Posted: May 16 2010 at 13:44 | IP Logged

My wife Gerda & I have owned a 1982 34' Californian, here in San Diego, CA, for just about 3 years now. We are only the third owners. The previous owners took great care of "GetAwayII" and we are continuing the tradition. We had no previous boating experience (except I used to do the fiber glass repairs on my father's small cris craft fishing boat many many years ago). We have a great broker to thank for steering us in the right direction (Bob Bryan at California Yachts, Harbor Island West, San Diego, CA). He would not let us buy more boat than we could afford, than we could manage, and that we could do most of the cosmetic work ourselves (wood work, waxing, pump exchanges, and so forth). He also made sure the boat was in tip top shape before we bought it (services, liens, and so forth). We have become great friends. He made all the difference in the world in our boating experience. Then there are our fellow boaters in our Marina (sail & power boaters). They are great people and we help each other out (to include watching each others boats for problems). Now, what we are having difficulty finding are any West Coast based salavage companies that might have Californian cabinetry (lockers) that we could refinish and install. Ours are fine, but we have ideas to compliment what we have. We have an upper and lower helm, single salon, full galley, full head, single state room forward, powered by 2 85 hp Perkins Diesels. We also can't find any reasonably priced (if there is such a thing) wood tables we could use in the salon as both a coffee table and eating table. We also have room in the salon (next to the galley which is down) to put a small dining table & two benches (that could also be used for storage). Any ideas?

Also, we just replaced the original battery charger and batteries, and the fresh water pump. Do you have any ideas in terms of preventive maintenance or upgrading other mechanical parts (such as shower pump and so forth)? We have fuel filters.

Now, the biggie for you. We don't have a generator on board which is amazing since the previous two owners traveled routinely to Mexico and out to Catalina for weeks on end. Should we consider installing one?

I know the above is a lot, but as you can probably surmise we still consider ourselves novices after 3 years (and from a safety standpoint that's probably good).

We are open to any recommendations -- especially self-help since we are definitely not wealthy but truly have come to love boating (even more than living on land).

v/r,

dan & gerda hatton

san diego, cal