A Mid-May Day On The Water

Springtime Sailing

After our disappointing first attempts at sailing Tri-oomph we were hurting for some success.  Our first sail after replacing the rudder (the second time) gave us that.  It was sunny and there was a strong, steady wind.  Tri-oomph has a knotometer that sometimes works and it told us we hit 12 knots with the gusts, while we were averaging around 9.  I was standing on the upwind ama trying to keep the boat flat and it felt like flying.  We just cruised out for about an hour and then came back, because it was pretty cold, but damn.

Weeeeee!

We also went sailing with Cody's brother Ross and his kid, Wyatt, who was about 2 1/2 at the time.  I love Ross.  Seriously, he's great.  He's also super smart, and he definitely knows more about sailing than me.  But, when he said, "Can I try?" and took the rudder out of my hand 2 minutes after I'd taken the helm I almost pushed him off the boat (I may have a slight tendency to overreact.  Also, I don't share well with others - symptom of being an only child).  Then Cody gave Wyatt our safety whistle, and if you've ever been around a 2 year old with a noise maker you'll know how that ended.  It was a stressful day.  But still, we love taking people out on the boat.


One Saturday in May we decided to spend our first night aboard Tri-oomph.  We headed out when I got off of work and sailed over to Plum Island Sound, about an hour away, and dropped anchor.  It was pretty late and getting dark so we cooked some food and went to bed.

As it was our first time anchoring Tri-oomph for any length of time there were, of course, things we could have done better.  We anchored right in the middle of the channel so the current was really strong all night.  Trimarans like to do what we call the "Trimaran Dance" when anchored in a current.  They swing back and forth on the anchor line, and not just a little bit.  (We recently found a trick to minimize the movement - leaving the rudder down.  I imagine monohulls don't move so much because of that big keel.)  Also, our boat is noisy at night!  Even tied down the boom moves around and creates a lot of metallic noises, and the wind moves through the backstay and creates an incredibly eerie howling noise. We found tricks to almost eliminate the noises as we spent more nights on board.  Also, we've become smarter about not anchoring right in the narrowest area of a channel where the tide will be ripping in and out.

Also, the ocean is scary!  I'd wake up hearing the water against the hull and pretty much thing we were sinking.  It's one thing waking up in your tent and hearing a bear rummaging through your camping food, it's another thing thinking you're in a coffin sinking to the bottom of the ocean.  But after more time on our trusty trimaran I've come to realize that she's not going to sink, at least not at random while we're sleeping.

The last part that made sleep difficult is the bunk situation.  Our boat has two wing berths, a v-berth in the front, and a claustrophobic little coffin sleeper aft.  We each started out on a wing berth - the port side berth is narrower, so I took that one.  The previous owners didn't seem to have any trouble with the size of the bed, but I quickly grew uncomfortable and moved into the v-berth, but oriented myself so my head and shoulders were sticking out into the cabin so I could move around without hitting my shoulders on things.  It was actually super comfortable.  Cody, on the other hand, felt that the starboard berth was still too narrow for him.  If he lays flat on his back his left shoulder hangs over the edge.  After a couple of nights like this over the course of the summer we eventually switched spots, and he was much happier with the v-berth.  (We're currently working on building a double berth that folds out across the cabin so we both have more room and we can snuggle.)

Anyway, after a slightly restless night of sleep we awoke to the most gorgeous morning, sunshine and a flawless view of Great Neck and Plum Island.  Absolutely beautiful.  Much like backpacking, there's nothing I find more joyful than waking up outdoors.  We made coffee and oatmeal, and sat out on the trampoline in the sunshine.  And then . . . !  Cody proposed to me, and gave me my beautiful wooden ring.  How could life get any better?

Eventually we packed up and decided to head out and try out the spinnaker because we had a great steady breeze out of the North and we could go on a run back into Essex Bay.

Wanna know a great way to put a damper on a perfectly wonderful morning?  Try rigging up a spinnaker that you've never used before and have no idea how to set up.  In choppy waters.  While you have to pee.  After three failed attempts I found myself sitting on the bow trying to untangle our hopelessly tangled spinnaker from the forestay, bobbing up and down, cold, hungry, and with a full bladder (the camp toilet wasn't set up at the time).  "Enough!"  I said.  "It's time to go home."  But we were still happy and it had been a nice day on the water even without the spinnaker.

The tide was out and we had to anchor Tri-oomph at Conomo Point and call for a ride.  The fun upshot of that was that when Tucker picked us up we got to tell him our exciting news!

