Some of you may not be familiar with the story of my Jupiter 31, so here's the tale of me and the boats...... I live in Maui most of the time. Maui is truly a great place for outdoor activities and a superb place to own a boat. It is always summer for all practical purposes. I've had 2.01 boats there. I started out with a Parker 25. It was the medium V version, which is very efficient, nimble and good on fuel. Its downside is that it is unruly in any chop over a couple feet. If it does not loosen your upper fillings and collapse your knees, it will drown you instead. In all fairness, the water in Maui gets pretty rough. By 11 am, the trades are generally blowing about 20 knots and they blow parallel to the shore of the primary boating area. That means it does not matter which way you go from the dock - you are going to face steep chop either as a head sea or a following sea.
I put up with the Parker for several years and replaced it with a Stamas 29 Tarpon. Marked improvement in space and creature comfort. Stamas boats are noted for their huge cockpits and this was no exception. I bought the boat in So Carolina, towed it to Los Angeles and completely re-rigged it. The 29 Tarpon is a decent boat, but they are bow heavy and have a tendency to bury the bow in steep chop, with green water coming aboard to greet you. If you look at the bow on one, you'll say "No way". Yeah, there is a way. The running surface goes to the absolute end of the hull and it has 310 gallons of fuel under the leaning post. The bow is not as full as it might be and it does not have much flare, so it is really happy to go into a wave instead of rising above it. I put 18 inch brackets on the boat along with a pair of Honda 225s. I also took out the twin tanks and replaced 'em with a single 135 gallon tank set aft as far as possible. The net result was perfect. The boat handles very well and the tendency to submarine is gone.
The Stamas and I were getting along just fine, even though I would have liked a bit more deadrise to soften the ride. But it was a good boat and set up very well for diving, which is my primary activity. I dive a lot. My boat typically will go in the water 5 days a week. One day, I was at the ramp when a commercial operator came up to me and asked if the boat was for sale. I said "No". He responded "Everything is for sale". At that point I was gut hooked and it was only a matter of determining the price. When all was said and done, he not only owned the boat, but he bought my truck as well. He's been using the boat for charter fishing and he and his clients love it. We talk frequently and have become good friends over the boat. That's the good news.
The bad news is my wife, who is also my frequent dive partner, was not at all happy that I sold the boat. She knows better than I do what I put into them and was very displaced not to have a boat in the driveway. So, after she found she could not stop the sale, she said "OK, find a new boat. But when you do, you cannot sell it until its replacement is sitting next to it." That, folks, is both a very happy and unusual thing to hear from your wife.......
So, I took the money from the Stamas and booked flights to places like Houston, Tampa and Ft. Lauderdale. A center console is perfect for Hawaii and those are the best places to buy them. I looked at another Stamas, Contenders, the Southport 28 and several other boats.. The Southport reamins a favorite, but it was just a bit too small. Then I sea trialed the Jupiter 31 that was for sale in Ft Lauderdale. I loved it. It had a arch, a decent head and everything but a transom door. It had a couple problems as well. It had been stored in the water, so it had bottom paint. It was also hospital green. So I bought it and the first thing I had to do was to get a trailer for it. McClain Trailers, in Houston, makes a very nice trailer. Now I live in Hawaii, so how do you buy a trailer, get it to Florida and then get the boat and trailer back to Hawaii? Well, since I had sold my truck, I found a new one for sale in Salina, Kansas. I got everything lined up, flew to Salina, where I picked up the truck and drove to Houston. Once I had the trailer, it was off to Ft. Lauderdale. I had found someone in Fort Lauderdale that did soda blasting, so I ran the boat over to them and they hauled it for blasting, with the idea that it was then going on the new trailer and back to California. That's where the planning and good news came unwound. They soda blasted a couple areas and it came out perfectly. The gelcoat had not been overly scuffed for the bottom paint, so it looked like $2500 later, I was going to have a boat with no bottom paint. They then tented the boat and the guy put on a blast suit and went to town. 2 hours later he was done - and so was the gel coat. In many areas it was just plain gone. The yard, who shall remain un-named, but is really big and in Fort Lauderdale said "Oh, that can happen sometimes. It is really hard for the operator to see what is going on. they then quoted me $ 17,000 to fix what they'd just done!
So I loaded the boat with the remaining 80 percent of its gelcoat on the trailer and towed it to Los Angeles. I had a couple fiberglass people come out and look at it and they all said it was too big a job. They suggested a good yard about 20 miles away. I took it to the yard and they said "No problem." Now that was music to my ears - until I got the quote. I almost needed to have my heart re-started when I read $ 25,500.00 to re-gelcoat the bottom and sides. At that point, I figure it was time to improve my own gelcoat skills. But I had just gotten started, when someone suggested a place in Lake Havasu, AZ, who could do it. I called them and they asked me to bring it in. It is 310 miles from LA to Havasu, but when you are getting bids of $25k to make the boat so you can put it in the water, you will drive 310 miles. They looked and said "Easy fix. We'll hoist it up and re-gelcoat the entire bottom for $6,000. A month earlier, the idea of spending 6 grand to gelcoat the bottom would have stopped me in my tracks. But instead I said to call me when it was ready.
They took about 6 weeks and did a magnificent job. They could not do anything to blend in the sides where the factory had done the Imron green, so they suggested a local boat paint shop that could do it. I talked to them and we laid out the colors. Two weeks later, it was done and spectacular.
Once I had a boat that could actually go back in the water, I added dive ladders, a windlass, all new upholstery, re-powdercoated all the pipework, installed all new electronics including underwater xenon lighting and video. The boat was perfect. I then took it to Matson Navigation and said "ship it to Maui." It missed the first ship and then the second. But six weeks later, I got the call I was waiting for. "Come pick up your boat" was music to my ears.
Then I got to the boat. It took only a moment to see that something was seriously wrong. Their version is different than mine. They say it fell off the rack on the ship. To me, something very heavy, like a container, hit the boat at about the rub rail level and turned the boat about 20 degrees on the trailer and then crushed it. Once the boat could no longer move out of the road, the hull side pushed in until things broke. It broke at the middle of the gunwale on both sides, at the anchor locker (both sides) and at the transom, also on both sides. The liner cracked along the cockpit floor. The arch had transfered force from the impact side to the far side meaning the boat, along with my year of work was lost. There was no question that it was a total.
The boat was insured, but not for enough. Everyone who owns a boat should really think about what it would really cost to replace it. I had insured it for what I thought I had in it. But when I started totaling up my costs, I was underinsured by at least $20K. The boat was insured by Progressive, who handled the claim well, but slowly. It took almost 10 weeks to get paid, even with a clear cut claim. But they did pay and I am still insured with them. One other thing to remember. When it is a total, you get to remove nothing. It becomes their boat, along with everything you put in it. You may be able to buy the salvage, but in this case, they wanted $50,000 for the remains. I told them to enjoy their boat. I don't know who came up with that number, but they did and that was the price, period.
So, if you've read this far, here are some pictures. First the boat in green and then the boat after sea trial. The pictures of the gunwale say everything you need to know.
My history and the sad saga of the Jupiter 31. Long post
Linear Mode
