount of electricity flowing out and compares it to what returns and if there is a slight difference it trips the breaker. We discovered once we powered up this new panel that our water heater was wired incorrectly since the new breaker tripped as soon as we energized the circuit. As it turns out, the wiring for the water heater was a commercial type of wiring (IEEE marine cable, intended for use on Navy and commercial vessels….with this type of wire red is ground, black is hot and white is neutral, so our water heater was basically wired backwards, which still allowed current to flow through the element but the new more sensitive breakers caught the difference in the polarity/voltage returning and shut it down) since the color coding was different it must have confused whoever originally wired it. It took an extra fifteen minutes to correct this and then things operated perfectly. We also added a safety cover to the interior of our shore power plug connection which was missing.

I’d like to extend our gratitude to Jim Bonnett, the owner of Wavetop Technologies in New Bern, NC, for his assistance with the battery and AC upgrades. He’s been having some website issues but if you need any work he’s an ABYC Master Technician in a lot of fields (maybe all of them, I haven’t counted yet) . His current website is www.wavetop.com but he may migrate to a new one if his current issues prove to be linked to that web address. Jim is so educated about AC and DC systems and wiring it can make you dizzy just listening to him talk….he’s a very smart guy. You can also reach him at Jim@wavetop.com

We also painted our newly re-plumbed and re-opened forward shower stall…..

I also painted new length markers on our anchor chain and replaced the shackles…..

I decided to go with Red at 50′, white at 100′, Blue at 150′ Black at 200′ and Orange at 250 just before the chain runs out and the rope rode begins.

We’d also like to give some well deserved praise to Pete Waterson of Seacoast Marine Electronics (http://seacoastmarineelectronics.com/) in Oriental, NC. Pete is the owner and installed our new NMEA 2000 backbone wiring, AIS transceiver, a new Raymarine I70 display, a masthead anemometer and wind direction sensor which is now all tied into our Garmin 741XS chartplotter at the helm. Pete also installed a new VHF antenna and Windex while he was at the masthead. Pete also helped me (or maybe I helped him) rewire our binnacle wiring and add a power/ground bus to clean up the connections there and eliminate some voltage loss and an issue with a weak ground. If you find yourself in Oriental or nearby and need any electronics or assistance be sure to look Pete up. He’s a great guy and his office staff (Jill, his wife and Betsy) are super friendly and helpful.

We were later joined by our good friend, Mike, in Oriental, just in time for the Ol’ Front Porch Music Festival on October 17. It was a great day, beautiful weather and lots of good music and food. Apparently, this was a tradition among the old time farmers in the area and on Saturday nights they would come into town and play music on a variety of front porches around town. Time and progress being what they are, this tradition was slowly lost and has been revived during this once a year festival. The Carmona Brothers and Laurelyn Dossett were the final performers of the day and if you’ve never heard either of these, I recommend looking them up online.

Aaron Carmona and his traveling pooch (photo credit to Towne Dock)

We waited for some weather to pass and departed Oriental on October 20th around 8:00am. It was a nice trip. We arrived around 11:45am in Morehead City, NC since we wanted to make the first day short and non stressful…then Murphy reared his ugly head. As we approached Portside Marina in Morehead City a large tugboat that was bow in at the state port abruptly moved astern into our path. I was forced to throw Kitty Hawk into full reverse to avoid colliding with the tug. As the dust settled from that encounter we again proceeded toward the Portside Marina face dock. There was suddenly something very wrong. It took about five seconds for me to realize that for some reason we were no longer getting any forward propulsion. I immediately shifted to neutral, then tried reverse and got the same result….no response …I could hear the transmission shifting and assumed we had lost our throttle cable. After advising Mike and Kim that we were going to be coming into the dock at about 3 knots SOG (speed over ground) I called the marina hands on the dock on our VHF radio to let them know. We managed to dock pretty easily, all things considered, despite coming in at what felt like warp speed. Once we got settled, we diagnosed the problem and it was, in fact, the throttle cable that had broken just below the shift lever. I spoke to the owner of Portside Marina, Denard, who is a super nice gentleman. He not only found the part for us, but let his brother in law, who works at the Marina, drive me over to get it. The cable was replaced two hours and $27 later…..Portside Marina is the only place I’ve ever walked into and been immediately invited to partake in the employee lunch. They were having fish one of the guys had caught and a local restaurant fried them up for them….talk about hospitality !!!

Our trip South was Kim’s first long distance trip on Kitty Hawk….she got her first experiences in the ICW (and her first grounding, so that’s over and done with), navigated out of the Cape Fear Inlet and made two overnight offshore trips. One was between Cape Fear, NC and Charleston (a rough one) and the second was between Port Royal, SC and Jacksonville, FL. During the first hop we even got the wind to cooperate and we sailed for 6 hours.

