The Virtual Reinhard
Created | Updated Jul 13, 2006
How did it happen that two landlubber computer programmers, on contract in the far corners of the world, decided to exchange their perfectly good if somewhat hectic lifestyles for the uncertainties and trials of bluewater cruising?
This is the tale of the how. The why you can figure out for yourselves.
Lists. Lots of Lists
One thing that we were agreed upon right at the start was that we weren't going to skimp in the bed department. This may, on the face of it, seem like a strange first criterion, but we had both been on boats where the quarters were cramped and uncomfortable and it really puts a damper on your day. In addition, we spend a fortune on orthopaedic beds and mattresses at home, and the logic that engendered those choices is just as compelling at sea.
David thought that we were nuts, but suggested that we look into centre-cockpit designs, because these tend to have a decent-sized aft or 'master's' cabin. Given that I was likely to be responsible for running repairs, I wanted a hull material that I understood. Wood and I do not get along and fibreglass struck me as too flimsy for the open sea. I wanted to come off at least afloat if we hit a sunfish or a shipping container, and so steel was the way to go. Since we were looking at sailing shorthanded, ease of sail handling would be a bonus, so in order to get a smaller sail area it made sense to have two masts with small sails rather than one mast with a big one; hence, we arrived at the concept of a steel centre-cockpit cutter ketch.
Looking at Virtual Boats
Looking around at the cruising boats available on the market, we found the world awash with proven circumnavigators that exactly fitted our criteria for the money that we had available. The internet is a fine resource and we spent many a happy evening examining photos of the interiors of second-hand cruising boats from all over the world.
Eventually, however, it started to dawn on us that many of these vessels had been on the market for years, and several became old friends as we followed their stories, eagerly logging on each evening to see if this owner or that had added any new gear or reduced the price again as they got more desperate. We marvelled at all those unfortunate souls, usually Americans, who were apparently stranded in this or that tropical paradise and needed to sell their yacht in order to go home; usually, it seems, because their wives had refused to sail any further and had already gone back to the US.
After a few months of following the fates of all these forty-foot Adams, Roberts and Van de Stadt ketches, we decided to change tack and look at newer, smaller boats, with a view to trading up later once we'd got our sea legs. Not only would this make the learning experience easier, but if we chose carefully, we could hopefully get a more modern resaleable model which would give us the option of ducking out if we decided that, for some reason, the cruising life was not for us.
Looking at Real Boats
Then came the Sydney Boat Show. We'd expected to be awed by the yachts, and even more awed by the prices, but in actual fact what we saw pretty much fitted our preconceptions and the prices were not too shocking. Out of our range, but not shocking. We tried every berth in the sailing marina and found that almost every designer had apparently catered to midgets. I'm just over six foot, and Bronwyn is a little under, so we're not mutants, but we simply couldn't fit into many of the berths provided. The only design that really blew us away was the Hunter, an American company that was trying to break into the Australian market. Everything was beautifully made, well thought out and, best of all, made for full-size people. The icing on the cake was that, due to the collapse of the US economy, in Australian terms they were remarkably cheap. We immediately vowed to buy one.
The problem, of course, was that since Hunters were new to Australia, there weren't any second-hand models available. We contacted a few dealers in the US, who pointed out that because of the weakness of the US dollar, they could crate one up, new or old, and freight it to us for less than the price of an Australian model. Although tempting, we couldn't bring ourselves to buy a boat that we had never seen, and in any case, there seemed something bizarrely wrong about buying a yacht by mail order...
