Decisions, Decisions

Since our arrival back to Perth, Peter has spent considerable time trawling the internet looking for our new (to us) Stolen Kiss.

We seem to find it difficult to get passed Olin Stephens’ philosophy in boat design being ‘the easiest boats to look at seem the easiest boats to drive’. When you are rowing (or rather motoring!) out to the boat, she has to have that ‘wow’ factor.

It would have been fun to be around Manhattan in the early days of yacht design as many famous designers like German Frers, Angelo Lavronos and Scott Kaufmann were all part of the S&S offices. There are so many beautiful yachts for sale by these designers.

We have found a great book that can be read on-line with google books. 'Used Boat Notebook' by John Kretschmer is an amazing review of many yacht designs. He also has a good website. Kretschmer basically has spent a lifetime of delivering yachts and has written great reviews. The S&S Hylas on pp 215 is of particular interest to us.

Although we are close to securing a purchase, we are still undecided. Location is a matter of time as we can sail anywhere we want to – down wind of course!! The yachts on our short list have most of our ‘wish list’, although none of course are perfect. It is all a trade off.

As for colour (lets get the most important thing right!) I still wish for a blue yacht, but more than likely it will be white. Sigh!

Peter is in the winning straight for a centre cockpit yacht. The movement of these yachts in the ocean is different to that of one with an aft cockpit and after never having been seasick racing/cruising on an aft cockpit yacht, I have some reservations. Reason being is that in the three centre cockpit yachts I have raced on in the past (albeit in 40 – 60 knots of breeze), I have been seasick for the first 36 hours. Not a good look doing a radio sched with a bucket between your legs, especially when the off watch are trying to sleep nearby!!!!!!!!!

Of course a main concern for us is a teak deck - or lack there of. Whilst they look great when new, they deteriorate fast in hot climates and are hot on the feet! So, for us to have a yacht with a teak deck it would mean that it would to eventually have come off.....and of course Peter does not want to get "house maid's" knees again (the end result of re-doing the deck and putting in a new floor in the old Stolen Kiss!!).

Our idea is that Peter will fly off to view the yachts and we will take ownership by mid October and be sailing again by mid December. Can we wait that long????????

As soon as all is finalised we will have pics of our new Stolen Kiss here!

In the mean time we are gathering more fun tickets and surviving Perth’s coldest winter for a few years. Choice! Doing laps is great in an outdoor heated pool as the water temperature is 28 C and the air temperature 14 C! At the moment we are house sitting at Cottesloe, with the beach literally on our doorstep and we go to sleep listening to the sound of the surf. Nice!

Safe Sailing!