Pirate Steve lives in obscene comfort (well, for a poor pirate
that is) aboard the catamaran "Spanky", presently docked in Indian
Harbor Beach, Florida. Spanky is a Gemini 3000 catamaran. She is 31' long, 14'
wide and the most luxurious 31' boat ever built. She has an amazing
amount of accommodation; a queen stateroom forward, two double
sataterooms aft, a full navagation station, a full galley, head
with hot water shower, and a grand salon for entertaining.
She has needed a lot of fitting out - notably a complete rewiring,
a redesign of the steering and rudder system, and removal of the
awful stern dual motor platform designed and installed (obviously)
by someone who was using the boat as a powerboat instead of as a
sailboat. There are a bunch of other defects of course, but the
boat is almost 20 years old so one expects such things.
Despite all this, she has many of the things I have wanted in a
boat for many years, and I got a pretty good deal on her. I swore
after my frostbitten trip from Norfolk in the winter of 1999 that I
would never own a boat without a pilot house - and Spanky has one.
She can fit in regular marina slips (the bane of Maru, and most
multihulls, was that I always had to sit on a T-head - usually way
the heck away from everything fun). She has glorious amounts of
space for all my junk, so living aboard is a pleasure. And she has
a very large, protected cockpit so I can sail comfortably.
There is enough room behind the cockpit to carry my Ninja 500
motorcycle, so I can take my land transportation with me. She
is a clorox bottle for certain (for you lubbers, that is a boat
built of fiberglass). I miss the feel, smell and sounds of my wood
trimaran Maru. Because she is built of plastic, Spanky has no soul
either. Maru was alive, she was a living creature of the sea that
enjoyed dancing on the waves with me as much as I myself did.
Spanky is just a boat, a tool to take me to sea. I was never lonely
or alone aboard Maru - no matter how far offshore I was. It will be
interesting to see how that works aboard Spanky.
Still, Spanky is just about the perfect boat for me at this stage.
One day, time and money permitting, perhaps I will build THE
perfect boat (of wood of course). But frankly, such a boat would
look a whole lot like Spanky does - so the drive to re-invent the
wheel is pretty low. For now Spanky will do just fine. Now, if I
can only get the refit done and get to sailing...
