Wrap up of our 2007 Summer Cruise on Tropic Daze.
The Crew is Captured by Aliens
We have waited to tell this tale until the outcome was known: it can now be told.
Fellow sea travelers and other followers of our adventures, you know how much we love our sails and rigging, but we have found other dwellers of the seas that don’t use sails and such. As alien as these creatures and their mode of travel seems, we have learned to converse with them and found them to be a friendly and adventuresome lot. They have told us of their adventures and of the worlds that they explore where we, the Creatures of the Wind, cannot go. These alien Diesel Dwellers can venture almost anywhere the Creatures of the Wind can go, but they can also travel into the interior where we can’t. As we met more of these aliens and heard their tales of adventure, we felt it was time to follow the other less traveled path and taste of these new adventures. It is with great hesitation that we leave our big mainsails and spinnakers behind and head for this alien world. Never fear, we have not lost our love of sails and rigging and shall continue to ply our sailing skills in the small craft from whence we came. To our fellow Creatures of the Wind we say it is “Hobies Forever”, or until we can do it no more.
For years, Sue and I have talked about the fact that someday we would move from large cruising sailboats to motor cruising of some kind. This year we spent a lot of evenings in the Florida Keys talking with these aliens travelers and hearing their tales of cruising up the east coast to the Chesapeake, on up to the Hudson River, up the river and across the Eire Canal to the Great Lakes. They motoring through the Great Lakes to Chicago where by river and canals they made their way south to the Ohio River and the Mississippi. Some followed the Mississippi south to the Gulf of Mexico, and others traveled through locks and lakes and rivers; across Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama to Mobile Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. These trips through America’s heartland often take a year or more and are known by the aliens as the great circle or great loop. Low bridges and small locks make these trips all but impossible for large sailboats, even with their masts removed and strapped to their decks.
Whether we ever do the great loop or not, late this summer we decided that “someday” is now, and we started talking to more aliens and researching their vessels. We soon developed a list of features we wanted in such a craft, and a list of things we disliked.
The first decision was speed. How fast is fast enough and how important is efficiency? These craft fall into two general categories, fast planing hulls and slower displacement hulls. The planing hulls travel at high speed on top of the water, but eat a lot of diesel fuel to do so. Displacement hull vessels just push the water out of the way, which is very economical and very slow. Planing hull may travel at 20 or 30 MPH while burning 40 to 60 gallons per hour to do so (0.5 miles per gallon). Displacement hulls will travel at 8 MPH and burn 2 to 4 gallons per hour (2 to 4 miles per gallon). Thus displacement hull boats are four to eight times more efficient. We aren’t in that much of a hurry and fuel costs are important to us.
The next decision was the type of boat - the trawler style or motor yacht style. Cruising trawlers have evolved from fishing trawlers into live-aboard cruisers, but still look similar to a working fishing boat. The motor yacht style tends to stand high off the water with a lot of side area for the wind to work against, and tend to be top heavy, both of these traits are okay if you never get caught in a storm in open water. For those that have followed our adventures or had the pleasure yourself, you know that storms happens when you least expect them, and far too often. As much as we love the experience of being violently tossed around in 10 foot seas or 40 MPH winds, we opted consider the slower, more stable trawler style boats.
After looking at a lot of boats and doing a lot of research, we found one vessel that seemed to fit our desires the best - the Independence 45 by Hans Christian. Hans Christian is a famous top-of-the-line sailboat builder, famous for their teak work and solid seaworthy construction. The bad news was that Hans Christian only built 18 Independence 45s, which were built between 1987 and 1995. The good news was that there were two of them for sale in the US, and both were in Florida. We looked at one in Fort Lauderdale named Exile, and she was a beauty. After that, all other boats paled by comparison.
We sailed to Fort Lauderdale, to one of the largest catamaran brokers and put our beloved Tropic Daze up for sale. By this time, we had made a trip to St. Petersburg and looked at the other Independence 45 that was for sale. It was in poor shape compared to Exile. We returned to Texas and made an offer on Exile, but negations broke down when the owner decided that the boat would be sold as is, no matter what was found during the survey.
We had not given up our search on the internet for other options, and as negations were breaking down on Exile, another Independence 45 appeared on the internet. The Boat, named “Three Suns”, was near Annapolis on the Chesapeake, and looked better than Exile in many ways. We contacted the owner and were convinced that it was a better boat for the same price. We rescinded our offer on Exile and pursued Three Suns. We flew to the Chesapeake, met the owners and spent a full day going over the boat from top to bottom. We came to an agreement with the owners on price and signed a purchase agreement, pending the outcome of the sea trial and an formal survey. Three weeks later we returned to the Chesapeake for the survey and sea trial. The surveyor spent about nine hours going over the boat from top to bottom. We had the boat hauled out of the water for his the inspection of the bottom and running gear. The sea trial was for both the surveyor and for us to feel how she handled and how she felt on the water. The surveyor was very impressed by her great construction, and beautiful condition. The formal written survey was extremely complementary and valued her very high. Excitedly, we returned to Texas to finish the paper work and financing, and after a week of papers, signatures and coordination, the boat is now ours.
We will be renaming her “Our Independence” because she is our rare Independence 45, and she is a symbol of the freedom and independence we Dwellers of the Sea cherish. She is a beautiful boat with a salty, sea worthy, traditional trawler look about her. She is a smooth ride and will be comfortable to live aboard. We will miss Tropic Daze, but the alien’s spirit has captured a part of our heart and we are very excited about the new places we will see and the adventures Our Independence will bring us.