CATEGORY: SAILING (ALL THE SAILING STORIES ARE GROUPED TOGETHER ALTHOUGH THEY SPAN MORE THAN 15 YEARS)
PHOTOS: 1) THE THUNDERBIRD
2&3) BOB ANDERSON

When I first met Bob he had a sailboat which he kept in Seattle.  On his maiden voyage with this boat, he discovered Port Townsend, and after we were married he moved his boat there.  Not only was it a beautiful town; it was one day closer to the San Juan Islands, the first stop on any cruise to the American and Canadian islands.

The boat was a Thunderbird, which meant it was a 27 ft. sloop that was designed to be made of marine plywood.  “Sloop” means it had a single foremast with a mainsail and jib . Bob’s registry number was 33, meaning it was the thirty third one ever built.  Because plywood cannot be bent into a complex curve, it had what is called a “hard chine,” meaning it was “folded” at the bow and stern.  It was a sleek little boat made for speed and ease of sailing.  It was low.  One could not stand up in the cabin, so it had a “pop top.”  That is, the top popped up when it was necessary to stand, as when cooking.  If the weather was bad, there were canvas pieces that snapped onto the open sides.

The boat had four bunks, two forward and two aft.  The forward ones were in the typical V shape arrangement commonly seen in the bow of small cabin boats.  The aft ones were narrow with most of their length being under the seats at the sides of the cockpit.  These cockpit seats opened so that the bunks could be used for sail storage when not in use for sleeping.  The heads of these bunks extended into the cabin for about thirty inches making places for two people to sit facing each other across the cabin entrance.

The hull of the boat was navy blue.  Bob painted eyes, fashioned after those of Northwest Indian art, one on each side of the front of the bow, so the boat could “see where it was going” and therefore never hit a rock.  The main circle of the eye was royal blue with an inverted new moon in red below it.  The eye was outlined in white with a white stripe extending to the stern.  A light blue stripe above the white, next to the aft deck, completed the design.  

This boat, which Bob never named, but called 33 instead, was the pride and joy of his life.  It soon became an important joy of mine too.