Tail over Tea Kettle

At this point we,re wondering if we,ll ever find anything that can accommodate our menagerie. A menagerie of cranky bored kids, tired of being dragged from marina to marina and boat to boat. I know it hasn't been long in the search but how can there be such a lack of three cabin sailboats? Until today. Mark shows me a listing for a trimaran. A trimaran? That wasn't even on my radar. If I know next to nothing about monohulls and catamarans I know even less about trimarans. So we started the research. A classic norman cross design you say? Reviews are favourable, says I. Sail performance and speed? excellent. Interior space? suitable. Stability? Decent. Risk of sinking? Impossibility. Capsizing?... Yes what about capsizing. I believe the old adage of mono vs. multihulls is "would you rather be right side up on the bottom of the ocean or upside down on the top?" Umm hello! Neither please. I don't want to be anywhere near either of those scenarios.

Appearanlty the risk of capsizing on a trimaran is more prevalent than say a monohull or catamaran. But not flipping over to the side like normal boats, instead with enough speed and the wrong wave a trimaran can flip over back to front. Okay! Hold the phone! Stop right there. I think that has to be the scariest thing I have ever heard. Visions of this enormousness boat somersaulting through the stormy Pacific Ocean with me and my family on board nearly sent me into appoplexy.

Of course mark quickly tries to explain to me that this isn't a racing trimaran and wouldn't get speeds high enough for that and it's just common sense, don't sail in bad weather. Common sense? I believe it's pretty evident that common sense checked out a while ago and isn't coming back. But in the end. With alot of reading and a lot of kind bloggers who shared their experience and expertise talked me down enough that I've kind of got excited about seeing this trimaran tomorrow. Who knows maybe this is our boat and maybe we,ll end up with a multihull after all.

Mono's. Multi's. And Moolah.

So we decided about two weeks ago, after having returned home from a long and arduous RV trip that it was time to buy our sailboat. Not sure what set off the starting gun. We do seem to go from zero to warp speed in a matter of seconds but that's just how we operate. No sense fooling around, lets get on with it. Initially when we moved to Whidbey island we assumed we would have 3 years here, but seeing as after six months we decided this was the worst place on earth in which to habitat and Mark had an opportunity to get us moved back to Victoria, BC and further his career towards command of a naval ship we figured we,d take it. Ohh whoa, not everything was bumped up by 2 years. We need to start selling our stuff, it won't sell as fast here in sticksville. If we want an American boat we need to buy it six months before we leave, (a whole customs, NATO thing so we don't have to pay double taxes). So we frantically started searching the Internet for sailboats. Originally our ideal would be a nice catamaran, lots of space, lots of stability but also lots of money. Unfortunately being in America does have a draw back. Our credit is stellar, our equity great, but... (its always the buts) being a stranger in a strange land, we cannot get credit in our strange land. And our homeland won't give us enough of a loan to purchase our ideal boat because it would need to be an unsecured loan because the long arm of the lenders can't reach across the boarder. So... (The so's and the but's, get ya every time) this situation has limited us drastically to finding a boat that we can pretty much pay for in cash. Most catamarans we found of course were in Florida, now I am not so crazy as to think I could buy a boat and sail it 3/4 of the way back around the continent for my very first time on a sailboat over 12 feet. So we let the multihull dream drift away as it were, but buck up, on to monohulls. Well we searched and searched and searched and do you know what? There are a ton of sailboats in the pacific north west. True story. Unfortunately it is also true that any boat in our price range was either 40 years old, wooden or too small. We are having the darnedest time finding a three cabin monohull, it's like the rarest thing ever, because out of thousands of boats from California to Alaska, we haven't seen one (in our price range of course). So I figured the Internet pictures were doing them justice, for the prices people were asking I assumed they must be bigger/better than I am thinking. This idea lead me to view our first boat, a 40 foot double masted ketch in Sydney BC (not Sydney, Australia, which I did have to clarify when I called the guy up and heard an Aussie accent). It was old and needed work, was well below our price range as he was desperate to sell but I know I couldn't sail that thing singlehanded and there was only 1 cabin.

