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Welcome to our new home. It wasn't long ago that I was having a conversation with a friend. She said "you just lost everything you have in the world. What makes you think you can just buy a boat and sail the world with no money or a job?" My reply was "what makes you think I can't?"

I had to prove to myself that anything was possible. I decided to teach my dog Esme to levitate. Pictured is proof that anything is possible.

If you want something bad enough you can have it. In the two years since, I have found the love of my life. Together we have acquired a safe and comfortable boat and started a new chapter together. We bought and sold boats till the Roo came into our lives. My initial plan was to clean her up and sell her. We purchased her for less than half of her value and like all the other boats I thought she was just a project to get us to our ultimate boat. Over the process she has become our home and ultimately our dreamboat. Now just a few weeks shy of having her in our lives for a year we have finally taken the last piece off that we intend to rebuild or replace. Now the fun begins. We have less than two months till winter starts to rear its frigid head and we intend to have her completed and launched by October 1St. One year in the boat yard is enough.

The name Boatyard Pirates came from a feature article I wrote for Latitudes and Attitudes magazine and it stuck with us.

Aug 13, 2008

When you build a new boat a starting point is easy. If you are building with glass you lay-up the hull. If you are building with wood using traditional techniques you start with the deadwood or If you are building with metal... well you get the point. When we purchased the Roo we knew she was ready for a complete refit, but where to start?

Whenever I purchase I new boat I follow a very specific set of rules. First and foremost is I never purchase a colored hull. No sooner did I violate my own number one purchase rule then I violated my number one new boat rule, which is only to do one project at a time.

My new boat schedule goes like this. First I make it a safe boat, then I make it a comfortable boat, then I make it a pretty boat. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This boat would be the largest personal project I have taken to date. I say personal because it’s my money being spent not my clients'. Because we were living aboard full time I wanted the galley and head in order. I immediately threw out the porta-potty and replaced it with a bucket. More on that later. Re-plumbing the water tanks and lines was an easy one-day job and a no-brainier. Our propane stove and oven would turn out to be a much larger project. Our tank was situated in a lazarette with a drain but was not completely sealed. This represented a huge safety issue to me. It took the better part of a month to redesign this system but eventually I decided to re-plumb the entire system adding a tank to the stern rail recapturing the lazarette space for storage. The propane line was nicely housed in a PVC pipe but due to all the bends leading from the cockpit to the galley I had to take the entire system apart and start from scratch. This project was a total nightmare but now that it's done I’m glad I did it right the first time. When I say the first time I am not mentioning the fifty or so trips to every marine store in town or all the custom fitting. Or the hundreds of dollars and time it took to get it right. By the time I finished this project winter was bearing down on us and time was running short. Most of the major projects included things like paint and sealant that need a minimum overnight temperature of 40 degrees. I dropped the mast, pulled the chain plates, removed the handrails, and pulled the motor mount. By November 1St the boat was completely stripped. Remember my one project at a time??

November 2ND winter set in and stayed till May. Our poor boat froze solid and so did our progress. Once again I’m in a time crunch to beat winter but this year is a lot more fun. Steadily all of our fabricated parts are showing up along with huge bills. We are moving forward and will update here with each completed project.

Aug 23

Renaming/denaming

You have just purchased the perfect boat. What next? One of the first things new boat owners do is change the name of their boat. We have all heard of boat superstitions. Don’t leave on Friday, never paint your boat blue of green, bananas are bad luck. These are all simple things to avoid but what about de-naming and re-naming your boat? I’m not superstitious but I also don’t want to press my luck. I have enough difficulty with basic seamanship. The last thing I want is a boat with bad juju because I broke the code of the sea in renaming my boat. I have heard everything from placing a silver dollar under the mast to sailing backwards a full boat length to erase the old name. I have owned many boats but never renamed any of them. Our last boat came with the name Dangerous. How could you ever want to change that? Can you imagine if Bob Bitchin changed the name of The Lost Soul to something like “Obsession” or “My Panacea”? Most boats come with their proper name and a soul not to be reckoned with.

My most recent boat and current home had been named Ruby. She was named by her builder but to us just didn’t seem to be a Ruby. When we purchased her she was and still is on the hard. Seeing as she had only seen half a dozen short trips in the eleven years since she had been launched I didn’t know what to do, but she just wasn’t a Ruby.

After consulting the gods I came to the conclusion that since every boat is different every ritual of boat naming must be individual. Rather than an elaborate ceremony I decided to bond with her and let her spirit guide me.

