I have big plans for my first boat outing.

A lot of stuff has been going on in my life over the past two weeks. One of them came to a conclusion yesterday: I closed on the purchase of my new boat, a 2019 Ranger Tug R-29 CB.

I wrote more about the purchase process in my Great Loop blog. The final chapter can be found here. It was a surprisingly easy transaction with the only glitch being Citibank’s wire transfer processing and unbelievably crappy customer service. At 11:22 AM on September 2, I was the owner of an amazing, near-new cruising trawler.

My still unnamed boat in a photo taken by the surveyor as we motored in to the lift for a bottom inspection.

Do It Now

Amazingly, although the boat was three years old, it had never been named. That was good for me since there are all kinds of superstitions about renaming a boat and I didn’t want to deal with any of the weird ceremonies involved in changing a boat’s name. It meant I could name it whatever I wanted to. I chose Do It Now with a home port of Malaga, WA, and during the closing process I made arrangements to document it with the Coast Guard instead of titling it in Washington State. That means I can take the registration numbers off the hull as soon as I get the name put on.

Why Do It Now? If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you may know that I feel that I wasted too many years of my life in a dead-end relationship, waiting for a partner to get his head out of his ass and start enjoying life. With him out of the picture, I was finally free to do my own thing — and I have been. I expanded my business, built a home, and started traveling more. But I wanted one more big challenge and had pretty much set my heart on cruising in my own boat. With the years ticking by quickly I realized that, at some point, a lack of physical fitness would prevent me from doing what I wanted to do. So if I wanted to start a new chapter in my life, I had to do it now.

It’s become a philosophy. Heck, I almost had it tattooed on my left hand near my thumb so it would remind me every day. I think buying this boat was a better solution.

Planning the First Voyage

As the purchase started coming together, I realized that there was a good chance that I could complete it before an annual event I really wanted to attend: the Ranger Tugs Rendezvous at Roche Harbor Marina on San Juan Island. Although it had been cancelled for the previous two years due to Covid, it was on for the weekend of September 8 – 11. I bought an attendee ticket and, booked a slip at the marina for September 7 -12. (Yes, I was so confident that the sale would go through that I booked a slip for a boat I didn’t yet own.)

I also plotted the route from Zittel’s Marina in Olympia, WA to Roche Harbor using Aqua Map, my iPad chartplotter of choice. I was shocked when I learned it was over 100 nautical miles. Not the kind of trip you can do in one day when you’re cruising at 10-12 knots. That meant an overnight stay along the way.

My entire route as plotted on Aqua Map. It takes me from Olympia past Tacoma, Seattle, and Edmonds in Puget Sound and then into the San Juan Islands area.

I arranged for an experienced boat captain, Larry, to join me on the first day of this journey to provide some much-needed training and orientation. I’d meet him at Edmonds on Tuesday morning and finish the drive with him to Olympia. That’s where I’d take possession of the boat and its keys. We’d offload my truck into the boat — I have a ton of packing to do — and then, after some orientation at the marina, head out along my route. The goal is to get to Edmonds by just after 4 PM, which I think is pushing it. I’d drop off Larry in Edmonds and motor across the channel to Kingston where I’ve already booked a slip for the night. (There’s no transient parking in Edmonds.) In the morning, I’d head out alone to finish the trip to Roche Harbor.

It is an ambitious plan and, if I didn’t already have quite a bit of experience last summer at the helm of a 2017 Ranger Tug R-27, I wouldn’t even consider it. Yes, my boat is larger — both in length and beam — but it has basically the same helm setup, right down to the autopilot, chart plotter, throttle controls, and side thrusters. I’m more worried about my arrival at Kingston, which might be after hours, than leaving Kingston or arriving at Roche Harbor the next day. I guess time will tell.

Anyway, that’s the current plan. I’ll write more about it when the trip is over. Stay tuned. Some fun, challenging times are ahead and I’m looking forward to sharing them.