Deeper dive 1: the liveaboard experience

Time to explore a bit further how daily life is on a boat in Marina Del Rey. As mentioned before, our boat is a relatively large, 15 meter / 46 feet trawler and coastal cruiser built in the eighties with a relatively large amount of interior space and two cabins, one all the way forward, and one all the way ' aft'. There are also two complete bathrooms, with showers. However, since a boat like this, in this marina, cannot be hooked up to the normal water supply and evacuation systems, there are tanks: two for the fresh, clean water coming into the boat that you need for cooking, doing dishes, cleaning, to operate the toilets and showers, and one tank where the water goes once it has been 'used'. The supply tanks are filled periodically with water from the dock using a garden hose. It takes about 10 minutes for each of the two tanks. The used water tank is emptied out by a special commercial service, called 'pump-out service' who come alongside the boat and literally pump out the tank. We have a choice of many providers, and chose ' Popeye's Pumpout'.  He came once so far, and has to come again soon.

From day 1 however, I decided to use the showers and bathrooms that are provided for resident and guests of the marina on the docks. This means every morning I take my bag of soap, shaving cream, toothpaste and everything else to the bathroom, shave, brush my teeth and shower, on the dock. Recently Anneke decided to follow the same approach, so that the whole pumpout experience will be a thing of the past soon. This is because the water from the kitchen, where we do the dishes, wash our hands etc, is considered 'grey' and that means clean enough to just go overboard into the marina water. For this reason we use biodegradable detergents and soaps.

One requirement for living aboard is that you have to obtain a permit from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department. To get such a permit, which is free, you have to make an appointment with the Sheriff's office. Someone comes on board, inspects the boat to make sure it is fit to be lived on, including fire extinguishers, smoke alarms and so on, and if you pass you get a liveaboard sticker to place on the hull so that the Sheriff can easily see when they come from time to time whether everyone who is living on a boat has the required permit. We had not gotten around to arranging for this until a few weeks ago, and here is the result:

It must be renewed annually.

Another adventure concerns our vehicles. In my previous post I posted photos of the BMW scooter/motorycle and of the Volvo. One more of the Volvo:

The difference with the prior picture is that you can now see the ' NL'  sticker. I added that primarily because some people expressed doubt that the general public, confronted with the personalized license plate I composed, of ' WDN SHZ' would somehow not be able to figure out that this obviously stands for ' WOODEN SHOES', which is the concept most Americans think of when they hear ' Holland'. I think that concern was a bit exaggerated, because even without the sticker two guinea pigs immediately guessed the deeper meaning. But there you have it.

Cheapskate that I am, I have long ago abandoned buying cars new, opting instead for 'good used'. In 2005 I bought our 2002 Volvo C70, then at 30,000 kilometers and still with us (well, in France) now at some 250,000 kms. Then, in 2010, I bought our 2003 Volvo S80 four door sedan, when it had 66,000 kms. We also still have that car and it now has over 200,000 kms. I do all the repairs and maintenance on these cars myself, after some poor experiences with the Volvo dealer in Geneva and the experience with those two Volvos has been so good that, this time, I dared go even older: a 2008 (so now 10 years old) Volvo C70 with 150,000 kms on the clock.

The main advantage of buying older cars of course is the cost: this Volvo was about 1/8th the price of a new one. I buy these used cars not at a professional dealer, I prefer to get them from the private owners instead. More risk, more fun. This one was being offered for sale in Craigslist (the US equivalent of Marktplaats.nl or Ricardo.ch) by its second owner, a very friendly engineer from India who works at Boeing. Some things were wrong with the car during the test drive: it vibrated slightly when you accellerated, it vibrated also when you brought the thing to a stop, and it was generally sluggish. No problem I thought, I am a DIY guy, nothing I can't fix. So I bid low, he took the bid, and after the cash and paperwork changed hands the next day, I drove it home.

Fast forward several weeks. Living in the marina, there is no obvious way to work on a car. You do this either in the parking lot on the street and in the hot sun, or you find a garage where you can rent space and tools by the hour. In all of Los Angeles, I was only able to find one such a garage to my surpise, in Burbank. It's about 45 minutes drive each way. So one Sunday I went there, armed with new brake discs, a set of spark plugs, oil, filters, windshield wipers and also a 'turbo control valve' that regulates the turbo pressure when accellerating. Many hours later I emerged from the garage and the car no longer vibrated when braking, drove altogether nicer, and had become much  quicker. Result!  Fast forward two more months, and today I fixed, this time in the marina parking lot, the vibration issue when accellerating by installing a new drive axle. Now the car drives and handles like new. We'll see how long this Volvo manages to carry us around in style and comfort. We're not adding that many miles to it, as I do all commuting by motorcycle and Anneke does almost all her business around town on her snazzy bicycle.

