The pleasures (and perils) of prairie trailer sailing
Issue 30 : May/Jun 2003
We happened to see her parked at the Glenmore Reservoir. A “For Sale” sign hung on her trailer, and the price was right. We wanted her from the moment we saw her — a 1987 Catalina 22. My husband, Ron, and I did not have much sailing experience, but we knew this was the boat for us. Our sailing dream was to cruise leisurely around our local reservoir and take overnight trips to out-of-the-way places.
Time Off (at $13,045 Canadian) fit our requirements. We needed a boat less than 26 feet because of a length restriction at Glenmore Reservoir; our van couldn’t tow anything more than 3,500 pounds; and the boat had to be priced below $15,000. People thought we were crazy to be considering such a purchase. A boat is a luxury item; we had two children under the age of four, and there are many expenses involved in raising our young family. But owning a sailboat had been our dream since we settled in Calgary, Alberta, 12 years earlier. Despite the lack of lakes and a six-month winter, we were not deterred from buying Time Off in May 2000.
Ron and I rented a mooring site on the reservoir for convenience. We live five minutes from the reservoir and wanted to avoid the headache of launching the boat every time we sailed. We love mooring; it takes 10 minutes to get ready to sail, and there is no waiting at the launching ramp. Glenmore has a “no anchoring” policy, so if we want to sit around on the boat on a calm day or eat a meal, the mooring site provides privacy. We love sailing at our local reservoir. The mountain backdrop provides beautiful scenery.
Family outings
Of course, there have been a few perils too. One of our main reasons for getting the boat was to use it for family outings. Our children have autism. One of the characteristics of autism is the need for routine and familiar surroundings. We thought Time Off would provide that for the children. The reality was much different. At two and four, both children were too young to deal with all the changes and challenges. Wearing life jackets, an unstable boat, and unpredictable movements are challenges we will have to overcome with time. After several attempts at making them into sailors, we gave up temporarily. Both children loved being near the water so we decided that in time they would love sailing too. In the meantime, Time Off became just that: time off for Ron and me.
Our most challenging times have been in trailering her to Ghost Lake, 37 miles from Calgary. This glacier-fed lake is close to Banff in the Canadian Rockies and offers breathtaking scenery, protected inlets, abundant wildlife, and solitude. However, this can be accompanied by unpredictable high winds. One summer day there, the winds reached 64 miles an hour and destroyed several boats.
One trip out there was riddled with mishaps: Ron fell from a ladder, we lost our Sun Shower bag in the lake, there was a bad electrical storm, and our outboard motor refused to start. This cut our trip short by a day and required a magnificent docking job under sail in very high winds with many spectators. Then, while we were driving back to Calgary, one of the wheel bearings lost grease. By the time we reached Calgary, the wheel was radiating heat and emitting a strong burning smell. Ron was so frustrated after that trip that he wanted to sell the boat. In times like this you need a short memory. These events tell you which skills you need to acquire to prevent similar mishaps from occurring next time.
Want to sell?
Not too long after that we received a call from someone in Vancouver who saw our boat moored at the Glenmore. He left a message asking if we wanted to sell Time Off. We considered it seriously. The kids weren’t sailing yet; we didn’t sail as much as we had hoped to; and we still had payments to make. Maybe we weren’t in the right place at the right time to be sailboat owners. Even though our pleasurable times outweighed the frustrating ones, it was time to re-examine why we had this boat.
With selling in mind, we took our last sail of the season with a friend of ours in mid-October. It was windy, but sunny. The mountains were clear in the background, and the trees were the most beautiful golden color. We had a wonderful sail, lots of laughs, and spent some time at the end just relaxing and conversing on the mooring. Ron and I looked at each other and said, “No way are we selling this boat. We’d be miserable without her.” No sooner had we said that, gotten into the dinghy, and begun rowing to shore, than Ron spotted a muskrat sitting on the stern-mounted transducer for our depth sounder, gnawing away at the wire. All we could do was laugh and say, “I wonder where we can find replacement wire?”
There have been highs and lows to owning Time Off, but I can honestly say the lows have been few. Maintaining the boat has been a pleasure for Ron. We’ve even begun to time ourselves to see how much more efficient we’re becoming in getting the boat off the water and unstepping the mast. We are constantly reading to improve our knowledge of sailing, maintenance, and safety.
We’re entering our fourth sailing season this May and have plans to get the kids on board again now that they are older. Marc is 6 and Julia is 4. Marc has started to handle some short, gentle sailing around the Glenmore Reservoir and enjoyed it last season. We took his therapist with us to help with the land-to-water transition. We plan on taking Julia out this year but know she’ll be a bit more difficult, as she is our daredevil. Safe boating will not be a top priority on her list.
Ron and I are planning at least two out-of-town boating trips on our own this summer to restore our sanity in our challenging parenting situation. The children continue to struggle with language, communication, and behavior. We hope sailing will become an enjoyable activity for them as they continue to develop.
Of course we’ll renew our mooring site at the Glenmore Reservoir and be ready to sail at a moment’s notice. Was the dream of owning Time Off all that we thought it would be? Yes — and more.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
