Pete (a friend of Alex, who I met through other Pete) told me last Thursday that a friend of his was giving away a boat. My response was that there was no way I could own a boat right now, let alone deal with importing it from several states away... Hmmm... What kind of boat?
By the end of the day, I had e-mailed four friends, all of who expressed some interest.
By Friday, Lukas had contacted Keith (the friend of Pete's), booked a berth at Mosquito Creek Marina in North Van, and started looking into options.
On Saturday, we bought some books on how to sail and chatted up the folks working in yacht sales on Granville Island. They suggested looking into shipping companies. By Monday, Lukas had contacted some, decided against that, and found a trailer on Craigslist. Tuesday, he bought the trailer, pending getting all the ownership paperwork sorted out so he could register it.
Wednesday night, Lukas and Megan drove to Oregon, picked the boat up, and drove it back to Vancouver on Thursday.
Friday morning, Lukas made an appointment with the crane at Mosquito Creek to launch it Friday evening.
Wey, Hey, and up she rises!
She floats!
Stepping the mast.
Motoring across to our berth.
Sunset over Vancouver.
We haven't met our neighbours yet, but I like them already. Their boat is called ``Privateer'', and that's a treasure chest lashed just before the mast. Awesome.
Captain Chrostowski.
The plan now is to invite a few other friends to split all of Lukas' out-of-pocket expenses for the transportation and importation, as well as the ongoing marina fees, and both cash and elbowgrease of maintaining and sprucing her up a bit. We'll have to see just how this co-operative boat ownership thing works out.
Lieutenant Thrift.
Lukas sitting in the stern locker playing with electricity.
So by Monday, we had done a bit of cleaning and fixing and poking around and replacing the odd pin or shackle that got misplaced on in transit, and it was time for a sail. Lukas motored us out of the harbour.
Mainsail hauled.
Megan at the tiller
Light airs, but enough to get 4-5 knots of speed and ten degrees of heel.
Me at the tiller checking the draw of the sails. Or maybe there was an interesting bird up there.
Lukas really wanted to hoist the spinnaker. Spinnakers are pretty. Though I'm pretty sure the topping lift should attach to the wire bridle and the sheet to the end of the boom, rather than the opposite as pictured here. Unfortunately, when figuring out how to rig a spinnaker and admiring its prettiness, it was a rather bad idea on our parts to assure Megan that the beeping of the depth sounder was nothing to worry too much about. Turns out, well, it was...
Sails doused, Lukas fired up the outboard, cranked it into reverse, and got us back to deeper water. I don't think we grounded hard enough to do any particular damage. Still, not the *best* approach to things...
Sailing back to the marina under main and genoa.