More on the motorcycles, and on so many other things we have experienced and done here in LA, in the coming days. Thanks for reading!

Well it has been a really long time! So time to catch up and resume regular postings.

In a nutshell, what has transpired since the last post:

• we moved with the cats to Marina Del Rey. It was a long flight with Air France as the flight was ultimately cancelled after waiting many hours at the terminal in Charles de Gaulle airport for ' technical problems'. We were put up for the night in a hotel and next day tried again, this time we made it over. The cats held themselves beautiifully so now we know they can travel well
• when we arrived on a Sunday end of February we picked up our rental car and headed for the Marina. Keys were waiting and we moved straight on board of our new home
• there were many things to be done to get settled:
• open a bank account
• apply for social security cards at the Social Security office
• buy a car and a motorcycle. I found a good used Volvo C70 (2009) and an almost-new (2017) BMW C650 Sport maxi-scooter
  
  
  
  
• try to get our French driver's licenses converted into California licenses. Unfrotunately the United States do not recognize any 'foreign' licenses and boy what a journey that turned out to be (today 4.5 months later I finally passed my last of the exams: theory, car driving and motorcycle driving tests and the new license is in the mail)
• replace a bunch of furniture
• get to know the boat
• buy bicycles

Here are some random photos that give an impression of where we have landed:

See you!

We are back in business

Well, the good news came last week, that our visas have been approved. On Thursday we made our 6 hour trek to Paris, for the last installment being an interview with a consular officer at the impressive US Embassy in the City of Lights. On that particular day however, the city was more of a 'submerged' affair due to the heaviest rains since 1906 and although we had factored in a 2-hour safety margin to make our 11 o'clock appointment, we were only 2 minutes early. Those 2 minutes were all that the friendly consular officer needed to vet my Anneke and me. So after a quick lunch we headed back. 12 hours of travel for 2 minutes of official business. The boat purchase is back on, and on Thursday it will be closely examined by our surveyors. Fingers crossed for no surprises, and in two or three weeks we will be in our new home (country). Can't wait!

Unexpected delay

Brief update on progress: last week, we learned that our application for a work permit had incurred a very unexpected delay. Until now we had understood that we would receive our permit last Friday, after an interview we had scheduled at the US Consulate in Paris. However, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services informed us that they need more information before they can make a decision, and our immigration advisers cannot make any prediction on how long this additional step might take.
This was a serious disappointment and a major surprise. Although after some researching on-line it seems this is quite normal: in 2014 the rate of these requests for additional information was over 50%, and that rate has probably gone up since then. It's just that our advisers never mentioned this, until we had already made all the preparations, picked out our favorite boat and marina, and so forth (everything you can read about in this blog so far). The thing we were least concerned about ends up being the biggest roadblock.
So I immediately canceled the contract for the boat purchase and the surveys we were going to have done, and informed the marina. Everyone was really understanding about this new twist, which is nice.
So we've had to adjust our plans quite a bit. We remain hopeful that, in the end, the visa will be approved because we meet all of the criteria, and that the process will not be delayed too much. Meanwhile we are looking forward to spending the holidays together (our son flew in from Irvine on Sunday, and I picked him up from Geneva last night) and keeping our hopes up that we won't have to wait too long.
When I joined my current employer, the estimate at that time was that the visa would take less than 6 months to obtain. That is now 15 months ago, and it could take many more.... When I joined a previous organization in Switzerland, also not an EU country that has tough immigration laws, the work permit process took three weeks and I think it is similar in my native The Netherlands. Oh well.
The Kha Shing boat is of course back on the market. Don't anybody buy it, you hear ?!  ;-)

Change of plan: when a boat has blisters on its bottom

Time for an update on our boat purchase process. After we had found Islandia, and agreed on a purchase price subject to satisfactory survey (= having two experts, one mechanical systems and one everything else, going over the boat in detail, including taking it out of the water for inspection of the bottom, and taking it out ON the water for a spirited run), this past week those surveys were done.

Unfortunately, 'Islandia' turns out to have the dreaded 'blister problem': water that gets through the coating and into the hull of the boat and starts to slowly cause problems. This plagues a lot of polyester boats, and has a lot to do with the quality of how it was built and subsequently maintained. In many instances it never becomes a really big problem so long as it is attended to on a regular basis, unless you are unlucky for whatever reason and it does become the Big Problem. At that point, the bottom needs to essentially be totally redone which costs months and many tens of thousands - not good, especially if this is your home! The surveyor nor the other experts who looked at the condition could really predict whether we would have 'The Big Problem' in the foreseeable future, or not. Fact was that this boat has hundreds of blisters, that are relatively close together.