Trial and Error and Error

After our awesome first trip aboard Tri-oomph we were eager to get out again and really sail, so we headed out the following weekend with a nice stiff wind.  Everything was going great, Cody at the tiller and the main sail flying.  Woooo hooo!  I took the tiller so he could haul up jib.  We were moving on a pretty good tack with strong wind and it took a little muscle to hold her where I wanted her.  I was thinking, "This is going to be difficult to do for a long time . . . "

And it happened.

Crack!  Pop!  Crack!

And suddenly I was holding a tiller handle that had dissociated itself (via breaking off) from the rest of the tiller.  I was like -

We're gonna die!

Cody, who is less of a spazz, climbed into the cockpit and grabbed hold of the rudder itself to hold us from running aground on some shoaling, while I got a grip on myself and climbed up to drop down the main sail.  

Ha.  Haha.

Well, we reasoned, the plywood was old and there was some rot where the bolt goes through.  We just need a new tiller.  It's cool.

So we did this.

We built a new one out of marine plywood donated by our good friends.  We modeled it off of the old one.  Should be great, right?  Right?

Right???

That's the new tiller.  Yeah.  New tiller, same problem.  Slightly less freak out, same sad return to shore.

After informing my much more ocean-worthy friend Jenny about our ongoing tiller woes she sent me a message saying something like, "[Our super experienced sailing friend] Gary's dad always says you want the tiller to feel light and easy. If there's a lot of tension on it you need to adjust your heading or your sail or something.  At least that's what he says."  It was a super tactful way of sort of suggesting that it was maybe user-error.  (A good friend will always find a way to tell you when you might just be sort of an idiot, and a great friend will make it patently clear without being a jerk about it.)

We built a new tiller, bearing in mind that we (I) might be responsible for the continued cracking of apparently sound tillers, but also deciding we might as well beef it up.  We doubled up on the plywood, applied lots of gorilla glue, and put lots of silicon on our bolt holes.  And!  With a new skill (that of not man-handling the tiller) in our arsenal and a nice beefed up tiller we made it through the entire summer with no tiller-related grief.

It's currently hanging above the stove 2, coats deep into what we hope is 7-8 fresh coats of spar urethane.  

Lesson - if things are breaking you're probably doing it wrong.

Launch!

Waking up the day after our trip home from Ontario and looking out the window at our big green dinosaur was, well, a trip.  It looked soooo big!  It looked like it was made for adventures.

We invited Cody's mom and her fella Kevin aboard for coffee in the morning.  We were sitting in the cockpit and Kevin stood on the ground, eyeing the boat skeptically (Kev is a retired fisherman and it's worth considering what he has to say where boats are concerned).
You sure I can come up there?
Of course, Kev, climb up!

We're pretty dim sometimes.

Sure enough, no sooner had Kevin stepped onto the boat that the whole trailer and boat rocked backwards, only coming to a stop when the rudder hit the dirt.  Coffee cups went flying, fortunately no people followed suit.  What went wrong?  We'd failed to put jacks under the rear of the boat to keep it balanced after we unhooked it from the truck.  D'oh!  You only make that mistake once.  No damage done, this time!

We were anxious to get Tri-oomph floating, but had some maintenance that needed to be done first.  A bunch if us had chipped in and gotten Cody a solar panel for his birthday and we wanted to get that hooked up, and the running lights needed to be replaced before we stepped the mast.  Highly motivated, we got nearly all the work done by to following weekend.  We invited a couple friends over for a "boat launch party" that mainly consisted of working on our boat.  Once we got to panel mounted, though, we were ready to launch!

We drove her down to Clammer's Beach at Conomo Point in Essex.  Jim had told us a story about his dad seeing someone get killed by a falling mast during stepping, which has permanently scarred me and made me afraid of falling masts.  Fortunately, he also provided detailed instructions. Our friend Andrew was there to help,  and 3 people is the ideal number for stepping our mast.  We followed the instructions and it went really smoothly.  NBD.

Our plan was to meet up with a few more friends at our house and go for a sail.  We got the motor going (in his struggle with the pull cord Cody sent his elbow into the boom - it was black and blue for weeks!).  As we pushed off into the water we unfolded the amas (the outer floats) and bolted them down.  So easy!

At our dock we loaded up 6 more people to take out - Tri-oomph was packed!  It was cold, too!  What is enough clothing on shore is usually inadequate on the water, especially when the temperature is below 90 F.  Another important lesson.

As we motored out of the creek I popped the cork on a bottle of champagne Cody had picked up, and proved to anyone who saw that I don't drink much champagne.  Despite giving the bottle a good shake, it didn't reward me with a nice shower of champagne to christen out boat. Oh well.  But we had cigars, too, because, well, boat!

This is pretty much how we roll.

