I have owned a sailboat for exactly four days and I am already lying awake at night thinking about impellers.
The listing appeared on Kijiji on a Tuesday. I was on the couch at half ten, pretending to watch something on TV, when I found it. A 1981 CS 33. White hull, blue boot stripe, teak trim that had seen better decades. Asking price that made me do a quick, involuntary, audible calculation. The post said “ready to sail” — which, I have since learned, is marine classifieds speak for “it floats.”
I messaged the owner before I’d finished reading the listing. I called Billy at 7 the next morning. Then Max at 7:05.
We drove down to Port Credit Marina that Saturday. November, grey, cold — that particular Lake Ontario cold that gets in through your jacket collar and stays there. Max went straight for the companionway. I talked to the owner. Billy stood on the dock and looked at the hull waterline with the expression he gets when he’s being diplomatically quiet.
Max emerged from the engine bay after four minutes: “Impeller’s gone. Raw water pump’s weeping from the seal. Throttle cable’s been cable-tied to the bracket with electrical tape — like, proper electrical tape, Sam, not even the good stuff. The bilge pump works, which is the best thing I can say.”
Then he said: “We can fix all of it.” So we bought her.
She Needed a Name
She was called Lazy Susan when we bought her. We renamed her Persistence. The renaming ceremony happened on the dock that evening — −3 °C and dark by 4:30. Billy brought prosecco for the libation to Neptune. Max played Don’t Stop Believin’ on a Bluetooth speaker, which was not in the script I had in my head.
Persistence. Because that’s what this is going to take.
— Captain Sam | SBM Offshore Adventures
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