Here we go again!

So six years after buying our great Nimble 20 yawl Turnstone, we’ve been bitten by the boat bug once again. We are now part owners in a 1988 Gulf 32 pilothouse full keel sloop! Yes, we live in Idaho and have two sailboats.

Having chartered in various places now, we really want to spend more time exploring the more temperate waters of the Salish Sea (all the inland waters from Olympia to north of Vancouver Island)… compared to tropical cruising we appreciate the scenery, the lesser crowds, cooler weather and more chances to explore on land… and, pretty critically, we can bring the hound dog Hobie! Long term we’d like to cruise the inland passage all the way to Alaska, so that’s a goal we’re shooting for. We did a trip out of Bellingham in Turnstone, and while she was seaworthy enough if we were careful, both safety wise and amenities wise she’s not up for cruising for weeks at a time in the Pacific Northwest, at least not the way we’d like to do it. In the meantime, chartering would actually end up being more expensive than a partnership on an older boat, even when you factor in improvements, maintenance and slip fees.

So we found a boat we loved, the Gulf 32… William Garden designed, full keel so very stable, classy lines (in our opinion), and a long successful run (over 400 built between 1965 & 1988). But most importantly, it’s a great boat for the Pacific Northwest because it’s a pilothouse, meaning we have a second steering station down below, out of the weather, for those days when it’s snotty out but we still want to make some miles. For good reason they’re popular boats in the Salish Sea. After viewing 5 different Gulf 32’s of varying age and condition, we settled on a boat named “Vera L” that was for sale in Anacortes. For those keeping notes, this boat was for sale all of 6 1/2 miles from where we bought Turnstone… has to be a good sign!

So we begin again with projects, learning a new boat, upgrading, fixing, backing into slips (gulp, this thing is, err, challenging to back!). We’ve also changed the blog name a bit to reflect our new cruising area.

So we’ll be resurrecting the blog both as a way of keeping track of what we’re doing, and to share anything we might learn with other folks out there who might be considering commuter boating, commuter sailing out of Bellingham, or a Gulf 32 specifically. Lots of the internet gets a bad rap (for good reason), but I have found so much info and so many helpful people when researching sailing and sailing related questions and Gulf 32’s in particular (perfect example: Stories of Aeolus, Our Gulf 32 Pilothouse in the same area, HUGELY helpful and very nice folks), I’m hoping to be able to give back a little bit of our hard earned knowledge.

In the meantime, some pictures of the boat itself, and we’ll leave you secure in the knowledge that we’ve already changed the name… she is now “Boundary”, in honor of Boundary Creek, the put in for the Middle Fork of the Salmon.