We raised the main sail but there wasn't much wind and there were some pretty big swells leaving Essex Bay.  After drifting about for a bit everyone was freezing so we turned around and motored back to Conomo.  The tide had come out so we couldn't get back to our house.  We dropped our guests off on shore and then threw out the anchor and walked through the freezing water to get back.  We went back to get it home after the tide had come back in.

We were pumped!  Boat in the water!  Sailing!  Awesome!  Friends!  (The key to making friends is having a cool boat - I wish I'd known that in high school . . . )  And so what if we hadn't really sailed much on our first trip - we were floating!

 Much discussion about what to do when.

 Up it goes!

 Ahhhhh!  Boat!

 Lots of seating for rad people.

 Cheers guys!

 Solar panel's not doing much with all those clouds.

 Captain!

 Brrrr!

Life ain't bad.

Bringing Her Home

We weren't able to go pick Tri-oomph up until the first week of April, due both to the persistence of snow up North and our own schedules.  We borrowed a friend's truck for optimal towing and headed north once again.  Jim and his family offered to drive the boat down to Niagara to meet up with us, which was epic and saved us about 5 hrs of windshield time.

We were a little concerned about the logistics of bringing the boat into the country, getting through customs, etc.  On the way into Canada we'd informed the customs official that we were carrying a significant amount of cash (you have to officially declare more than $6000) and he sent us into the office to fill out the appropriate paperwork.  The official in the office took one look at the form, looked at us, and said, "Well, if you break it down between the two of you it's less than 6K each, so you're all set."  Ummm, ok, if you say so, sir.  Feeling like we were getting away with something, we scurried out of there.

Italian Villa

We stayed at the same awesome motel as before (on our first stay we'd opted for the "Africa Room", but this time we stayed in the "Italian Villa").  The next morning we headed to a coffee shop that looked like it would be easy to transfer possession of a large trailer.  As we sat at our table drinking coffee we heard some muttering from the tables around us.
"Whoa, what is that?"
"Is that an airplane?"
"No, I think it's a boat!"
Looking through the window, we saw our very large green trimaran pull into the parking lot.

The transfer of boat, accessories, information and stories took about an hour.  They'd brought the whole family to see Tri-oomph off and it was great talking to them all about their experiences.  Finally we pulled out, towing what looked like a big green fair ride and feeling more than a little giddy and excited.  We hit the border within 10 miles, though, and the trepidation of dealing with customs put a temporary halt to our effervescence.

Boat Transfer

We were told to park and go into the office, as we'd expected.  Once in there I was told to have a seat while Cody dealt with the paperwork.  The official looked at our bill of sale and our passports, and then asked us why we hadn't declared our cash coming into Canada.  "Funny you should ask!"  The US Customs official didn't seem to think it was funny though, and said we should have declared our cash.  With a shake of his head he told us we were all set and could go.  Again feeling like we were getting away with something we speed walked to our truck (again struck at how freaking awesome our boat is!).  We had been prepared to pay sales tax and customs fees and have to fill out a bunch of paperwork, and for the whole process to take at least an hour.  And here we were, 5 minutes to get through, not a penny out of pocket.   
"Walk so we don't attract attention but go quickly so we can get out of here before they realize they were supposed to charge us a bunch of money!!!"

Anyway, the drive home went smoothly, although it took a long time towing the boat.  At one point we stopped at Sbarro and climbed up into the boat to eat our pizza.  First meal aboard Tri-oomph!

We'd budgeted quite a bit of cash for tolls getting across New York and the Mass Pike, however, when we pulled up to the booth getting off I-90 the toll agent told us, "$3.40."  Uhhh, we said (because we're dumb), are you sure about that?  He looked at what we were towing and punched a couple buttons on his computer and said, "Fuck it, $3.40."  I think it's safe to say that our whole trip was made so much better and more affordable by lazy government employees.  


About an hour from home I was getting hungry and bored so we stopped to get Mexican food and margaritas.  Well, margaritas for me, the bored and annoying co-pilot, not for Cody, who was driving.  We couldn't find a place to park so we kind of pulled alongside a curb near the curbside take out area.  As we got out of the car one of the employees came out.  We thought that we were about to be told to move our car, but he told us we were find there and asked us what we were towing.  People love Tri-oomph!  We'd fielded numerous questions regarding what, exactly, we were towing at gas stops along the way. The rest of the way home was much more entertaining after I'd had 2 margaritas and dialed up the 90's hip hop station on Pandora.

The Beginning

Now that Tri-oomph is high and dry for the duration of the winter and the adventure-making is down to a minimum, I thought it would be a good time to write down all the things I've wanted to share in the last year.  Maybe I can get caught up by the time we put her back in the water in the springtime?