The Admiral at the helm…..

Next time I’ll detail our stops at Beaufort, SC and St.Augustine, FL and share our ghost video from Facebook if you haven’t seen it yet…..

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An important note about Pre-purchase Surveys of Boats

Since the purchase of our boat we have upgraded, replaced, rebuilt or refurbished most of the onboard systems in one way or another. During these upgrades we have noticed a few things that our marine survey did not uncover. As a result of this, I’d like to take the time to recommend that any potential Liveaboard boat buyer bite the bullet and have some separate inspections performed by a qualified expert in the individual field to save you a lot of headaches down the road.

Now, I realize that there are a great many highly qualified marine surveyors out there and that all of them intend to be the best at what they do. The cold truth is very few of them can be experts in every single aspect of every system that make up a cruising, Liveaboard sailboat, unless they are Master Certified Tech’s in each field. Even then, you might find that they are more versed in some than others. If you are going to spend what might be the bulk, or a very large portion of your life savings on your dream boat, it pays in the long run to find every bruise, wart or under rated system that lurks on board, especially when you are negotiating the final purchase price. It can also save you a lot of hassle when you insure your boat.

Our surveyor, for instance, missed a localized termite infestation, some very bad DC wiring in the binnacle, missed a couple overburdened DC grounding system points, severely underestimated the age of our rigging Sta-Loks and missed some very under rated AC four position switches (one of which later partially melted and could have caused a fire). The resistance in that circuit, which is the primary source for our battery charging, may have lead to the premature demise of our last set of ten Trojan T-105 house batteries….about $1500 to replace…..ouch….since it took some time and looking to find that switch it may have had some negative impact on our new batteries but only time will tell. It also caused issues with our refrigeration and freezer compressors. Those units don’t like low or unsteady voltage and ours are equipped with diagnostic LED lights that flash a code every four seconds when there is an issue detected by the control module. Low voltage can display as the same code for a locked up compressor rotor (which is about a $1000 just for parts) so beware when someone tells you your compressor is shot….it probably isn’t. There is a simple test for the compressor, cut the power and by placing an Ohm meter on the three connections for the control module (which must be removed first to access these but it’s only one screw) if you don’t get an “infinity” reading between any two of the three pin connections, meaning the coils are intact, your compressor is fine. The readings should all be between 1.5 and 3.0….. (Thank you John Nihiser for the tutorial on compressor coils !!!!)

Here are a few shots of that melted switch……

Note the exposed wire at the terminal connection….also bad

This same switch was partially melted from the heat build up….

My recommendation is this….once you have a general survey (about $400) of the boat you are interested in, which will hopefully point you in the direction of the most serious issues, find some experts in these specific fields, preferably ABYC Master Certified Technicians.

Electrical Inspection….(AC and DC)….this can take as long as two hours and will run about $160

Rigging Inspection…..this will take about an hour or an hour and a half and cost about $100-$150while I’ve never seen an ABYC certification for this listed on their website….a few inquiries will find a locally recognized quality rigger.

Engine Inspection……you can find a manufacturer certified technician for almost every brand of diesel in most regions… Most charge travel time unless you are close to their offices so this will run about $400-$500

Heat/AC/Refrigeration……If you have one or all of these systems it would pay to have these inspected separately as they can run into the thousands to replace…..an inspection will run about $300 for all three….

At every stage of these inspections you will obviously have the opportunity to walk away from the purchase negotiations or negotiate further based on what is found. You might save yourself a ton of headaches and expense in the long run or get a better deal on your boat and free up the money for the upgrades or repairs.

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Always Learning….But don’t let that stop you

I often think we should have named this blog “Learning to Liveaboard”. After all, despite our lengthy research process, extensive reading, our numerous inspections of sailboats and our experiences on sailboats there is always something more to learn.

On top of that, conditions are almost never as calm and easy as you would like them to be. Swirling currents, wind, vessel traffic, equipment failures, weather and tides contribute to the challenges we have and will experience on a daily basis.

I recently read a quote that said something like “if you aren’t nervous about going out there, then you haven’t done enough research”. I don’t think that means that you have to be petrified of taking a vessel out to sea, it just means that you should be aware and concerned about your boat, gear, the constantly changing conditions, how to react to them and developing the skills to do so. I once met a fellow in Florida who had bought a Hunter Cherubini 27. Shortly after we met, he was recounting the details of his first offshore trip….that occurred three days prior and two weeks after he had bought the boat in North Carolina !!! His engine had failed about 20 miles offshore between Georgia and Florida and he didn’t have the ability or parts to fix it…..while recounting this story he basically shrugged his shoulders and said …”we just put up the sails and got as close to shore as we could until we could get someone to tow us in”….I was floored by his nonchalant attitude about the failure of his engine and his lack of preparedness, yet he and his boat survived, unscathed. At least a thru hull didn’t fail……that might have been a different result.

