New Beginning

There’s a saying that goes “The two happiest days of a boater: The day they buy the boat and the day they sell it.”

I remember how excited we were in August 2006 when we bought our boat. It was at an end of season boat sale held in the parking lot at Southcenter mall and we purchased a new 2006 Maxum 2200 SR3. 22’ bow-rider. At 260hp, she could do 55mph across flat water. With the trailer, we dragged that boat everywhere. We named her “New Beginning”. Being our first boat, we had no idea what we were doing. We had no idea how we would use it. We tried salmon fishing and failed. We struggled with shrimp season hand pulling pots but later mastered it and upgraded to a pot puller (which also took some ingenuity). Crab season was overwhelmingly successful. Cruising through the Puget Sound and San Juan Islands was always fun. We took the boat to Poet's Cove, in Canada, for our honeymoon. I learned to wakeboard on Lake Samamish. We’ve also had her on Moses Lake, Lake Washington and Lake Stevens… We've done Seafair on the logboom. We went fishing for Chad (bait for crab) off the Columbia river once. Though, she spent the majority of her time in the Puget Sound. We put 450 hours on that boat in 12 years. We have so many great stories to share, so many fond memories created with friends and family. Then things went wrong. Mechanical failure, all the things that bring truth to what BOAT really stands for:

$$ (B)ust (O)ut (A)nother (T)housand $$.

We sold our boat in early February. We were not happy that day. It was a sad day for us. Which brings me to the second half of the story.

We found ourselves looking at waterfront property in January. Something that we could watch the sunrise and sunset out over the ocean. Some place to hang out and spend quality time with family and friends. Something with beach access. It must be accessible enough for a day visit with friends and family, an overnight weekend and maybe a week long stay on occasion. We finally found it and have been waiting for it to be built since January.

We are scheduled to take delivery in June of a brand new Ranger Tug R-27. It’s a 27 foot boat, which is actually 32’ long with a 300hp Yamaha outboard. It’ll do 42mph across flat water, on plane, with a range of about 300 miles on a tank of gas. It’s got a full kitchen, bathroom/shower, dining room, V-berth, all heated and sheltered from the elements. The large cockpit will do well for crabbing, shrimping, and down-rigger mounts for salmon fishing. The 9.9hp Yamaha kicker motor should improve our odds with salmon fishing as well. With no trailer this time, the boat will be moored out of Port of Everett, the gateway to the Puget Sound and Canada. This will be our new home away from home with a clear view of every sunrise and sunset.

Her name is Channel Surfing.