Disappointed but hey, it was boat #1. Next we ended up in anacortes, lots of nice boats there but not so nice brokers, people we managed to get a hold of we're kind of jerks so we got turned off right away, also everything was beyond our budget and the sellers would have had to come way down for us which we got the impression wouldn't happen. So we trudge on like good little soldiers and take the show on the road to Everett. Everett was interesting, nice people, lots of boats, one cat actually, in our price range too. Just got my hopes up when the broker talked me out of it. A 34 foot gemini would not be a good offshore vessel, it needed repairs and the bottom had some blistering so reason prevails and we check out some more, old 40 footers. Nice boats, CMS and Pearson sloops but all still too small.

Proper Introductions Please...

So... You want to be a cruiser do ya? Join the thousands of people who throw status quo (and sometimes caution) to the wind and set out on the open seas for a world of adventure? So... You haven't sailed in anything bigger than a 12 foot dink? And that was over 15 years ago? So... You want to take along your three small kids? No? I guess it's just us than.

Hi, I'm Rebecca McShane, more commonly known as Becky or scooter, (my dad calls me scooter, you can't, so Becky it is.) I am a military wife, to my sailor Mark who for the 8 years of our marriage has moved us from one end of the country to the other and back again with a few stops in between. He's left us for months at a time to travel the world on a navy ship. And as a proud, Canadian, stay at home mama of three, I stoicly kept the home fires burning in service of our great country but now Mama says, "it's my turn!"

I remember two crazy teenagers, who'd just started dating, sitting across from one another in a booth at the Steak N Stein in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, stars in their eyes, and someone saying, "we should live on a sailboat when we get married." Who'd have thought 10 years later that dream would actually come true? Getting married at 19 to a man who just went off to basic training, we were broke. when our first move took us our west to Victoria, BC. We talked to the bank at that point to get financing for a liveaboard sailboat but I believe we were quickly and unceremoniously shown the door. Not that I blame them, here's a couple of kids who had owned nothing, had gone from living in a basement and had a grocery budget of $30 a week, to making a commissioned officers pay, but we had no credit, no equity so we needed time. And time went by. Two moves later, three kids later, too many dogs to count later, we were back east and bought our first house. A 25 year old baby split that needed a complete overhaul inside, but it was ours. The next five years were spent raising babies, fixing up the house, breeding angora rabbits, learning to spin from angora rabbits and generally living the normal life. But always in the back of our minds, driving all our plans and decisions was someday, sooner rather than later, we,d buy our boat, sell it all (or most of it) and sail. When our oldest child and only daughter Aislinn started school we decided to homeschool right off. Not only because the public school system is so atrocious and scary but because we didn't want to be tied down. Mark took two deployments almost back to back over in the gulf to pay off debts to get our credit up. It's been hard and we,ve worked for it but its time to make everything worth while. We,ve got the money, we,ve got the moxie (with the bank anyway), enough dreaming all ready, it's time to act. So here's where we start. I'm 28 years old, mark my husband is 32, both born and pretty much raised in dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Our great kiddos,

Aislinn (Ash-lyn) a sweet and tender hearted 7 year old, suffers from celiac disease and as a result is very tiny and thus we are all on a gluten free diet to combat this. She's, energetic and persistent, makes friends with whoever she meets and is just generally the sweetest girl ever.

Macallister or Mac a rough and tumble 6 year old, he's a thinker and figure-it-outer. Loved to build and make and draw and observes things and people in ways I never think of. A middle child he,s self sufficient, more reserved about emotional displays but is kind and generous and loves his family and has a laugh like no other, contagious as the chicken pox.

Finnegan or Finn the baby of the family, a 4 year old bundle of mischief, sass and obstinance. He likes to be heard, he likes to get his way and has figured out how to manipulate his older siblings to doing his will. He loves to smile and giggle, plays excellent with everyone (except for babies, he doesn't like babies, but come on, babies are no fun.) he's the cuddler, the wrestler, the joker and keeps us all on our toes.

Penelope a 3 year old shih tzu/Pomeranian. A little, furry bundle of loyalty. Hands down the best dog ever... Here's hoping she doesn't get sea sick.

And Barnicle aka Barney A 2 year old cockatiel and the newest addition to the family. Skittish and a bit noisy, likes to imitate smoke alarms rather than songs, but a good traveler in our RV, hoping that trait translates to a boat... Can you get a gambled bird cage? Hmmm. So that's us, currently we live in an isolated log house

out in the sticks of the minuscule town of Coupeville on tiny whidbey island in the puget sound. Come join us (or don't. up to you) as we search for our boat, learn how to sail it, live on it and eventually cruise on it.