This enthusiastic couple cruises the greatest Great Lake
Issue 34: Jan/Feb 2004
ALL HUSBANDS QUAKE WHEN GREETED by their wives with the words, “Sit down. We need to talk.” Six years ago, those dreaded words led to good news for Dale Longtin, however. His wife, Cori Breidenbach, had received the call from a friend of theirs telling them he was selling his 1976 Ericson 29, Carina. Cori began thinking that perhaps it was time to sell their Chrysler 22 and revise their sailing activities. Dale and Cori called in an accountant to determine whether they had what it takes to make a purchase of this nature. They did — and they soon became Carina’s third owners.
Now that they have a liveaboard lifestyle in mind, Dale and Cori have begun looking for Carina’s fourth owners. The next family or couple to have wonderful sailing adventures on Carina won’t be hard to find.
Carina is a much-modified, well-maintained cruiser. Her second owner, Tom Embertson, was primarily the handyman who gave her her present name, modified her for cruising, and passed along the results of his accomplishments when he bought an Islander 36. Dale and Cori have been the happy custodians for 5 years, maintaining her while enjoying Lake Superior aboard.
Dale discovered sailing while spending summers at a family cabin in another beautiful cruising area: Lake of the Woods at the border of Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. His family owned powerboats, but another enterprising fellow brought a sailboat to the area and offered sailboat rides to paying customers. As a teenager, Dale’s appreciation of sailboats changed the day the boat rounded up while he was at the helm. “I didn’t know what was happening,” he remembers, “but I was impressed by all that power.”
Summer sailing
After that he spent summers aboard a Sunfish knockoff by Arctic Cat, Inc. (of snowmobile fame). Somewhat later came a Force Five, an AMF design similar to a Laser. More than the Arctic Cat, this boat turned Dale into a sailor. “A Force Five teaches you to sail, because if you do anything wrong, you’re in the water,” he says. He swam frequently in the beginning and turned righting the boat into an art form. “I could capsize the boat and get it back up without getting wet above the knees,” he says. As it capsized, he simply climbed over the side to the centerboard, tipped it upright, and stepped back in.
About the time he’d worked it all out, Cori came into Dale’s life. “He courted me aboard that Force Five,” she says. “We even sailed it on our honeymoon.” Cori has a twinkle in her eye and an indomitable spirit. After having her hand on the tiller a time or two, she decided she could sail the boat solo. Dale wasn’t sure she was ready, but she wouldn’t be discouraged. Sure enough, the Force Five had a sailing lesson in store for Cori, too, and she soon learned that she didn’t have the upper-body strength to right the boat by herself. That might have been the end of sailing for lesser women. Not for courageous Cori. This first solo was merely the beginning.
Eventually the two were sailing a Chrysler 22 on Lake Pepin, a wide spot in the Mississippi River not too far from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, where they were living. They enjoyed frequent trips to the boat, and Dale took it to the Apostle Islands, where he soon decided that a larger boat would be better for this more extensive cruising ground. The couple wound up chartering boats, including Carina, in the Apostles.
Longer cruises
Once they’d purchased the larger Ericson and began cruising on a corner of Lake Superior, there was no looking back. Each year they made longer and more ambitious cruises on the big lake, one of which included a 44-hour passage to a distant point in Ontario and working their way back via the scenic and protected anchorages along the way. Most summers between launch in mid-May and layup in mid-October, Dale and Cori rarely missed a weekend at the boat. “The best 3 weeks of my life were 2 years ago when we spent 3 weeks cruising in Canada (on Lake Superior’s north shore),” Cori says.
During the time they spent sailing on Carina, Cori discovered an untapped facet of her psyche. She wanted to singlehand this boat so she could sail on weekends when Dale’s work took him away from home. With the encouragement of Dale and three others, she became an accomplished sailor in her own right and was soon entering a low-key, but long and physically challenging race for singlehanders in the Apostles, a 27-mile solo circumnavigation of Madeline Island. She has competed in this fun contest twice. So far, Cori is the only woman ever to enter this race.
