Two-boat-itis arouses ambivalence
Issue 107 : Mar/Apr 2016
It is possible to have too much of a good thing. We discovered this in the summer of 2015, the year we had two boats in the water. At once. In two different states. Talk about being conflicted! You might call it an embarrassment of riches, but we called it stress. Our fellow sailors, however, failed to show any sympathy when I complained.
We launched Sunflower, the C&C Mega 30 trailerable boat, in a city lake within 20 miles of home so we could sail her for another season before her first over-the-road excursion this spring. We wanted to adjust the rigging, tune the rig (so the main will come down reliably without sticking at the spreaders), learn the ropes (all led aft to a spaghetti bowl in the cockpit), and determine what we like and don’t like about the original jibs before having new ones made.
But we’d spent the previous summer so focused on Sunflower that we’d agreed not to launch Mystic, our beloved C&C 30. We weren’t going to let that happen two years in a row. In the spring of 2015, we launched her in the Twin Ports (Duluth/Superior) of Lake Superior and delivered her to her home slip in the Apostle Islands, about 75 miles to the northeast (see “There’s No Place Like Home,” September 2015).
How does one sail both? We kept two lists of projects to be done: which boat needs to have the deck washed (necessitating that we bring along the pressure washer on the next visit)? Which one is out of paper towels or sunscreen or WD-40? In one room, we had a season-long pile of supplies and equipment we had to remember to take along on our next trip to Mystic. A pile of similar size accumulated in another room for Sunflower.
Then there was the mental “reset button” problem. These are two entirely different sailboats. The only thing they have in common is the combination we selected for the locks on their companionway hatches. When transitioning from one to the other, we had to think carefully about the steps involved for raising each boat’s mainsail. Since their rigging could not be more different, stepping from one to the other required that we breathe deeply and empty our minds of all thoughts of the other boat. Time to reef? We had to first ask, “Which boat is this?” and then think through the steps involved. From one boat to the other we didn’t even reef the same sail first. To de-power Sunflower we first reef the main, but for the same result aboard Mystic, we start with the jib.
By far, the worst part of a two-boat lifestyle is the guilt. If we took a week to sail Mystic, we were neglecting Sunflower. Spiderwebs billowed accusingly from bow to stern as if demanding to know where we had been. Oh, right! This is the one in need of the deck wash. The next week belonged to Sunflower, but Mystic was neglected. Spiderwebs gathered about her lifelines and pulpit clearly indicating that no one had been aboard lately.
Somewhere between the boat jobs and sailing times there was also a house to maintain, a yard with needs of its own, and a magazine or two to put to bed. It was a busy summer. Still not feeling my pain? At the end of the season there were two boats to haul out and winterize.
Except for the year we lived aboard and cruised full-time for a summer, we’ve never sailed so much. If we were not sailing one boat, we were sailing the other. Perhaps that’s why no one was feeling sorry for us.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
