GOTTA LOVE YOUR BOAT
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| Enough visibility at the helm? |
April 24, 2017
Pahia, New Zealand
A strange thing happened during these last few months. As I mentioned in our last blog, we had put DOMINO on the market last July (rest assured, she is off the market now.) In the period of just a few weeks, this fantastic boat managed to morph from the boat of our dream, to the most unique (and misunderstood) Passagemaker on the market, and back to the boat of our dreams again. To say the least, brokers, lookee-lookers, and potential buyers had managed to make me feel terrible about our DOMINO.
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| Yep, only ONE head... and no glass shower door to scrub and polish! |
As we were showing the boat, I was hardly prepared for the barrage of objections to what I had considered completely normal.
- What? There is only ONE stateroom?
- What? You don’t have a washer-dryer? No dishwasher? Only ONE head? No big screen TV?
- All that space you’re not using! You could build 2 cabins in there!
- What? You need to be two to drop anchor?
Little by little, I sank into a depressed state, letting others measure our boat to their standards while ticking off their list of what accommodations they perceived a boat “should” have.
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| Plenty of room for the 2 of us... and the occasional other diners... room for 6, if we must! |
Envy is the root of all evil - As time went by, I started to wish for 4 staterooms, forgetting how much I hated cleaning chores and making beds; I started to wish for a washer-dryer, ready to trade the fresh smell of my 2 shorts and 2 T-shirts sun-dried on the line for an “April Fresh” dryer sheet; I dreamt of a big screen TV, even though in all our years on land, we rarely watched TV; I started to wish for a second head, oblivious to the fact that guests regularly plug the head and that each additional loo would be more work for JP. Little by little, I was measuring DOMINO trough other people’s perception and desires instead of my needs and lifestyle. I was getting sucked into other people’s dreams and wishes, forgetting my own. I was terribly unhappy and was wondering how I could ever love our DOMINO again.
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| Nav station and night watch bunk. |
Be careful what you asked for, you might just get it!
But it dawned on me that DOMINO was conceived and built especially for the two of us. Many years ago, when we first envisioned a boat, Malcolm Tennant asked us some very specific questions, such as:
- Where will you cruise?
- How many months a year?
- How often will you have guests, and what kind of guests?
- Do you want to entertain? How many people?
- Do you want to fish?
- How fast do you want to go?
- Would you rather clean or play?
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| Stored on the davit or on the fly bridge, Do-mini is our play ride. Gasoline tanks stored on the aft platform. |
Malcolm designed DOMINO around our answers.
- We want to cruise the South Pacific, all year round and live on board.
- Guests would consist of family, children and grandchildren, who don’t mind sharing a head, about a week or two per year.
- We definitely want to entertain, up to 60 people for a party, 12 for a sit-down on the aft deck, 6 in the salon.
- We want to fish! We want to fish!
- We want to cruise a 10-12 Kts, with get-away speed of 20 Kts.
- No, we don’t want to spend our time cleaning, scrubbing, and slaving! We want to play.
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| Party? Start with 30 dinghies streaming off your stern and you'll see how many we can host! See how we kicked off the cruising season last year at Minerva Reef... or how we staged the Sea Mercy Recovery effort in the Lau Group |
And that’s the boat we got: great fuel tanks and engines with an apartment for two on top. A simple boat, with not much to do in ways of maintenance and a range of 6,000 NM at 10 Kts (or 2,300 NM at 20 Kts.) Accommodations, we don’t really need much; performance, safety, toughness, that's where it's at for us. (DOMINO is built to commercial standards.)
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| The 5 vent doors give such efficient ventilation that we haven't used the A/C since we left Paraguay, 7 years ago! |
Hidden Beauty - For all the criticism about the missing washer-dryer and head, we hardly heard any praise of her engines who never quit (“Nothing Runs Like a Deere”), of the HRO system able to deliver 12,000 liters ( 3,000 gallons) in 48 hours, of the toughness of her structure built to commercial standards, or of her fuel efficiency.
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| DOMINO making and delivering 6,000 liters of water in Susui |
These are technical points that, unfortunately, many buyers overlook as they get sucked into the fluff of accommodations.
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| The view from the galley is rarely bad! |
Potential cruisers often ask, “What kind of boat should I get?” Well, look at Malcolm’s questions and your answers will dictate your boat. They say that the perfect boat parties twelve, eats six and sleeps two, and I agree... what is the perfect boat for you?
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| And watching shooting stars at night is without compare. |
As for me, I’m loving my boat again. I love the airy feeling of the 7’6” ceiling; the light streaming from the 21 windows that wrap around the house; I love watching shooting stars from my bed at night; and I feel safe at the big helm, even if we’re submarining in 12’ seas and 35-Kt winds, nice, dry and comfy.
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| New anchor launching system: lower and more forward, easier to single hand. |
So, never again will I judge my boat by others’ standards. As we grow and gain experience, as our cruising conditions evolve, we make slight modifications to the boat. This year, JP modified the anchoring system so that anchoring can be done single-handed. When we get to Alaska, I might get a washer-dryer after all!
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| Workmode, JP in his workshop while I quilt. |
This is the boat that we wanted, that we built, and that we love. I wish you all to love your boat as much as we love ours!
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| JP: "Don't worry, Dear, I won't spill epoxy on your freshly-waxed table!" |
Until next time,
dominomarie