I suppose the the moral to this entry is….learn as much as you can, don’t stop learning or think you’ve learned it all. Most of all, don’t let it stop you from doing what you love and enjoying the process……

Kitty Hawk on the hard….getting some much needed upgrades…..and TLC ….isn’t she shiny now ?

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Common questions we get while at a marina…..

Recently, while staying at a marina that allowed the general public to roam the transient docks…….we had quite a stream of people who were interested in Kitty Hawk and what type of vessel she is. There were several small children who I overheard asking their parents if she was a “pirate ship”. A few groups even stopped to take photos in front of her bow. That’s one of the things I like about the CSY design. The hull shape, raised aft deck and the unique scrolled “mustache” make them memorable boats. A lot of the passersby stopped and talked to us. Several of these short conversations ended with the “How did you afford to do this?” question. Over the years of being the person asking this question, to now being the person of whom the question is being asked and seeing the number of posts in the forums and other online venues, I thought a post about this topic was in order.

Most people are obviously uncomfortable asking this question of someone they have met just thirty seconds prior. You can almost see it in their face right before the words come out of their mouths. It is generally considered rude or invasive to ask such things, but their desire to form a knowledge base and evaluate their own planning in a short conversation overrides their basic inhibitions about asking. I don’t mind necessarily, it seems logical enough and I like helping people anyway so, I answer as honestly as I can. I didn’t fully realize it until the first time I was asked this question face to face and I thought “How did we pull this off?”…..I know we had a plan and a goal but after a couple of decades, the logistics of how it happened get fuzzy…..

I have now worked out an answer that seems to satisfy most people who ask and give them a little hope for their own goal…..

We’re not rich….I’m not rich…my wife isn’t rich and we didn’t come from any family money or have any other rich relatives. There won’t be anyone there to financially “pick up the pieces” should we have a failure that destroys the boat or seriously injures one of us. We are our own safety net and that idea takes some getting accustomed to. We didn’t “strike it rich” in the stock, commodities or real estate markets. We had jobs, worked hard and saved. We made career and life choices that were, at times, risky and might have ended the dream before it began but we had a plan, evaluated the risks and benefits then acted accordingly. Neither of us ever made more than $100,000 a year. What we did do was form a habit of always “paying ourselves first” by contributing to our boat fund and retirement accounts as much as we could and doing so regularly for over 20+ years. We also limited our expenses and avoided buying new cars, new houses or other things we didn’t absolutely have to buy. We didn’t always take a vacation. We always bought used cars, bought the cheapest houses in the best neighborhoods we could afford and after two decades of sweat equity improvements we sold the house, paid cash for the boat, slip and invested the rest to fund our cruise kitty and retirement accounts. We also didn’t buy a new boat. We bought, what we believe, is the most solid and capable boat with the best modern amenities and upgrades that we could afford. There are a vast number of solid, suitable cruising boats out there that have been refitted with modern gear and are available for one third or even one fourth of the price of a new boat with no cruising gear. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with a new boat…if you can afford it……but I don’t like to buy new cars either.

There are also different ways to succeed at this dream. Not everyone needs, or wants, to live on their boat full time. Not everyone wants or needs to go offshore to feel like, or be, a sailor. We spent weekends living on our Hunter 23 on a lake for several years and that was a great way to live the dream very, very affordably, while still having a land based life. Don’t get caught up in the idea that you have to do exactly what we are doing to enjoy the sailing life.

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Pre-trip maintenance….

Prior to any departure, we have an informal checklist, (that I would like to convert into an official checklist) of systems that we inspect before departing the dock. We check the bilge pumps, batteries, engine room, shower sump box, refrigeration/compressors, the dinghy, the outboard, the oil and T-fluid levels, engine belts, the air filter, the raw water intake, all the seacocks, the prop shaft, bearing and the prop among other things.

When we left North Carolina in December of 2014, I dove our prop and hull to clean and inspect everything. Aside from a minor wipe down and some minor cleaning of the intakes, everything looked great, the zinc, bottom and prop were clean and ready to go. I have become a big fan of the Petit Ultimate SR-60 bottom paint I applied in December of 2013.

