[Rhodes22-list] New addition to the family: Nautisaurus

[Ron Kaye]

Hello all

So... my future wife, Lisa, and I were going to sell our places and buy a
single house together this last Summer.  And move the kids, dogs, and cats
all in together.  That idea turned out to be complex, frustrating, expensive
and too difficult to do in one Summer.   So of course we decided to do
something simple and fun - and what else could that be but buy a sailboat.

I had owned a sailboat for a few years long long ago when life was simple
and there were no children about.  When that life changed and children and
jobs crowded for time and money, the sailboat had to sail out of our lives.
 That was a 27' Balboa, the Kundalini Express.

I took Lisa out on a Flying Scott over the Summer and she was hooked.

Our recently purchased (then unnamed) Rhodes 22 is a '86 hull, refurbished
and bought by the previous owners in 2005.  We had Stan's crew do quite a
bit of additional and refurbish work on her after we bought her out of
brokerage in Sept of this year. She looks brand new now.

We have yet to launch the Nautisaurus since we burned a hub bearing on the
trailer on the way up to Maryland from NC (we are going to dry-sail).  The
Nautisaurus arrived on top of a roll-back flatbed wrecker (remember to take
the mast off the crutch if this happens to you, or it will tear down all the
road signs - but we lowered it).  Then the Yamaha 9.9 need a thermostat that
had to be manufactured deep inside Japan by an irritable and distracted
Ninja.  More than two weeks to get a part.

Question: Is there any advantage to converting the 9.9 to a 15? I'm told it
is easy to do, but would we just going to burn fuel against hull speed?

Raising the mast this weekend was some kind of adventure, arriving on the
scene with about 45 minutes of daylight because of other life complications,
and ending up confused with tiny flashlights panting and squinting at the
instructions (ever heard of a simple illustration Stan - ok sorry, Stan we
love you).  It got better in the light of the following day and we did the
deed.  Next time around it might be a lot easier.

The best part was when we were wallowing around in the cockpit trying to
figure things out in the dark and the bimini was sitting in there and
suddenly the motor lifted up and was grinding at the end of the lift and we
had no idea why it came to life like that.  It was the bimini (in the case)
pushing against the switch that we couldn't see.  The lift seemed to be
undamaged by that accidental activation. Kevin at GBX told me not to run it
up to the end of the lift with the motor or it would break.  I said OK.  I
told Lisa this.  She said OK.  The Nauti has a mind of her own.

We have been reading the discussions here.  Interesting! We are going to ask
a bunch of questions.  Brace yourself.  But for now we just wanted to say
hello to fellow Rhodies.  We love our "new" Rhodes.  She's a beaut.  We'll
try and get a picture or two on here soon.  We are on the middle Potomac.


Ron and Lisa