Why Cruising?

As I stated in a previous post we had some catching up to do on the blog. So here is how it all started back in the fall of '10.

   Why are we choosing this lifestyle? That is a good question and one that many have asked us. It was my very intelligent wife who asked herself the question “Is this it, Is this all we're going to do for the rest of our lives?”. What she was referring to was living the same life day in and day out, get up go to work, pay bills, stress, spend money, make new bills, go back to work to pay those off. There had to be more to living than just work and debt.  Yes, we had full lives outside of work, we very much enjoyed each others company and loved to do things together, but what about seeing places, traveling, meeting new people. A vast majority our lives and brainpower was being spent at work and that sucked! So the wife asked one day what I would think of living on a boat. I said really, why? She explained her reasons and I jumped onboard with both feet, having grown up sailing and loving it. We agreed that we wanted to simplify our lives and not be a slaves to debt and jobs. A sailboat would take us where we wanted to go, yes at a slower pace but also for less money and once we found a destination we could stay there as long as we wanted, our home was with us. Yes, we will have to work, we know that. Our goal is to just work enough to get by and live the cruising lifestyle.

We immediately started researching the cruising lifestyle. Lin and Larry Pardey became house hold names. We started scouring yatchworld and every other website like it, sailboat listings everywhere. We started looking at boats in the 38-42’ range. We found a Cascade Pilothouse sailboat locally we liked, but the boat was a project and things started to add up. So we kept looking. On Christmas day 2010 we were walking the docks at a local marina and ran into an older britishman, who owns a Luders 33. He said if you plan on cruising oceans buy a boat with a keel. He also explained to us the additional cost involved with a larger vessel.  I took his advice and we started looking at keel boats and started researching boats in the 30-35’ range. It seemed that everywhere  we looked the Alberg designs kept popping up as a solid cruiser and in our price range. We weren’t looking for speed, we were looking for comfort at sea and a solid base to build our cruiser at a reasonable cost.

That's not Sal!!!! Here is the salty looking Cascade we were looking at, nice boat but needed way too much to even sail.

One Feb ’11 day, I was searching Yatchworld, I typed in Alberg  and about 20-30 Alberg designs popped up. I saw this Alberg 30 and said "wow, what a nice boat for the money!". I then called my wife at WORK and told her about it. I followed that with a phone call to the broker. By that night we had a deposit on our to-be 1971 Alberg 30 pending visual inspection, haul out and sea trial. We traveled to Oriental, NC where she was located and took about a thousand pics. I was beside myself inside but did not want to let the owner and broker know. I pointed out this and that. We told them we would think about it and return for a haul out and sea trial in a few weeks. I knew inside that would be our boat.  She wasn’t perfect but she was solid and simple. I could see and get to everything! We returned 2 weeks later and hauled her. Everything the owner had listed was done and we took her for a short sail. My wife and I agreed this was the boat for us. She was capable of taking us where we wanted to go and she was cozy inside. Small, yes, but very functional .....did I mention cozy? She just felt right. Upon return we agreed on a price and she was ours……We were starting our adventure!

Haul Out time!

She had a nice clean bottom, rudder was tight and Indigo prop as advertised! We were happy!

Sea Trial time, Atomic 4 ran like a champ and she sailed beautifully for a few short minutes. It was cold this day, only 40 or so!