First came our initial bond, the kind you have long before she has safely carried you through yet one more storm or sat gently bobbing at anchor patiently waiting for her next journey. I simply sat by the light of her lantern with a nice bottle of scotch staring at every nook getting used to her feel and smell.

Eventually her name came to Lizzie. Who am I to question a woman. She would be forever hailed as the Roo. Rather than an elaborate ceremony I chose to make her my blood sister. I waxed, buffed, sanded and oiled every inch of her leaving a trail from bloodied knuckles as I went. In the process I have touched and examined every inch of her inside and out. There is not one scratch, chip, or nick I don’t know about. I know every wire, every leak. Every loose screw has been tightened. My blood lives in her bilges and lockers. Like a newborn infant her genetic makeup will never change. Her soul has been intact since her first conception but together we will continue to bond and grow. We will learn our limits together and push those on every horizon. As a last measure I bought her a bottle of scotch, poured a pinch in her bilge and have saved the rest for her first visitors. When the bottle is empty we will paint her name.

If you happen to stumble across us in the yard feel free to stop by for a drink.

Aug 26

Transitions aboard

Houses are but badly built boats. So firmly aground that you can not think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable - not animal world, rooted and stationary incapable of transition. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content hence forward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting place.

It is for that reason, perhaps, that, when it comes, the desire to build a boat is one of those that cannot be resisted. It begins as a little cloud on a serene horizon. It ends by covering the whole sky, so that you can think of nothing else. You must build to regain your freedom. And always you comfort yourself with the thought that yours will be the perfect boat, the boat that you may search the harbors of the world for and not find.

Arthur Ransome: "Racundra's First Cruise"

Aug 30 2008

We are often asked how we can live in such a small space. People often comment if I had to live on such a small boat, or in such a small space, or spend so much time with so and so, I couldn’t take it. First off I love living in such a small space with Lizzie. My biggest complaint is that we don’t get to spend enough time together but that’s what this whole plan is about- best friends spending all of their time together exploring and playing their way around the world.

I often wonder what’s smaller, our boat or others life style? I have friends who wake up in a small box, their bedroom, and then move to a smaller box the kitchen. When it's time to head to the small box where they spend most of their adult life, the office they get into their smallest box where they spend half of their life the car. This goes on day in and day out working to pay for all of their boxes and newer bigger boxes until they finally rest in their final box 6’ under. It may sound insane but this is what we are taught as youngsters. You can't be successful unless you have a lifetime of debt and work till the day you die, always one step behind the man. I’ve never considered myself wealthy but I have yet to meet even one single American who has paid cash for their house. Our number one rule is that all boat transactions are paid in full cash and carry. I might not have the luxury of subsidizing my income with a $200k second on the home at 9% interest but I know I own my home outright. All of a sudden 24 feet doesn’t seem so outrageous. See pictures below: our old living space and our new space.

We had quite a bit of down sizing but now we own our home instead of it owning us.

We have given up most everything for this lifestyle. In doing so we are in the process of gaining our freedom. Living simply and naturally. Most all of our so-called luxuries are gone. The last thing we need to get rid of is the car. Since I use a car daily for business we are downsizing until I officially retire. Living in such a radically different environment does take some time to get used to. If either of us ever feels overwhelmed we grab the dogs and head for the trails. Nothing is better than coming home to a warm dry bed with everything we need close at hand. I can cook and serve dinner in the same room and never feel left out from the party. I can see and hear everyone on the boat from the galley, one of my favorite parts of the boat. I’m no further from the cockpit than I am from the saloon. While we are still mapping out the best place for everything on the boat I find that the more food we look to store the less space we have for all of that other junk that never really gets used but just moved from one place to the next. Our ultra light backpacking philosophy has transitioned well onto the boat. While we don’t carry any less gear than necessary we focus on Items with more than one use. We also do a cost analysis on every new piece of gear we might add. A radar would be nice but at what cost? Do we really want to pay $4k for a life raft that may never be needed or worse may not function properly in the unlikely event of disaster? My car doesn’t have radar and so far I’ve been ok. My backpack doesn’t have an epirb but I still go into the backcountry every chance I get. How can we possibly survive without weather fax? I’ll never know. We do have a GPS but at the first sign of trouble I will rip it off the bulkhead and throw it overboard. We humans as a general rule are looking for such a huge safety cushion that likely someday we will just pay someone to go to sea for us while we stay home and read about it in our padded room on a blog. While the sea has its risks I don’t find them any greater and in most cases far less dangerous than living in a guarded gated middle class suburban neighborhood. And far safer than commuting in a 5-star, airbag-encrusted, full-size car. After all if boats are so dangerous why don’t they require safety belts and air bags?