Archive for February, 2008

Gypsea

Sunday, February 3rd, 2008

The Islander 30 was a below-the-radar boat. I had a pretty long list of boats that I thought would be nice, but the Islander never made it onto that list until we found one for sale.

Designed by Bob Finch and built here in California, the I30 is the epitome of the “plastic classic” from the 1970s boatbuilding revolution. Well constructed, decent sailor, no extremes in design or construction. The hull is solid hand-laid glass, the interior is teak, and it sports 8 Barient and Barlow winches on the deck, cabin-top, mast, and boom. She’s got an Atomic Four, and the main (which we hoisted in the pouring rain to check out) seems to be in the solid “OK” category.

This particular boat has the unfortunate name of “Gypsea”. The Kevin/Bob-Shana/Jon/ tradition of keeping boat names might be ending here.

Gypsea

Here she is, all cleaned up.

Islander 30 in the fleet

Friday, February 1st, 2008

My dad and I bought a new boat. Or at least, we put down a deposit pending an upcoming survey. She’s an 1972 Islander 30 Mark II, currently berthed in Vallejo Harbor.

Eb’s new Bwoat

We’ve been looking for a shippy little 30′ cruiser at a reasonable price for a while. We checked out a lot of boats in the last couple months. It’s really amazing what kind of crap is out there, and how much money people want for boats that are really just (barely) floating projects. A couple of the boats we checked out (in terms of decreasing shippy-ness):

  • Southern Cross 31
  • Farrallon 30
  • Rawson 30
  • Newport 30
  • Triton 27
  • Santana 27

Having been a partner in Kevin’s super well-kept ’71 Ericson 29, I had high expectations for the baseline condition of the boat. Eagle was ready to do some pretty heavy-duty boat project work, but I was hoping to find a boat that needed a thorough cleaning, but was otherwise sound.

We saw this Islander back in December, and kept our eye on it as the price dropped during this cold, rainy, economically anxious winter. When we thought the price reached the right ratio of good-bargain to not-screwing the previous owner, we called up and made an offer.

The same surveyor (Brendan Schmidt) who did the pre-sale assessment on both Shanti and Charisma will be coming over to do an in-the-water survey on Tuesday, after which we can finalize the paperwork, assuming there’s nothing catastrophically wrong with her. I have no idea if people actually buy boats without surveys, but it seems insane to do so to me, even if the survey is 10% of the overall cost. At the best, you save yourself the heartache of buying a boat that needs a new keel or cabin-top or something. At the worst, you’ve paid half a boat dollar for the most professional and thorough to-do list you’ll ever see.

More posts on the new boat over the next few days. Welcome to the fleet, Silver Eagle.