Amadeus Closing

So very cool. So the terror is mostly declining, steely determination is trending, I'm all for that. Took Betty to the boat the other day, she was not completely displeased. We are compromising a bit on the berthing areas. It has a center cockpit, yay, but has a walk over interior. So the "Owners Stateroom" is completely separate from the salon part and has no attached head. Well I can live with that. It has a number of other berths including two sea berths, nice and snug, as they need to be. The head is all rather odd as it is split port and starboard. The "shower" and sink is to port and across a small passageway is the head to starboard. Old manual head at that. Might be looking at replacing that in the future with a composting air head. Has an interesting puzzle of interlocking doors to allow a touch of privacy for those personal moments. Two doors manage to cover three openings. The sole is junk. The Gin Fizz originally came from the factory with a glassed over plywood sole, which they then carpeted. This one just has some creaky plywood down painted and mostly not attached to the boat really. The vaunted hanging lockers are miniscule, but seeing as we don't have to sell the house to afford the boat we are not planning on living on it while the refit is happening. Still haven't determined if the engine is a rotating thing or rusted into scrap metal. We bid the boat expecting the engine to be junk, so if it isn't, gravy! Moves the plans up several years and lowers the refit cost significantly. Or at least leaves the outlay further in the future. The engine says it only has 1563 hours on it, which is insanely low hours for a boat this old. Still need to find the stupid battery bank, it's a small boat so there are only a few places left to look, but I need tools.

Anyway I am off to handle the closing tomorrow. Many more pictures and ruminations to follow. Got to make a run to Home Depot for a chain and lock for my ladder, and wasp killer as I have a hive living under the lid to the starboard lazarette in the cockpit. Forgot about them and whipped open the lid the last time I was there and promptly got stung, but only once thankfully. Any of you that know me know I have a weird sensitivity to bug bites.

LA!

OMG!! We bought a boat!!!!

So we got the dreaded email from the broker today.

I quote: "Congratulations you bought a boat. I will. Call you tomarrow to give you details .thanks Arne" yeah tomorrow is spelled incorrectly, but really I don't care!!!!

This is both the coolest thing ever and fricking terrifying. My initial reaction is jumping up and down screaming, which is rather amusing seeing as I am who I am, Mr. Doom and Gloom himself. You could call me Eyore. There is so much to do! And the firstest thing is getting Betty on the boat. She wasn't able to come with me to check it out, so I did a FaceTime walk through with her after I determined it wasn't a total pile of crap. We have been looking for so long that the culmination of this phase is very hard to believe! I have spent the last couple of days doing research and making lists. 

Really that is all for now, I'm going to get stupid drunk and eat pizza. More when the news soaks in and the terror slides into steely determination. 

Amadeus

Hello faithful followers. So it has been quite a few months since we last reviewed Craig's obsession with getting a new boat. I saw a listing for another derelict hull for 8K somewhere around here and called the broker. Excited! : ) Boat was withdrawn from market due to a deck issue. Bummer! : ( However he then reached into his magic internet thingie and produced a number of other equally derelict hulls sitting here and there. Going through those listings was pretty simple, nope to small, small, to much and to small, then magic! Amadeus.

Kind of a catchy name for a boat. Amadeus is a 1977 Jeanneau Gin Fizz ketch, 37.5 feet, 17,400 pounds displacement. If you look quickly before it is pulled from Yacht World @ http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1977/Jeanneau-Gin-Fizz-Ketch-2749683/Solomons/MD/United-States#.U-_FZ_ldV8F you can see the original listing. She is in pretty darn good shape for an older lady. Appears to have a full compliment of sails, books, almost everything. Bad thing about these boats, they cooled the engine with water directly from the ocean, usually they are fresh water cooled with a heat exchanger. So hot salt water + metal = RUST! I am willing to bet the engine is a frozen lump of cast iron back there. So I'm looking at another re-power situation. But this hull is smaller and lighter than the other beastie we offered on, so fewer batteries, smaller motor, less cost, yes!

So why this boat in particular? It is inexpensive so we can buy it outright, it's a strong hull form and is quite respected. Respected enough to let a 15 to 16 year old single hand it around the world. That would be Laura Dekker in 2010. How cool is that?

This boat is not too much of a compromise, we are getting the ketch I wanted, but are lacking a hull, so monohull it will have to be. Maybe I will stumble on a winning lottery ticket and I can go get the catamaran I want in a future purchase. Until then I will be happy with the rehab on this baby. It is listed at a steep discount as it is an estate sale and they just want it gone. I am happy with that. It is located about an hour and a half from home in Solomons, MD. So anyway we tossed out a bid, will see where that goes.

So very excited! As the saying goes, the two happiest boat days in your life, the day when you buy your boat, then the eventual day when you sell your boat.

Hey did anyone see "All is Lost"? We watched it not to long ago and all I got to say is "Dude, you might be Robert Redford but you can't plan for shiite!" At least he had a sextant, note to self, maybe look into getting one, then learning how to use the damn thing. But have a back up laptop or two, a back up GPS unit or THREE, and toss in a VHF handheld as well, and for gods sake don't store them all in the same place! Beyond that though I thought they did a most excellent job in filming the movie, the sound track was awesome! I think there are maybe ten lines of dialog in the entire thing. He fought his boat and didn't abandon it till it was actually sinking out from under him. Because life rafts can keep you alive, but man they suck. Keep your harness clipped to the boat, he went over the side a couple of times.

So that is all from this end, stay tuned to see if this has legs!