- About the boat
- Learning the Boat
- Training in my new crew
- Plan for improvements
- The name "Tchoupitoulas"
- Some more pictures
- Log
About the Precision 18 Other People's Boats Small Boat Sites
After almost 20 years out of regular sailing, I broke down to the long-simmering longing and bought a boat. After a lot of worrying over how much to spend, and a lot of struggle trying to find a boat close to home, I settled on a 1987 Precision 18.
My criteria were:
- $5,000 budget;
- Boat in good shape;
- Room enough for myself, wife two kids and sometimes a goodly sized lab/spaniel mix dog;
- Stable and dry enough to keep the above mentioned non-sailers happy;
- Room below for a porta-potty, kids looking to get out of the sun, and sometimes the dog;
- Simple enough to give me time to re-orient myself to sailing; and finally,
- Sporty enough to be fun to sail after I got my sea legs back and got my crew trained up a bit.
Boat shopping is a little thin around Fargo, N.D. Most of the boats on the Minnesota Lakes are racing scows, old beach toys (many left over from the 1970s gas crisis craze of sailboat buying, or bought for children long gone and now sitting neglected under canvas), too pricey or requiring too much work.
This forced me down toward the cities to look at the boatyards for used boats. Having scouted around on-line and in-person, I found the best selection was at Hooper's Yacht's. This is where I found Tangent. It's a great place to look for a used boat. The staff is helpful when needed but mostly leave you alone to wander the yard and check out their entire stock. I would recommend them to anyone in the area looking for boats. They are also a Precision dealer.
The boat, rigging and sails are very good shape. All that was needed was a coat of bottom paint and a new centerboard painter. I took delivery on June 21, and survived the five hour drive from Afton, MN back to Fargo, ND with cool bearings and everything I left Afton with in tow.
The boat is berthed at J&K Marina on Little Detroit Lake on the Detroit Lakes, MN waterfront. This map shows the lake in general contour. The marina is about where the highway indicator "22" is on the map at the lakefront.
We used to live about a block from the marina at 1306 Lake Ave, in a mostly original 1919 home. It was a thing of beauty, but with a daughter just starting kindergarten and a toddler son, we weren't ready for a This Old House trip. Rebecca, who was staying home with the kids at the time, did a wonderful job on painting and generally making it look lovely inside. But I digress.
The boat name, Tchoupitoulas, is a Louisiana Indian name which I've been told means people who live down in the mud by the river, but which further research revealed to mean "Piney Rest". This sounds a bit like Northern Minnesota, and so the name seems twice apt for a gunk hole draft boat on a lake in the piney wooded north. The boat was purchased with the name Tangent, and was one of two P-18s with the same name, as I discovered via the Internet. A peculiar coincidence, to say the least.
Yahoo/GeoCities only allows one guest book, and that's now shard with my ZenGarden page. Please drop by and leave a note about the Precision pages.
Here's today's weather for our Lake:
