2010-10-05; 06:42:03 EDT
Member Since
2002-09-17
Posts: 4946
Ron and Lisa, Welcome to the list and congratulations on your new boat. We are always appreciative of newby's because they always provide the list with needed humor. Rummy In a message dated 10/5/2010 12:21:37 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, ronkaye343 at gmail.com writes: Hello all So... my future wife, Lisa, and I were going to sell our places and buy a single house together this last Summer. And move the kids, dogs, and cats all in together. That idea turned out to be complex, frustrating, expensive and too difficult to do in one Summer. So of course we decided to do something simple and fun - and what else could that be but buy a sailboat. I had owned a sailboat for a few years long long ago when life was simple and there were no children about. When that life changed and children and jobs crowded for time and money, the sailboat had to sail out of our lives. That was a 27' Balboa, the Kundalini Express. I took Lisa out on a Flying Scott over the Summer and she was hooked. Our recently purchased (then unnamed) Rhodes 22 is a '86 hull, refurbished and bought by the previous owners in 2005. We had Stan's crew do quite a bit of additional and refurbish work on her after we bought her out of brokerage in Sept of this year. She looks brand new now. We have yet to launch the Nautisaurus since we burned a hub bearing on the trailer on the way up to Maryland from NC (we are going to dry-sail). The Nautisaurus arrived on top of a roll-back flatbed wrecker (remember to take the mast off the crutch if this happens to you, or it will tear down all the road signs - but we lowered it). Then the Yamaha 9.9 need a thermostat that had to be manufactured deep inside Japan by an irritable and distracted Ninja. More than two weeks to get a part. Question: Is there any advantage to converting the 9.9 to a 15? I'm told it is easy to do, but would we just going to burn fuel against hull speed? Raising the mast this weekend was some kind of adventure, arriving on the scene with about 45 minutes of daylight because of other life complications, and ending up confused with tiny flashlights panting and squinting at the instructions (ever heard of a simple illustration Stan - ok sorry, Stan we love you). It got better in the light of the following day and we did the deed. Next time around it might be a lot easier. The best part was when we were wallowing around in the cockpit trying to figure things out in the dark and the bimini was sitting in there and suddenly the motor lifted up and was grinding at the end of the lift and we had no idea why it came to life like that. It was the bimini (in the case) pushing against the switch that we couldn't see. The lift seemed to be undamaged by that accidental activation. Kevin at GBX told me not to run it up to the end of the lift with the motor or it would break. I said OK. I told Lisa this. She said OK. The Nauti has a mind of her own. We have been reading the discussions here. Interesting! We are going to ask a bunch of questions. Brace yourself. But for now we just wanted to say hello to fellow Rhodies. We love our "new" Rhodes. She's a beaut. We'll try and get a picture or two on here soon. We are on the middle Potomac. Ron and LisaSee the original archive post