Our first boat was Grand Slam.
She’s a 1998, Hunter 340. She’s 33′ 8” long and 11′ 8” wide. She’s a chubby gal – nice and roomy below with a good-sized cockpit. She specializes in day-sailing and trips to Catalina but also great for big parties:
Adam’s parent’s bought the boat in 1998 and sailed it extensively around the San Diego region. When Adam’s Dad died in 2001, we continued sailing her, taking her to Channel Islands every summer and sailing with friends in San Diego. Eventually we moved aboard to make her our permanent home.
After taking her through the Channel Islands and up the coast to Santa Barbara in the fall of 2010, we put her up for sale, eventually trading her for Betty Jean, a Fuji 32, plus some cash to throw into the cruising kitty. We missed her aft cabin and party cockpit but were excited for a new (to us) boat.
This is Betty Jean, a 1977 Fuji 32, also a classic beauty, built for cruising.
We decided to name her Betty Jean, after two indescribably special women, Betty Melin and Jean Powers.
- Adam’s Grandma Betty
- Molly’s Grandma Jean
Betty Jean is the opposite of Grand Slam: she is smaller and closer to the water yet almost 20% heavier, with a full keel and bowsprit. She is a ketch, with a main, mizzen main and genoa, as opposed to a sloop with a large main and jib. With regards to precision, Grand Slam maneuvers like a car, while steering Betty Jean feels closer to an ox-drawn cart. But Adam invested in secondary sails and we had great fun with the variety of sail combinations. We slept in a berth half the size of the old aft cabin that required a pull-up bar or pole vault to get into, but we loved her dearly. We were lucky, this is the boat we’d always pictured for ourselves and we had two wonderful years living aboard before we sold her in the Fall of 2013.
- Betty Jean
Adam and Molly Go 