A couple years ago my husband, then boyfriend, told me he wanted a trimaran.  My response was of the pretty typical haha-whatever-you-say variety, and the subject was spared very few thoughts for the next year or so.  

I didn't even know what a trimaran was, and every time I typed it into Google I misspelled it trimeran.  I have always been mountain girl with a fondness for the desert, not an ocean-goer.  My time away from the mountains and near the ocean has been marked by a strong desire to return to the mountains, and a dissatisfaction with the nonexistent elevation gain/loss around our current home.  We had sailed on a borrowed sixteen foot day sailer a handful of times, but it never captured my imagination in the way that a long bike ride high in the Sierra Nevada mountains did. 

But then in the summer of 2012 we ran into a neighbor (not literally) while out sailing the O'Day.  He had a 24 foot Corsair F boat that he'd had gotten a great deal on, and he let us climb aboard to check it out.  

This is not actually his boat.

What can I say?  Do I need to say anything?  Look at that thing.  

I was sold.  

Over the course of the fall Cody researched used trimarans and we found a number of prospects.  We went to the New England Boat Show (where I met Devon McCourtey!) and oogled Corsairs.  In February we found one that looked like it might fit the ticket, and it was within our price range.  It was located Ontario, about 8 hours away.  We contacted the owner and told him we were really interested and would love to come see it.  He said he had another interested party but wouldn't sell it until we were able to drive up for a look.  He lived about 2 hours northwest of Niagara Falls, so I insisted we make a weekend out of it.  

In front of a very frosty Niagara Falls - Canadian side, naturally.

We drove up early so we'd have daylight enough to see the falls.  They were pretty amazing.  It was also amazingly cold.  We walked around, visited a brewery, and stayed in a pretty sweet little motel.    The next morning we headed up to London to see the boat.  Actually, it was in London that we met up with the sellers (awesome Canadians) and they drove us an hour further north to see the boat at its winter storage location up on Lake Huron.  First we stopped in to visit the guy who owned the barn Tri-oomph was stored in.  He is a retired aeronautical engineer who was building Farrier F-22 tri in his garage, as well as a hovercraft.  Yeah, you read that right.  A hovercraft.  Bad ass.

Eventually we made it up to the storage barn and got in to see the boat.  It was absurdly cold in that barn (Ontario in February, go figure).  I had on long underwear and insulated boots and a down jacket and a hat, and by the time Cody spent 2 hours meticulously going over the entire boat with the owner, Jim, I was about as cold as I'd ever been in my life.  But Jim knew all the details we'd be interested in and was very careful to point out anything that needed replacing or reworking.  We were both pretty stoked (or, I would have been if I hadn't been borderline hypothermic.  We got hot chocolate on the drive home - Jim paid since we didn't have any Canadian money (hahahahaha) - and that warmed me up.  In the car Cody was asking him how much he'd take for it, and we quickly settled on a price and agreed to purchase it.  We gave him a deposit, then went back to his house where his wife, Carleen, cooked us lunch and we reviewed the boat plans, checked over the sails, and talked about the history of the boat.  We got going much much later than we'd planned, as Cody had to work the next day, but we had a lovely time hanging out with our new friends and getting all the details on the boat.  We agreed to come back when the snow melted enough for him to pull the boat out of storage to pick it up.  

This is Jim's picture of Tri-oomph at dock on the reservoir in Ontario where they primarily sail.

So what is Tri-oomph?  She's a home-built Farrier Trailer Tri 720 (#74 to be exact), plywood and fiberglass construction, 23 feet long, fully spec'd for cruising.  Jim and his father built her in the late '80s. Jim's father had built dozens of boats in his lifetime, and Jim and his siblings and grown up racing small sail boats.  Several years ago Jim and his father decided to built a new, updated trimaran because Jim really wanted to go do some multihull racing.  They built a new F-22 out of foam and fiberglass and shaved about 1000 lbs off of Tri-oomph's weight.  I'm told under a strong wind the new boat, christened Raise A Little Hull, can go 20 knots.  You can water ski behind a boat at 20 kts, so that should tell you something.

Why is she green?  Well, when they were kids attending regattas they had three boats of similar design that they would sail, and they were all green so the competition wouldn't be able to tell them apart.  They continued the tradition with Tri-oomph, and later with Raise A Little Hull.  Both the name and the color grew on us pretty quickly once she* was ours.   

*When we were first visiting Jim and Carleen I thought it was so funny that they referred to a boat as "she" and "Tri-oomph", as in, "We love to cruise on Tri-oomph, she's so comfortable!"  But after almost a year of boat ownership I totally get it.  It's way more than an "it", and saying "the Tri-oomph" is just stupid.