Learning to be Scottfree!

[Scottfree]

Our purchase of a well known Ranger 29 (formally Karma) has been challenging, educational and most recently on the Desolation Sound run extremely rewarding. We are new to boating with the purchase of this boat. How new? Other than a few hours in small tin fishing boats we have never owned or operated a boat! We purchased her at Christmas 2012 and towed her to Vancouver Island from Seattle, an adventure in itself! A very experienced friend helped us get it from the trailer to our slip at Canoe Cove. The effort, learning and shear terror that took place in the months to follow we're character shaping to say the least. Although a used but very well maintained vessel it came with the need of the required maintenance. Being a Do It Yourself kind of guy I dug in? The learning curve immense! I spent hours with the dozens of manuals and found myself in the strangest positions trying to find the various parts mentioned in the manuals. How did they get that in there? I'm a Gearhead and have built cars from the ground up. The Yanmar was the easiest, the alarms, electrics and the navigation was a whole new thing. I ignored the 6 batteries, what could go wrong with that many batteries? You could weld plate steel with that much amperage! Well they were the original batteries and for whatever reason, shot! Without shore power we could not run anything. We managed to stay connected by sharing power with the generous fellow Tuggers and stayed through to the second night at Gorge Harbour. We left very early and headed for our slip at Canoe Cove. In a mere 14 hours we were back in our slip. A new set of batteries and a day cleaning and regretfully we caught our flight back to Alberta.

We met a lot of fantastic people and wish we had more time to spend with all of them. We handed out our boater cards to anyone that we spoke with, I think?? I still have a few more years to works according to my banker but after that its time to tackle ourBucket list! A lot more of Desolation Sound, the Great Loop and numerous beautiful places in Canada we have never seen. Our investment in this lifestyle is certain to be the most rewarding thing we have done. Thank you Ranger Tugs for creating such a wonderful lifestyle and thank you all the patient and wonderful Tugnutters that make boating so special.

Leon and Karen

 

[Irish Mist]

You did what I warn people not to do all the time since I got my Tug.. Jump into a big investment before you boat for a bit to be sure...so many see the tug and the dreams start... But seems in your case will work out.. 🙂 go slow and get comfortable with everything .. It is really straight forward and should be mostly fun with a bit of terror which makes for good stories later.. Enjoy the journey and from all the reading I did about your tug before I purchased mine I think you have one of the best equipped tugs out there.. Good luck and as you know lots of help and advice here.. 🙂