The following articles all concern our adventures in Murre.
Murre is a Far East Mariner ketch of 31 feet, Japan built in 1972, whose design and furnishings are reminiscent of Herreshoff and Garden and the much older yachts that cruised just after World War II. Her decidedly full keel, spade rudder, worm gear steering and wooden ship's wheel; her rig, wooden masts, sprit and tackle; her twin teak samson posts; her bronze hardware all speak to the values of a previous era. And though her hull is of fiberglass, her only modern feature, its lines suggest a lofting floor rather than a mold.In short, when we bought Murre in 2001, nearly 30 years after she was lowered into Los Angeles Harbor from the decks of a freighter, she was an old boat based on old ideals of what constituted seaworthy yacht construction. These were our ideals too, so when we first met, and as she sat proudly in her slip, newly painted and accompanied by her broker's confident, mellifluous baritone, we were easily overmatched.
Which goes some way toward explaining why so many of these articles concentrate on restoration and why our acquisition of carpentry skill was driven much more by necessity than natural inclination.
But for all our time with hammer and saw there has been plenty of sailing to chronicle, plenty of cruises in and around our home waters of San Francisco Bay.
The work and the sailing continue, as does the "worse habit of writing about them."
