A New Old Boat

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“Man, she’s a beaut. A real classic.”

“Yeah, she sure is. Look at those lines…the bronze fittings and ports.”

“And the teak… Don’t forget about that beautiful Taiwanese teak.”

“And those round port lights. Looks like a pair of eyeballs!”

“She’d be great for exploring the Baltic.”

“Would be a lot less space than what we’re used to…”

“Sure, but we always said we didn’t need or use half of that space.”

“We’d need to sell the other boat. Things will be even tighter than normal until that happens.”

“We’ve lived on tight budgets before. That’s not a problem. We can do most of the work ourselves.”

“True.”

My long-time partner and fellow adventurer, L. J. turned to me and gave me the look. I knew that look. I’d seen it many times before. Heck, I’d even given him the look quite a few times in past. The look that says, “I know it’s a crazy and risky decision, a lot of hard work, but don’t you want to jump in and see where it takes us?” 

I felt the smile spreading across my own face as I looked back at him and nodded my head. We both turned back to further admire what was soon to become our new old boat, a 1981 Tayana 37, sitting proudly in her slip on the tropical island of Trinidad in the Caribbean. 

We hadn’t started out searching for another boat. As a matter of fact, we had every intention of doing yet another refit to the 1987 catamaran we had owned and sailed for 6 years. 

For those of you who know the Tayana 37 is a monohull, you might be a bit surprised to read that we owned a catamaran before purchasing the Tayana. You might even wonder if we have lost our minds. Or you might be smiling and nodding your head in agreement, as we found many of our monohull friends did when they learned the news. 

Yes, I know the saying, “Once you go cat, you never go back.” 

But we did. And we are planning to share our story with you, letting you in on why we made that decision, the ups and downs along the way, and the realities of such a drastic change. 

In our next post, we will share with you more about our previous sailing experience and the reasons why we decided to go from catamaran to monohull. 

Thanks for stopping by and reading our blog. We hope you find it interesting and we look forward to your comments. 

—Julia & L. J.