RONNIE'S REFIT — ALL PHOTOS RONNIE SIMPSON
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lmost every boat I've owned has gone through several phases and constantly evolving levels of preparation before I finally shoved off and sailed across a big patch of blue water. It's the nature of being a sailor whose dreams are far bigger than his pocketbook. Buying a boat that is 'ready to go' just isn't a realistic option for me. Instead, I require months and sometimes years of money and effort to bring a tired old boat back to her glory days. There's that first phase, where you've traded a wad of your own hard-earned cash in exchange for someone else's single biggest headache. You're on an unfamiliar dock scratching your head, trying to figure out how to get the boat home. There's likely an old, rotted halyard here and maybe a broken shroud there. The bottom needs a good scrubbing, and the motor may or may not be functional. But sooner or later you're ready for the maiden voyage, and with just a bit of luck it's a good one. Then there's that first overnighter where you fix the broken electrical connections to get the running lights working and make sure your ground tackle is all in order. Then that first big solo trip, where you've just 'Quiver' tucked in at Hawaii Yacht Club's 'Aloha' dock in January. Inset above: With some help, I was able to re-rig 'Quiver' in the slip.
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Latitude 38
• February, 2018
installed a new autopilot and had a couple of fun and sometimes humbling sea trials. Then the first ______. You get the idea. My Peterson 34 Quiver has now been through several of those phases, with just a couple more to go. From 'straight outta Craigslist', to getting her dialed in to live on, to cruising the length of the Hawaiian Islands, Quiver and I have come a long way. During the first week of January, I was wrapping up my final winter break from my studies at Hawaii Pacific University while simultaneously getting ready to drop the mast back into the boat. After a two-week-long refit of the rig complete with days of getting dirty in a boatyard, the constant shuffling of funds on my smartphone, and countless runs to West Marine and the machine shop, we were finally ready to step the mast. As the crane lifted the rig and I watched it go vertical before being set down on the mast step, I got goosebumps. This isn't my first rodeo (far from it), so when I watched that mast go back in the boat, I knew that I had just punched my ticket to go somewhere far away under sail. In this case, my first major bluewater passage with Quiver will be sailing to Tahiti and back this sum-
mer on my final summer break before graduation. After I get my diploma next December, it will be time for an extended surf-focused cruise via several Pacific atolls and Indonesia, with the potential for a fairly quick circumnavigation. Since relocating from San Francisco Bay to Hawaii on my old Cal 29 Loophole, I ended up selling the Cal and somewhat impulsively replacing it a few months later with the Peterson 34 Seabiscuit, which soon became Quiver. Five days after purchasing the boat, I nearly dismasted while sailing in our first Friday night race when a lower headstay toggle (which lived inside the roller furling drum) failed catastrophically. It was the only rigging component that couldn't be seen from a simple visual rig inspection, and as Murphy would have it, it's the one that was a ticking time bomb. Miraculously, the rig stayed up and we motored back to the dock to begin removing the headstay to figure out what
