Our Boat

China Doll

After our long, long search, just about when we were going to give up, we tried a local Craigslist search.  We found a Sabre 28 listed within our budget and the photos looked great, but we'd been fooled before.  Nicole and I hopped in the car and headed down The Garden State Parkway to exit 25 and were pleasantly surprised.  When we arrived, Janis, the owner, already had the boat running despite it being on the hard.  While I tapped and tugged on every service and fixture of the boat, Nicole pleasantly chatted with Janis and got the back story.  We left with the boat's manual and every part that had been installed on it.  10 minutes into our drive home I said, "One of us should say it." 
     Nicole simply replied, "It's not going to be me."
     "Fine, I'll bite the bullet.  I think we found our boat."
     "Let's make an offer."
And the rest as they say, is history.  Janis took our offer, we launched the boat during the survey, loaded our stuff 5 days later, and left the dock at just about a week without a look back.  This is China Doll.



Sabre 28



Just to give everyone an idea of what our boat is like, here's a rundown of her systems as they came with the boat.  Most of them will be upgraded, but not nearly to the degree of an RTW boat, or something you read in Nigel Calder's books, because frankly, you don't really need most of that stuff, you just have to be willing to adapt.

I'll try to go from the bow of the boat working towards the stern topside, then belowdecks, but if it gets random, too bad.

Ground tackle: 60 ft of 1/2" rode, 15 ft chain, 12-15 lb. danforth anchor

Sails:  Roller furling jib with blue solar rim.  Mainsail equipped with boom roller reefing.  Both sails were relatively new and fresh.  Backups came with the boat.  They were loaded with spiders.  Yes, I literally mean arachnids.

Running rigging:  Relatively new.  It's white with blue and red specks, which I hate because it's not easy to see most of the time.

Standing rigging:  I think it's actually the original stuff.  It did come factory installed with an additional forward lower shroud to combat the mast-pumping problem originally found in the Sabre 28 design.

Steering:  Tiller with autopilot.

Radar arch with swim step.  Makes the boat quite a bit bigger and is great for fishing.
Sanitation:  Porta potty with 5 gal. holding tank.  Came with fitting to connect pump-out.  Originally not connected.  Sun shower.
Galley:  2 burner Kenyon alcohol stove, not working, 1 burner portable GloMate butane stove, Norcold refrigerator.  When connected to shore power we also have a toaster oven and microwave.  2 Caesars palace coffee thermoses.
Water:  20 gal. holding tank with 1 liter accumulator for water pressure.
Electrical/electronics:  Mounted VHF radio w/ antenna on radar arch, depth finder, fan.

The boat also came with a ton of little stuff that saved us heaps of money.  Fenders, docklines, flares, inflatable lifejackets with harnesses are just a few to name.  Also, the previous owners had done the major refit projects for us.  Chain plates, stanchions, new sails, sealed the leaks (windows, handles, etc.), and a few other things.

We will or have already upgraded any system that we thought would hinder us from staying away from marinas for extended periods.  While in the short-run these were cash expenditures that we really didn't want to outlay considering our budget, in the long-run, these upgrades would save us money.  However, we didn't actually do these upgrades until we realized that the current system in place was not sustainable, we'd exhausted all other quick alternatives, and we'd done tons of research to figure out the lowest cost way to execute the upgrades.  Check out "The List" page for stuff we've been working on and how we've done it.