Bob Perry told you what???
When we started to look for a boat we had so many questions, we didn’t even knew what we were looking for but the one thing i knew is that we wanted a sailboat to leave everything behind and start a new life from scratch, well it wasn’t that simple…
I tried the cruiser forum and i ended clashing with all the jerks and salty bullies that thrive on newbies ignorance to the point i told them to Fuck off!! After several nights surfing the web staring at boats listings trying to understand what kind of boat was the right for us, the name Bob Perry started to become a familiar thing every time i searched for a ”Bluewater Cruiser” (at least i knew that i need a Bluewater cruiser)
So one night i decided to google about Bob Perry, it didn’t took me long to realized that he is like the Michael Jordan of boat designers, pretty much like Jesus, there is a before and after Perry when we talk about cruising boat history.
I wanted to learn everything about Perry and his boats but also learned that he was banned from the same stupid forum i hated, and that moment is when i realized that he was the right guy to ask for advice, i sent an email to his website telling him our history and why we were looking for a boat, i couldn’t believed the next morning when i saw an email from him on my inbox with a photo of him rocking a Gibson guitar and telling me about his teenage band, he told me to feel free to ask him a few questions so i sent him the 3 boats that were meeting my budget ( Not my needs) and this was his response…
Marcel:
Holy cow! You are all over the place. Hard to imagine three boats more dissimilar. I don’t know where to start. You need to narrow down or refine your search parameters more. Right now you have a clunker, the Welly, and old race boat, the Choate (Dennis Choate is a good friend of mine) and a middle of the road, slow Pearson.
What do you want out of a boat? Give me a short bio of your sailing experience.
From the “Holy Cow” i knew my free consultation was over, and having nothing but NONE as the answer to“ a short bio of your sailing experience” i knew that i needed to learn a lot more before keep pushing his kindness.
Maiden Voyage of Gutenprank I
But our time to get the boat was short, we were one month into the Covid-19 lockdown and our family priority was to leave the nasty Downtown as soon as possible, with no income at all our biggest fear was to spend the boat money on rent, being exposed to the virus or whatever crazy shit that might comes to your mind when the world seems to be ending. So i took his word and bought “the middle of the road, slow Pearson” to have a place to live isolated, gain sailing experience and time to learn.
After a few months of sailing and living in our Pearson 365, we realized that we needed a little more space she was the perfect boat for a couple but when you add the 2 dogs, one of them being almost 90 pounds we were a little cramped, so after reading Bob’s book and many other sources i reached back to Perry with a slightly better idea of what i was looking for, this time the 3 boats were a Valiant 40, a Tatoosh 42 and the Mason 43. I sent him the listings links and after debating for a week about the boats his final word was to pull the trigger on the Mason.
i couldn’t believe he was picking the Mason over his own designs, even the Valiant 40 is the boat that launch Bob’s Career to the roof, His Professionalism and ethics are above all, his reasons were honest and clear, the Ta-Shing Yard who builded the Mason was the best yard at that time, the materials and construction quality is way superior and the resale value of the vessel is gonna be way better than the other two contenders, he took the time to go over the survey with me and pointed a few things that i used to my counteroffer.
Every review i found about the Mason’s were amazing, the bulletproof hull and the sturdy construction was making perfect sense for our adventure.
Last Week i went to Seattle for work and emailed Bob telling him that i was gonna be in town and asking if he minded to sign my copy of his book, it shocked me the “Yeah Come by my studio and say hi ” answer and a few hours later i was taking a ride north off Everett,WA winding into a small but beautiful shore road on the peaceful Puget Sound, almost at the end of the road there was this waterfront house with a dock and a clear view of the Olympic Mountains. I called Bob and he came outside to receive us and invited us to follow him into a top floor room surrounded by countless wooden made scale sailboats, music instruments, photos, his drawing table and his computer desk, we shared a nice cup of coffee and talked about music and sailboats for a while, he shared a couple tips about my rigging and sail plans, and didn’t like my idea of going electric that much.
i didn’t want to leave but it was getting the time for me to run back to the studio.
Im not sailing a Perry design how i wanted but only because Bob told me so.