Sailboat years. Part 2 of 3

I threw my bag in little station wagon and headed straight for the gas station and gassed it up. I also filled my primus stove bottle as I knew that eating out a lot would tear my scant budget to shreds.

The next order of business was to gear up a bit and get squared away for what I predicted was to be a long search. I headed to the nearest supermarket and grubbed up about a week’s worth of basics.

I knew what I wanted, and I knew what I could afford, which certainly wasn’t a Pacific Seacraft Dana 24 or even a Flicka 20. They were outrageously expensive.

Still, there were other choices out there. A Cape Dory 25 was a possibility, even though they were a little high.

Still, they could be had in the price range I had to work with. There were a couple of others. I also had one thing going for me financially; I wanted a simple boat.

One other thing. As most people are aware of, a boat is nothing more than a hole in the water that one pours money into. I was also looking for one that had already had a lot of money poured into it so as to be able to afford to cruise it.

While I was at the supermarket I wandered into the men’s room and looked in the mirror. I was clad in an old, well worn leeather flight jacket, jeans and fishing boots. My face bore a shaggy beard and my head was topped with a shaggy mane. It was the look of a guy with half a buck in his pocket, which I wanted as it would belie the fact that I was carrying a huge amount of money.

I was planning on sacking out in the back of the wagon as rooms were another added expense. This expedition was going to be basic and rock-bottom.

Staying clean would not be a big problem, as there were showers to be had at not only Fisherman’s wharf, but at just about any marina. If that proved to be difficult, I had my little faucet attachment which I could use in any gas station men’s room that had a floor drain.

Of course, there was money in the budget for beer and a little entertainment and I had based my beer budget on Kodiak prices. When I saw that the taverns in the towns outlying Seattle were practically giving away draft beer, I was tickled pink.

On a shot in the dark, I stuffed a quarter in a pay phone and called a friend that I figured might be in town and when he answered I told him to stay put and thirty minutes later I pulled into his mom’s driveway.

Although he had a place in central Washington State, he had been at the family manse taking care of family matters. When I told him I was on a road trip looking for a boat, he simply walked back into the house and grabbed his bag. In a minute the pair of us were on the road.

Our first stops were the marinas and boat brokers in the Lake Union/Shilshole area and as I had figured, the area was a little pricy and because of our appearance the people were a little leery to deal with us.

I hadn’t figured finding much there, and the day was waning. We headed south into the Tacoma area and found a little tavern that looked like a good spot to spend the night.

The requirements were pretty simple. Cheap beer, a trouble-free clientele and a quiet parking lot to sack out in was about all we needed. We tipped a few and then sacked out for the night in the back of the wagon.

The next two days were spent searching the Tacoma area and vicinity with no luck. We then headed north and as we were passing through the Lake Union/ Shilshole area I saw a broker that we had passed up because the boats they were selling were out of my league.

On a whim, the pair of us wandered in and I was promptly greeted by a little dweeb in a yacht club type uniform who in a rather snooty tone told us that their prices were out of our range.

As he spoke, in behind him walked a guy in torn jeans and paint covered topsiders who listened.

He interrupted the little dweeb and asked us what we were looking for and several other questions, which I freely answered.

“There’s a tavern two blocks up that makes pretty good burgers. I’m buying. Meet me there at noon,” he said. “I might have something.”

Then he turned to the dweeb and in the tone of a man addressing a small child, he said, “These men are from Alaska. Up there, that is what money looks like.” And he went back to what he was doing.

At the stroke of noon we entered the tavern and as we entered, he came in behind us, took the lead and straight to a table. He ordered burgers, fries and draft beer all around and produced a sheaf of papers.

It was a list of boats of the type that might meet my needs. They were located from Seattle all the way north to Bellingham. There were a number of notes and his business card was stapled to every listing.

Lunch lasted until 2 pm and I listened and took notes. The deal was that if we bought any of the boats in the list he gave us that we were to give the broker his card and call him. He would be entitled to half the commission.

He also told me that he had called Point Roberts, a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water and Canada on the northern end. He explained that sometimes there were distress sales to be picked up there for a song, but there were none now.

We were also told how to cut ourselves a good deal and he showed us the ins and outs of the business.

