In November, I sold the Dean Catamaran that I had left in the Caribbean and in December I sold the F25C kit stored in my father-in-law's barn. This left me, for the first time in years, BOATLESS!
Kim and I went to Hawaii during the second week of January to look at some property I had a contract on. Since we were going to be gone for over a week, I unsubscribed from the Multihulls Mailing List (MHML). I came back from Hawaii and went directly to work up in San Luis Obispo, where I had made plans to meet with another subscriber from MHML. During our get-together, Greg mentioned the availability of a modified Searunner 37 that had been posted to MHML the previous Sunday. She sounded like a stellar deal, but I told him I would not pursue her until he had decided what to do about her. Fast forward a few weeks. On Wednesday January 19, 2000 Greg wrote to me to tell me he was passing on her. With the help of the wonderful folks on MHML, I was able to contact the owner and get a signed contract (subject to inspection) by friday morning. I had already planned a trip to Portland that weekend, so when the family met me at the airport, we went north instead of south.
We inspected Hang Ten on Saturday morning and took her out for a motor. There was absolutely no wind, so motor was all we did. With the Yanmar 27hp engine and the MAXPROP 3 bladed prop, she moved along quite nicely; I guesstimate about 6 knots at 2500 rpm. We ran the main up the mast to look at it and unrolled the jib to look at it, too. It was COLD, making the pilothouse and cabin heaters very popular. Kyla excelled as pilot, driving the largest vehicle she ever had.
Hang Ten was pretty much what I expected; an older but well built wooden boat. The builder (Powell Hargrave of British Columbia) had done a very good job on her. I was told he took her to Tahiti for a while; she certainly seems capable of that journey.
After our little adventure, we went and talked it over for a while and decided to buy her. I say we, but Kim tried to stay out of this one from guilt over the decision on the Dean. We headed back south after making some arrangements for her survey and caretaking if the sale went through. In the end, I didn't have her surveyed for a couple of reasons: