Another new guy

[tugfan]

I've been a boater since 1994 or so. My current "ride" is a 21' Ribcraft rib. It's like crossing a hummer with a corvette, commercial build, sports car performance. Love my boat. What am I doing here you may ask. My wife, Michele has a vision quest, she sees us doing the ICW or cruising up or down the coast, stopping to smell the roses. I'm not sure I can go from 40+ knots to 8 knots, but am interested in the whole thing.
We were at the Newport RI boat show and saw the Ranger and Nordic tugs and thought, hey, these might be something. What caught my eye was the R-25 because it can be trailered.
So, here we are. My first thought is to look into renting one for a weekend first to see if we like sleeping on a boat. If that goes well, rent one for a week to see if we can live together on a 25' boat. Most likely we will begin phase one next season.
If that goes well, who knows, we may end up Ranger owners.

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?
Bill

 

[Lone Star Ranger]

Bill,

My wife and I have only owned our R-21EC for a couple of weeks, but we've owned a travel trailer for 6 out our 7 year marriage. Boating is very similiar to owning a trailer, there's not much room, much work is involved, and you need to communicate with each other. However, it can bring the two of you together because you have to work together to make it work. Just give yourselves "outlets". We don't live in our trailer or boat, we use it to go to a new location and check out the sites or eat at a new restaurant. Just be prepared to have folks stop and ask about your tug, that's one of the perks about being a tug owner...they do draw attention. 😉

Hope this helps,
John

 

[tugfan]

Hi John,

I agree with the need to work as a team, on a smaller scale we do that now during launch and retrieval, she mans the car, backing the boat into the water, I man the boat side of things. Works well most of the time. I agree it can really build a relationship to a higher level. It's a life style change. I haven't camped in years and never in a trailer, so the space and space confinement would be a transition. I think we would like to spend a month or two out as well as week long trips yearly, so we would spend more time out living on the boat than it sounds like you do. Michele knits, I am a found object artist, but I think welding is out on the boat, so I need another distraction while boating. As far as the attention, I get the same thing with Blue Moon, most people have not seen a privately owned non Coast Guard rib. When I pull up in a 21 ft. inflatable powered by a 150 hp outboard the boat always generates conversation, so that I am used to.
Thanks for your response.

Bill