Satch
Member
My wife, Marilyn, and I recently purchased a 1978 CHB Trawler on north Lake Union in Seattle. It is our first power boat of any kind, however, we have been sailing a San Juan 23 for about five years, and crewing on other people's sailboats for years before that. My job and the sailboat are landlocked in Yakima and Rimrock Lake, respectively, but we love Seattle and visit my daughter there occasionally. We have also trailered the sailboat over the mountains and sailed the San Juans and Gulf Islands on an annual boat club cruise the last two years.
For some time we had been contemplating a condo or timeshare or something in Seattle where we could stay when we were there, since my daughter lives in a tiny apartment. Around June of this year Marilyn spotted a trawler for sale on the Facebook Marketplace and we finally got over to check it out at the end of June. The boat and the owner were both full of character, and the boat came with an assumable liveaboard slip on Lake Union. Needless to say, we bought it. The engine wasn't running, and it needed a little restoration in general, but that is a hobby of ours, so we set about it and had her running around Lake Union and Lake Washington within a couple of weeks.
I rapidly learned that driving a nine-ton single screw boat bore little relationship to driving a two-ton outboard as I smacked her on a pier piling and gave her a fat lip the first time out of the slip. Nothing too serious, but we do get to learn teak railing repair now. We've struggled with docking and undocking her a lot, but we're much better now and take her out pretty much every time we visit, which is every couple of weeks. Obviously we have a lot to learn about power boats, but we love our funky old Trawler and plan to keep sprucing her up.
I am near retirement, so eventually we will likely cash it all in and live the liveaboard dream. Although we are planning on doing that on a blue water sailboat, the trawler is our toe-in-the water liveaboard experiment toward that end. It's probably better suited than a sailboat toward cruising in the Sound anyway, since we have learned that "San Juan Sailing" is motoring around in a sailboat with the sail up. There just isn't that much wind in the San Juans that we have found.
I have already learned a great deal from The Trawler Forum and enjoy it so much I bought one of the cool TF burgees to fly on our trawler. Thanks for the opportunity to introduce ourselves.
Satch & Marilyn in Seattle
For some time we had been contemplating a condo or timeshare or something in Seattle where we could stay when we were there, since my daughter lives in a tiny apartment. Around June of this year Marilyn spotted a trawler for sale on the Facebook Marketplace and we finally got over to check it out at the end of June. The boat and the owner were both full of character, and the boat came with an assumable liveaboard slip on Lake Union. Needless to say, we bought it. The engine wasn't running, and it needed a little restoration in general, but that is a hobby of ours, so we set about it and had her running around Lake Union and Lake Washington within a couple of weeks.
I rapidly learned that driving a nine-ton single screw boat bore little relationship to driving a two-ton outboard as I smacked her on a pier piling and gave her a fat lip the first time out of the slip. Nothing too serious, but we do get to learn teak railing repair now. We've struggled with docking and undocking her a lot, but we're much better now and take her out pretty much every time we visit, which is every couple of weeks. Obviously we have a lot to learn about power boats, but we love our funky old Trawler and plan to keep sprucing her up.
I am near retirement, so eventually we will likely cash it all in and live the liveaboard dream. Although we are planning on doing that on a blue water sailboat, the trawler is our toe-in-the water liveaboard experiment toward that end. It's probably better suited than a sailboat toward cruising in the Sound anyway, since we have learned that "San Juan Sailing" is motoring around in a sailboat with the sail up. There just isn't that much wind in the San Juans that we have found.
I have already learned a great deal from The Trawler Forum and enjoy it so much I bought one of the cool TF burgees to fly on our trawler. Thanks for the opportunity to introduce ourselves.
Satch & Marilyn in Seattle