When I asked him why he had done all of this for me, he explained that it was because there was a pretty good chance he’d make a little money. “I won’t get rich,” he explained, “But it will keep me in beer and cigarettes for a while.”

He also let me know he was just shooting in the dark. I was under no obligation to limit myself to his list. If I found something on my own, that was OK, too.

We headed north to Bellingham and scouted one or two marinas before we sacked out in the parking lot of an auto wrecking yard. We parked next to the fence confident that if anyone approached the car that the dog inside the fence would wake us.

The next day we scouted the Bellingham area with no luck. My pal had to go back for a couple of days and I returned him home and came straight back to where I left off. I was on my own.

I found nothing and decided to head a little south and there I found a boat in the price range and made a low ball bid on it if it would pass muster. It was accepted.

I started going through it carefully and found that there was a lot of hidden pitfalls and withdrew my bid.

The broker got a little hissy about it and when I pointed out that I could use any marine surveyor I wanted, I’d simply hand him an extra couple bucks to recommend against purchase. The broker knew he had been beaten and caved in.

As I was leaving the brokers, I looked down at the docks and in an area reserved for yet another yacht broker, I saw her. She was a thing of beauty and had a sign on it with the two words I was looking for: For Sale.
She was a Sailstar Corsair 24, also called a Bristol 25 because Bristol had eaten Sailstar and kept producing the boat for a while.

She was just the pocket cruiser I was looking for, displacing a whopping 5820 pounds, and over 40% of that was lead ballast. I knew she’d be as stiff as a cathedral.

This one was a well found 1969 model and she proved to be pretty much bulletproof.

Back then they tended to overbuild fiberglass boats.

I went straight down to the dock and looked at her carefully. She was a clean looking boat and looked pretty solid. I went back to the car and checked my list carefully. She was on it, I knew I didn’t want to tip my hand. I wanted to make sure the guy in Shilshole got his piece of the pie, as it was only fair. You don’t crap on a guy that did you as big a favor as the Seattle broker had!

He got the paperwork on the boat and we looked it over. I decided to have it pulled and checked out carefully by a good surveyor and made the necessary arrangements. The price was a little high, but when the broker told me that the owner’s wife was behind the sale, I knew I could steal it and asked a couple of seemingly innocuous questions about her. From what I gathered she was eager to get rid of the boat.

I looked at the paperwork and noticed the name and address of the owners and made a mental note of it. Then secretly I wrote it down. I even got their phone number.

The following day I had the boat yanked out of the water and inspected. The surveyor gave it a pretty good bill of health and gave me a list of little things, all of which I knew I could repair myself for peanuts. I paid him and the lift operator. Then we went out into the bay for sea trials and there was a pretty good breeze blowing so we tacked into it for a while and ran downwind back to the slip. It was now the middle of the afternoon. The banks were still open.

I left the boat with a promise to call back and went straight to the bank and cashed in exactly half of the asking price of the boat’s worth of traveler’s checks.

Then I cooked dinner, took my bearings and waited.

I was going to try something a little sly. I was going to bet on the owner’s basic dishonesty.

You can’t cheat an honest man, I knew. Yet for some reason the broker had let a couple of little things slip. I gathered the owner wasn’t one of his favorite customers. I decided to try and work with human nature.

This was January. Financially speaking,things were flat. It was cold and nobody buys boats in January. They generally wait until the end of March. Besides a lot of people are still trying to recover from Christmas.

At about 6 pm I knocked on the door of the boat’s owner. The wife answered and when I told her I was interested in buying the boat for cash, she invited me in.

Almost immediately I handed her a wad of cash and told her to count it. “It is my first, last and only offer,” I said. “Either put the money in your bag and sign the boat over to me or return my cash.”

She took the wad and called her husband and met him in the other room. I listened to the pair of them bicker a little. The husband came out and gave me an angry, dirty look. He was madder than hell, to say the least.

“This is between us,” he said. “Tell nobody.”

At that point I thanked the luck of the Irish. Had the man of the house answered the door, he would have invited me in, closed the door behind me, heard my offer and thrown me through the closed door.

When he said that I knew he was going to pull it off the market and try to cheat the broker out of his commission. It wasn’t my problem, but I was going to play this one fairly. I said nothing, but gave him a serious look which he misinterpreted.

