New year marks my next huge adventure in life!

Happy Chinese New Year! Gung Hay Fat Choy, everybody! I'm supposed to eat noodles and fish today for the new year, so I just had Pho for lunch (hey, that counts!) and I'm going to try to find some fish to cook tonight.

With today marking the start of the new lunar calendar (year of the rabbit), I thought I'd take this occasion to announce my next new adventure in life ...

San Francisco apartments have been demanding huge security deposits despite my history of 3 different landlords in 3 different cities with 3 different utility companies in 3 years all willing to attest that I have never once paid a single bill late. Despite this, they're still hassling me for the equivalent of up to $4000 in deposit. Are you kidding me? Anyhow, suffice to say that after enjoying sailing so much these past couple months, we've been looking into sailboats some more. I guess I should be more specific ... I mean, actually living aboard a sailboat in the San Francisco Bay. Maybe 2011 could be considered "year of the sailboat" for me as well ;-)

Most peoples' reaction is shock but let me first put it into perspective: $1450/month for a tiny studio in San Francisco or $250/month for moorage (a slip to dock a boat in at the marina) after purchasing the boat? Add into that equation the fact that you can get a wonderfully decent sailboat for anywhere between $4000-$6000, and you really get an idea about how much money you can save with the latter option.

The boat we are currently interested in... maybe my future home? :

I don't even need to explain the complete joy of being able to move around whenever you want, sailing around Alcatraz, Angel Island ... up to the San Francisco ferry landing for the farmer's market 3x a week, or hopping down to Jack London Square in Oakland or the hip restaurants of Alameda island. There is absolutely nothing in the world like being powered by the wind with the water rushing below you.

People have brought up the fear of such a lack of space, but Ian said it perfectly: "Well if you're sitting in the back of the sailboat and you look up and there's nothing but open sky above you ... do you really feel like you don't have any space?" Nevermind the fact that besides below deck and the seating area/cockpit near the stern, you can also sit on top of the whole boat, really making the boat more like three layers. Finally, you also just learn to live life outside - picnic in the park, read at the library, hang out in cafes .... do something besides sitting in front of the TV. In urban planning I believe they call this using "third places".

We have a couple of things to check up on, but there is a boat that we are interested in at the Berkeley marina. It has excellent access to Berkeley (which itself is a cool town), as well as excellent links to the BART subway into San Francisco, or over to the north bay, or down to Oakland as well.

With that option in mind, we set out to sail here in Seattle again with our friend Kyle. This time, I really paid attention to learning all of the different ropes/lines/sheets and points of sail (wind direction, speed, sail angle, etc). He happens to have the exact same boat we're thinking about purchasing (same model and year), so it's that much better that what I'm learning to sail on, I will be sailing in the future as well.

Pulling up to the dock right in front of Duke's for happy hour in Lake Union (usually you never come into dock with sails up, but winds were so calm today it was okay). How cool is that ... pulling up to a waterside restaurant on your boat!

Kyle and Brad folding down the main sail

All dockside prep done, time to have some happy hour clams!

We'll see how all of this pans out of course ... it would make for a pretty interesting new adventure to blog about! My life on a 27 foot sailboat ... sounds pretty fun ;-)

[Update: 2-3-11, 7pm]: So we've officially made contact with the current boat owner, the marina, and a surveyer to have the boat hauled out of the water and inspected. Ian will fly down to Berkeley this weekend and it could very well be possible that by the beginning of next week we have a sailboat! Of course, if there is anything major that comes up during the inspection, it will have to be taken care of or we may have to keep looking, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed and knocking on wood that all goes well. It could also very well be that our first day upon arriving in San Francisco, we could take the parents out for a sail in the bay before the farewell dinner and their move to Japan the following day.

Anyhow, in other random news, I decided to finally get rid of my Thomastik Dominant strings on my violin and try something else. Everybody grows up playing on Dominant strings and they're great overall, but I wanted to fine tune some things. My violin itself is wonderful, but sometimes I feel like there's too much surface noise when I play, or perhaps that my sound is a bit harsh. So, I bought some new Corelli strings (from France) which are not as "bright" sounding as Dominants and a little "warmer". 

The turquoise and black winding on the bottom is really cool looking

After letting the strings stretch for a couple days and playing on them, I can say that they're much better! A bit softer, darker, warmer, and feel less harsh under the finger. They may not project as far as the Dominants, but I will sacrifice some projection for a lot more warmth in the sound (plus, my violin tends to project pretty far anyways). Since they're half the price of Dominants, this may be my new string of choice!

I guess that's pretty much it for now ... just chugging along with school. Ian's thinking about heading down to Berkeley to check out the sailboat this weekend so we'll see how all that turns out soon in a couple of days! Stay tuned...