Our New Sailboat

We sold our 1979 CSY 33′ Cutter rigged monohull recently when we discovered my wife was pregnant with our second child. The CSY boats are virtually bullettproof and are extremely rugged with a solid fiberglass layup and a modified full keel, making it a great boat for blue water cruising and for beginners alike. The only problem, it has one berth.

We could overcome this problem with one child, but with a newborn and a 2 year old the odds are stacking against us for a home with growth.

Living on a sailboat is about compromise. There is no ONE perfect sailboat, no matter how much or how little money you have. There’s an old saying;

You can have GOOD, FAST, and CHEAP! You just can’t have all three at the same time!

When we were making our wish list we realized that living on a sailboat with children added important requirements we wouldn’t have considered flying solo without kids.

Even with our daughter, Emma James, on the boat starting at 14 months old we noted the need for some flat play space Emma could play unrestricted and unsupervised. In the CSY, I took out the center dining table and it really opened up the salon making a perfect play area for Emma James down below.

She was small enough and the V berth was big enough, we could co-sleep with Emma and basically ’stash’ Emma James in the fore peak of the “V” and we could sleep on a diagonal allowing me to sleep on the outside to easily creep out of bed at night to check the anchorage or weather.

The only problem was that the V berth was pretty high off the sole. We had a little step stool for Hil to climb up in tho the V berth. We were concerned that Emma James could fall the near four feet out of the V berth. As a result, we couldn’t leave her unattended in the V berth. We were working on a gate to make sure she was safe, but we sold the boat before we came up with an ideal solution.

On our trip down to the Keys from Georgia, you pretty much bash to windward from Georgia until you hit Palm Beach where Florida starts falling off to the west. During our offshore legs through the night, it became challenging for Hil, my wife, to wrangle Emma James and prepare meals or even attending to basic needs with the heel of the boat and the seemingly never ending bashing through the waves.

One hopes and plans to minimize the bashing experience, but it is a undeniable reality. There’s another great truism that applies here;

If Momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy

My wife is a trooper and I’m lucky to have found someone like her with an adventurous spirit and the ability to embrace the unknown, but what’s the point of making her life harder than it needs to be- goodness knows we are far enough out of the box already the adventure should be FUN not painful.

As a result, we decided we would look for a Catamaran or a Trimaran for both the stability and the increased living area. Due to the popularity and expense of catamarans, our choices boiled down to an older Prout Catamaran (and I mean OLDER- like early 1970’s), a Gemini Catamaran made by Performance Cruising out of Maryland, or a 35′ to 40′ homebuilt trimaran designed by Jim Brown called a SeaRunner.

While all three have their Pro’s and Con’s here’s the short list of why we chose to buy a Gemini Catamaran:

• MOST IMPORTANTLY- We found an excellent deal on a Gemini Catamaran in Mexico.
• The Gemini is 14′ at the beam which makes it possible to use the same haulout facilities as monohulls. The Prouts and Trimarans are too wide for most lifts.
• With the 14′ beam we can still fit in a standard slip, making slips cheaper and more plentiful than a T head for wide boats.
• The Gemini has a pullman master berth that is ‘about’ the same size as a queen bed- quite a luxury!
• The Gemini has a total of 3 berths (2 adults and 2 children or the family unit and grandparents).
• There is plenty of cockpit ‘playroom’ space for the kids.
• The 1993 Gemini we found is the first year with stern swim steps, making it easier for Mom and the kids to get in the boat. This year is the first year of the 3400 model with some additional ‘roomier’ changes in the floorplan.
• The Gemini has dagger boards that drop down to allow up to over five feet of keel depth, making going to windward more efficient.
• On the other hand, with the dagger boards up, the Gemini only draws 18″ of water.
• Our Gemini has a gas outboard on a ’sled’ that you can raise and lower out of the water. Besides being easy to maintain and replace, when the outboard is out of the water you can beach the Gemini in shallow water.
• The Gemini comes with an ‘instant on’ propane powered hot water heater (hot water? A luxury!)
• The Gemini comes standard with a ‘dorm like’ fridge that is either powered by 12v, 110v, or propane. A standard BBQ tank provides refrigeration, hot water, and fuel for the stove for about 2 months.

Were still working on moving onto the boat full time while overcoming the logistics of buying a boat on the west coast of Mexico while currently living on the east coast of the USA.

Here’s some photo’s of our 1993 Gemini 3400 Catamaran that I took during the inspection of the boat. The boat was not cleaned up and desperately needs basic maintenance. Without going into the philosophical musings of the soul of a boat, all boats benefit from regular use of all the systems. Keeping this in mind, these photos show the ‘gem’ as we first found her in San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico.

1993 Gemini 3400 Catamaran Inspection55 pictures

I’ll update photos of the Gemini 3400 as we continue to clean up and make improvements as necessary.