There were also a few other issues to be dealt with, like a sales tax, but I knew how to dodge that one.

He handed me a legal bill of sale and I was now good to go. I left and took off like a shot and overnighted in my new boat, but before I got to the Marina I called my friend and he would be there I the morning. I would meet him in the next marina down.

The next morning I found out that my friend was good to his word. I met him and we went back to the boat and he checked it out. He was impressed.

Then I let him know what I had planned.

We went into an office of some sort and politely asked to have a copy of my bill of sale made out. The girl behind the desk did this and as soon as I had it, I called the broker in Seattle and told him the whole story. He laughed like hell and commented that maybe he had taught us too well. Then he proceeded to tell us how to avoid the sales tax.

Then I went into the former owner’s broker and gave him the paperwork from the Seattle broker and a copy of the bill of sale.

He was angry until I pointed out that I was just doing this as a courtesy to keep him from getting burned and he was then grateful. He knew that half a loaf (or a quarter of a loaf as this case worked out) was better than none.

Because I wanted no part of the donnybrook I had probably started, we went down to the boat and immediately set sail for the next marina down where I had rented a slip when I met up with my friend earlier. We had left his pickup there so going back to snag the station wagon was no problem.

I was trying to buy 24 hours to hide from what I knew was going to be a real mess when the broker tried to collect his commission. Threats would probably be made and there was also a chance the previous owner would want to try and claim he had left valuables on board and wanted them back.

Then the sales tax question would pop up. I knew that the pair of them would gang up on me to pay it. They had good footing on this issue.

With 24 hours to get things squared away I knew I could be safely in Canada before any of this came close to catching up with me.

The next step was to rearrange the vehicles. I took the station wagon back to Seattle with my friend following me. I returned it, giving the keys to the father. Then we headed back and we parked the pickup one in the parking lot on the mainland side of the Port Townsend ferry.

I saw a kid there in a junker car and offered him some cash for a ride back to the marina. He agreed, but only if he could drop something off at his girlfriends house, which was fine as it was actually on the way. We returned to the marina as the sun was going down.

We overnighted on board, but there was a nice place nearby so we treated ourselves to a decent dinner and a few drinks.

The following morning at oh-very dark-thirty we set sail for Canada. I think it was about 3 in the morning.

In order to beat the state out of the sales tax we had to get the boat out of the state within 30 days.

It was in the middle of the night when the pair of us arrived in Victoria, BC looking like we had been through a wringer. The Strait of Juan de Fuca had been a little boisterous. It had been a wet, cold, wild ride and we sacked out as soon as we tied up in the slip.

The next morning a patrolman woke us up. I felt like I had been asleep for ten minutes and maybe I was. I headed up to the office and signed in and rented a slip for a couple of days and carefully pocketed the receipt.

We licked our chops for a day and the following morning headed off again. This time we went to Port Townsend, back in Washington. Before we left Victoria, I removed the registration numbers and renamed her after a friend of mine in Kodiak. I got the stick-on letters from a local shop that took my American money at par, beating me out of a couple of bucks.

I registered her with the harbormaster in Port Townsend under her new name and not by her registration number, explaining that the number was being processed by the state of Alaska. They accepted that and told me to let them know what it was as soon as I got it. Then I immediately had her pulled and put in dry storage and paid the rent until July first.

We spent a day of two in PT meeting shop owners and boat people. I contracted with a local to paint the AK numbers on the bow as soon as I got them to her and later found her to be good to her word. The price wasn’t very much. I also found a sailmaker and gave him a down payment on a new three-reef main sail and a storm jib.

The main the boat came with only had one set of reef points and I wanted three because I figured that it was only a matter of time before I wound up in heavy weather. I wanted the storm jib for the same reason.

The previous owner has only sailed her on nice weekend afternoons and stayed close to the marina.

We then hopped on the ferry to the mainland and headed south. I caught the next flight to Kodiak and landed there and went straight to the Anchor Bar and bought a round for the house to celebrate.

The next day I went back to work to dig up enough cash to take her to Kodiak.

It had been a hell of a trip, I was tired but I was happy. I had my boat.

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The post below this one has some stock photos of the same make/model of my boat.

Left click on the images to see them full-size.




my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/