“I never understood what motivated women like Ellen MacArthur to enter a singlehanded long-distance race,” Cori says, beaming. “But by the time I finished my first race, I understood. I didn’t want to get off the boat. Carina and I had bonded. It was very empowering.” Dale, who is not driven to race but who also singlehands the boat when Cori is unavailable for a weekend, encourages his wife.
“This boat has two captains,” he says with pride. “One day I realized that when I was captain, everything was done beautifully by the ‘crew.’ But when Cori was captain, I wasn’t following through. I wasn’t used to doing all those things (like getting out docklines and fenders). When I was captain, they just happened magically. I decided that when Cori was captain she had ‘sh*# for crew,’ so I had a hat embroidered with those words and wore it the next time I messed up. Now we both wear it at times.”
Wonderful shape
Since Dale and Cori would rather spend time sailing than doing projects on their boat, they’re lucky that Carina was in wonderful shape when they bought her. They have recovered the cushions and increased the insulation in the icebox. They bought a new mainsail and had the furling jib redone by North to add a couple of ropes in the luff. These ropes take up the slack better than foam, they point out, since foam is eventually crushed by spending most of its time in the furled position. Dale also enlarged the battery storage space in order to accommodate two 27s where a pair of 24s had been.
But previous owner Tom Embertson deserves the praise for installing the removable inner forestay, which allows them to hank on a storm jib. This forestay runs through the anchor rope locker and is tied to the hull. He added controls so all lines lead to the cockpit, installed a deck washdown system, and moved the shorepower outlet. Belowdecks, he added a nifty folding door to expand the room in the head to accommodate the knees of a sitting sailor, added storage above the settees, mounted the radar screen so it could be seen from the cockpit, added extra seating for the fold-down dining table, and built in a clever screen and chart storage shelf above the V-berth, among other things. Tom also rewired and replumbed the boat and added alarms to indicate low oil pressure, high water, low gas, and low battery.
All of these modifications make a 29-footer more livable, of course. And Carina was more than adequate during the summer of the 3-week cruise with all provisions aboard. But now Dale and Cori are contemplating a liveaboard life on the East Coast. For this lifestyle, Carina has a few disadvantages. Primary among them is the lack of an oven and the need for a permanently mounted range. Dale and Cori cook on a Coleman camp stove, which is inconvenient on long crossings, since it’s not gimballed or fastened as securely as necessary on lumpy seas.
Looking to live aboard
So they’re looking for a 35- to 40-foot boat, believing that size to be as large as either one of them can singlehand. They may go offshore someday but are looking for a roomy coastal cruiser with storage capable of being a liveaboard. “I looked at boats in Annapolis,” Dale says. “That changed our outlook about what we needed. I began looking for something like a Tayana with a full keel. But now we’re looking for a boat capable of bluewater cruising but lighter than the Tayana-type boat. Something with a modified fin keel. We want to be able to go out in lighter wind.”
Sometimes cruising dreams are shifted from dream status to reality by a job change. Not long ago Dale lost his job as the lead of a team of field computer installation specialists. In the ultimate irony, they trained their replacements in the field and were then laid off. That led the couple to a crossroads. For the past five years they had been talking about living aboard and cruising. They were discussing how they’d sell the house, quit their jobs, and make the timing play out. They had a mindset of not accumulating more stuff and of divesting what was not needed. All they needed was the right timing.
The timing is now, since Dale is free to move. Cori has arranged for a job transfer from Minneapolis to Virginia Beach with her employer, Galyan’s, a respected outdoor outfitter, where she is office manager. All the dominoes are stacked on the table. This couple will soon learn the pleasures of saltwater cruising in a much warmer sailing climate. Carina will go on to show another family what can be achieved in a well-executed 29-foot design.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