A picture of the blistered bottom:

In addition, the mechanical survey turned up a host of smaller and larger issues, the cost of which to address would be around $6 thousand. One thing that really bothered us was that the engine oil had not been replaced in the last 6 years, a sign of neglect and nonchalance; oil should really be replaced at least every year.

We decided we would rather not take the chance and, yesterday, Steve (our marvelous broker) and I looked at two more boats we had on the reserve list: a 1986 Spindrift and a 1985 or so Hershine. We met the owner of the Spindrift, Rob. A very nice software developer in his early thirties who had bought the boat in May 2015 and had lived on it for a few years, until his newfound better half convinced him that life 'on the hard' (another nautical term, this one means 'land') was better after all, and so now it was for sale:

We woke Rob, and another person, up as we were thirty minutes early and the night before had seen 'a bit of a party'. What struck me was that this Spindrift boat was a lot roomier than the other boats we had seen until now, and certainly a lot roomier than 'Islandia'. This is because it is just a bit wider, taller and also it does not have a rear 'cockpit' so the entire length of the boat is used for living space. Here as an example is the rear ('aft') deck:

And here the master cabin. This had a tabby (red and white) cat lazily observing the newcomers:

Long story short was that we put in an offer for the Spindrift. If we can agree on a price, then the same surveyors who helped us surface the various issues with 'Islandia' will have a go at the Spindrift (which Anneke and I just agreed we would name 'Jantje' in honor of one of our cats). One thing Rob assured us of is that Jantje does not have any blisters - we shall see!

A quick update: we reached agreement on the price and other conditions with the seller of 'Islandia'. On Monday, a professional surveyor will take the boat through its paces during a 'sea trial' and the boat will be hauled out of the water to get a good look at the hull. Another surveyor will examine the engines. If those surveys come back positive, and we obtain the necessary permits, we will be all set. We expect to have all wrapped up by or shortly after Christmas.
So our visit this week has been highly productive: we found a very nice boat, also found LA and the marina to be better than we had hoped for, and 'en passant' also saw our son Victor, who started his university studies at University of California at Irvine last September, a couple of times during our week's stay.
Now we are all packed, ready for the flight back to France in a couple of hours. I will be returning on Sunday for a week in LA at work and to take care of a few things related to the boat purchase and permit applications.
Result!

Fingers crossed ... we made an offer on a boat

Last Thursday evening we arrived in Los Angeles, after a long-ish journey that had us fly from Paris CDG, via Montreal, to LAX. We picked up our rental car and settled into our AirBnB apartment in Venice Beach for the week:

The next day we met our broker, Steve Curran of Marina del Rey Yacht Sales, at his office in Marina del Rey:

Steve showed us the three boats we had selected to see, as well as another one that he had identified might fit our profile.

The first boat needed a lot of freshening up, literally as well as figuratively. It smelled a bit musty and was just tired. We then saw the second boat (our 'favorite' from an earlier post), a 1995 47 foot Lien Hwa aft cabin motor yacht built in Taiwan, named 'Islandia':

The third boat was much smaller and also a bit tired. The fourth was a true classic yacht, that had been owned by a prominent member of the Marina del Rey Yacht Club and was docked there, waiting for its new owners:

Long story short, after this tour of the first four candidates we decided to suspend the next day's viewings, in San Pedro, Long Beach and San Diego and put in a written bid on 'Islandia'.

We are keeping to Europe time, turning in around 4 (Anneke) and 6 (Cees) PM, and wake up around 3 AM. We're not the only ones awake at this time though; our friendly and laid-back neighbours are still out, chatting, playing music, sometimes making a small wood fire. It's definitely a beach community.

One great discovery we made early yesterday, as the sun was coming up, is that beautiful nature is only 20 minutes away from the marina. At the crack of dawn yesterday, we drove to Topanga State Park:

The park is just west of Santa Monica / Marina del Rey and gives us a very similar nature sensation we get at our home in Guyonvelle. So when we want to smell the trees we just circle up there and go for a hike. No doubt there is lots more of beautiful nature around.

We topped of the early morning with a coffee and omelet at this place, just off the Venice Beach boardwalk. A meeting place for surfers young and old, joggers but most of all dogs:

So now we are waiting to hear back on our offer on 'Islandia'. If accepted, next steps involve selecting two marine surveyors (one for the Ford diesel engines, one for all the other facets) and getting her out on the ocean for what is called a 'sea trial'.  Steve is confident we can work this out, and really likes this boat. We agree and hope this will become our new home for the next thirty or so years ...