After spending six months in the Indian and Banana Rivers in Florida we were preparing to depart Florida when I began our pre-departure checklist of items. Our hull and bottom paint still looked good. Our prop, however, looked like a marine archaeological artifact. I had planned to “bag” the prop with a heavy duty plastic lawn bag but life got in the way and I forgot to do it before we left to return home to help with our ill relative. This was not a condition that we could travel under. We don’t currently own a prop puller (high on the list of items to acquire) but I was fortunate enough to get a referral to Randall, the owner of Bottoms Up Hull Cleaning in Cocoa Beach (321-458-7323). Randall is a great guy and showed up the next day to pull the prop. I spent that evening cleaning, sanding and painting the prop. Randall reinstalled the prop, a new cotter pin and a new zinc the following day. He also wiped down the hull and cleaned all the intakes.

We had a trouble free passage north and it seemed like our fuel consumption was even lower than normal…..although I haven’t had time to do an official calculation of that yet…..

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What we were looking for in a liveaboard sailboat

During our fifteen plus years of touring, inspecting, researching and eventually selecting our boat we cherry picked a list of design characteristics and features from various boats that we liked. Once we had our list of preferred details, we were always concerned we might not find a boat with even half of our desired attributes and would have to settle for a boat with the essential basics and then upgrade the rest of the features ourselves, increasing our cost and extending our timeline. We looked at a LOT of boats. We seriously considered a couple of very very nice, upgraded, older sailboats. One (A Gulfstar 50′) had about 75% of what we were looking for but we felt that the overly open design of the interior made it unsuitable for any rough weather crossings and therefore didn’t make the cut.

Here’s the final list that we used to evaluate the boats we looked at…..

40′ to 47′ LOA
6′ or less of draft due to slip depth
ICW suitable mast height
Solid glass hull w full filleted, bulkhead and hull tabbing
Skeg hung rudder
Keel stepped mast
wide side decks uncluttered no lines or tracks in way
Generous engine and/or genset access
Limited, Accessible, all bronze hull bolted through hulls
Center cockpit preferred but not mandatory
Sloop or cutter rigged w furling
Encapsulated lead cutaway keel
Sta-Lok rigging…no rod rigging
Baffled* Plastic/Poly/ Monel water tanks in bilge
Aluminum fuel tank(s) in bilge
Two cabins w convertible settee
Two heads maximum w fresh water flush* and overboard discharge option (Lectrasan or composting heads a plus, We added a Lectrasan)
Separate shower stall in at least one head
Encloseable cockpit and dodger
Large cockpit drains
Anchor windlass
Genset w suitable sound insulation*
Swim platform or transom steps
Transom Deck shower and anchor wash down
Watermaker
Aft arch w solar panels / antenna / radar
Wind generator(s)
S/S framed / Lexan opening ports
Some solar powered vent hatches
Reverse cycle AC/heat*
Solid lifeline rails*
Bow thruster?? Prob only for >45’*
2 or more HP per 1,000lbs of displacement
500 mile cruising range under power alone
NO teak decks

We ended up with all but five of our listed features in Kitty Hawk….the five she didn’t have weren’t crucial items….

*indicates a feature that our boat did not have when we purchased her.

Don’t forget to check out our front page for a list of items with which we can assist you during your search for your new floating home……

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Our First Boat and Our Current Boat….

Our first sailboat....a Hunter 23...I'm not sure why I look so angry in this picture...maybe it was my "pirate face" — Our first sailboat….a Hunter 23…I’m not sure why I look so angry in this picture…maybe it was my “pirate face”

Our current “new to us” boat is a 1979 Caribbean Sailing Yacht…more commonly known as a CSY. Our particular boat is a “walkover” or mid-cockpit design. This means that the aft cabin is completely separate from the forward area and you walk up and through the cockpit to access the opposite area. We like it because it makes the cockpit more like the “living room area” although it does necessitate a willingness to travel seasonally to maintain the optimal usefulness of the cockpit area. Here’s a few images….and a few specs….

CSY 44 Mid-Cockpit drawing on sailboatdata.com

She’s 44′ LOA weighs in at a total of 44,000 pounds, is 36.33′ at the water line, drafts 4.8′, has a 13.33′ beam, is a cutter rig, has a fully encapsulated 14,000 pound lead ballast, has been re-powered with a 65hp Cummins 4B 3.3 Diesel, She has 100 gallons of fuel tankage, 400 gallons for water and has just over 900’sq of sail area.There have been a lot of modifications and improvements to Kitty Hawk since she was first launched in February of 1979.

Notice the hard Bimini top, solar panels, wind generator, radar, the full enclosure and the arch at the stern…This was just after a fresh coat of bottom paint that I applied and was thrilled to save $1500 by doing it myself….

This is us, on the day we made our offer to purchase Kitty Hawk,…a very exciting day

I was pleased to discover that the 44′ CSY was chosen as the #11 design in Cruising World Magazine’s reader selected 40 Best Sailboats …….the photo is from the original CSY brochure…text courtesy of CW