Roots of a Voyage
Part Three: The Interior

by Dave and Jaja

There was something about the geometry of the companionway that was all wrong. It would have been the perfect entrance for sea-going Pygmies, but it was back breaking for us average-sized folks who had to descend in a squatting position. And the interior woodwork was hideous. It had been fabricated with unnecessarily thick 3/4-inch plywood. This was veneered on both sides with 3/8-inch solid iroko timber. Iroko is an African hardwood similar in density and weight to carbon steel. The edges of the bulkheads were capped with wide iroko trim, the size and shape of elevator handrails. My guess was that the most sophisticated tool used to hack out the interior was a dull machete. If the interior construction had been done well, the effect might have been "rustically charming". Instead, the impact was closer to "modern tree house".

There was a small shallow sink, with barely enough counter space around it to balance a few coffee cups, and there was a solid iroko cupboard door that opened directly over the counter, sweeping everything into the sink. Continuing forward, the starboard settee was only a foot wide by three feet long, which reinforced my belief that the interior really had been designed for Pygmies. The conventional "v" berth forward was so over-crowded with lockers the word "spelunk" came to mind.

In the main saloon, behind the dysfunctional dinette table, two locker doors jutted out at a daunting angle. When I opened one door the other was automatically released and it swung down, hitting me in the face. Those doors were also made of solid iroko. The toilet was aft, under the cockpit. Opposite to the head was a proper homo sapien-sized quarter berth that proved to be the only place to comfortably stretch out. I recalled that the literature touted the boat slept nine--it did not actually specify what those nine things were.

The electrical panel was corroded, with broken toggle switches, and the wiring was regular household grade, twisted at connections and insulated with masking tape. The battery cables were fabricated using several strands of ordinary sized wire, jammed into eye lugs which had been pounded closed with a hammer. On deck, the aluminum mast was badly corroded, the turnbuckles were undersized, and the lifeline wires had finger-spiking "meat hooks".

The funky steel boat we were scrutinizing was not the dream ship we'd been hoping to find. And no matter how much money we injected, her rough-around-the-edges hull construction would give her a low resale value. This was no investment. Besides, she was only 33 feet long and we had wanted to buy at least a 38 footer to accommodate our growing family.

Did it matter that the boat would be tight squeeze? By sailing our 25-footer DIRECTION around the world we had proven that a strong, small boat was as capable as any big boat. Coping with a "lack of space" is a mental game. The difficulties are offset by the thrill of realizing a lifetime dream.

As for an investment, we had to ask ourselves if the long-term resale value of DRIVER was a valid argument. One of the reasons we wanted to go cruising was to escape shoreside materialism, and improve the long term value of our lives. Here was a boat to achieve that end.

After several weeks of negotiation, title searches, and bank transfers, the boat was ours. We hadn't bought the biggest boat we could afford, we had found the smallest one that we could comfortably squeeze into. We would worry about resale some other day. For now, we were hot on the heals of adventure.

Next week: The Purchase.