Introducing Jomo

We are excited to introduce our new addition to the family, Jomo.  She is a J130 that comes from Seattle most recently and has been well cared for by her previous owner. 

We've been boatless for over 2 years now and Keith and I are getting anxious to be back on the water and able to go cruising again. Why this boat?  This wasn't the direction we had planned to head, we had thought we would go a bit newer in design, probably a twin helm, wider stern boat.  Honestly we were looking at a Hanse as a good fit for us at this point in our life.  The problem is we were unwilling to go into debt for a boat.  Boats are expensive enough, and boat prices seem to still be a bit inflated for the newer boats that were impacted by the pandemic and production shortages.  I was expecting to see a price correction, and I am seeing it now but it's only on the older boats.  So Keith and I had to prioritize and focus on what we considered critical for us.  We wanted a boat that we would be able to day sail, something we could have fun with but had enough features that we could handle the boat as just a couple getting older but had a little room for our permanent child in resident, Loren. We took a look at the J130 back in February, we were worried she was too old.  After a few weeks, we looked again, and thought we would throw out an offer since it checked enough boxes that we could be comfortable with the choice.  We spent the last few months negotiating on price, actually walking away from the boat for a period of time until we could agree on a price we felt the older boat was worth to us and here we are!

Keith and I brought the boat over last weekend, our shakedown was a pretty good test, with 4-5 ft seas and 16 knots steady, gusts to 21 in the strait.  I felt comfortable on her, though I was wishing the second reef point was setup on the main - we could have used it.  Keith already added that to the list.  Previous owners were fair weather sailors I think, and inside the Puget Sound you can pretty comfortable navigate good weather if you are flexible. Out here on the Strait we often get blows that mean one reef in the main isn't enough so that's top of the must do list.  Other things include adding AIS - it sends but does not receive and that's pretty critical for navigating our busy waterway here as well. Lastly on our list is to add solar, a gap we plan to take care of.  Otherwise, she is ready to go adventuring just as soon as we can make a little time in our busy schedule.

What's in the name?  The boat was named Women to Blame - a shout out to Jimmy Buffet.  I get it, but I can't keep it.  Just saying the name to the women in our sailing program made them scoff.  Sure you could spin it many ways but it's just not a good fit for us and how we sail.  So then the name game began.  We usually rename our boats, we usually look at the heritage, where it was built to help us find a name that resonates with us.  e.g. Kaishi was Chinese to represent it's manufacture Cheoy Lee, Resa was Swedish for where it was manufactured.  The J Boats are built in the USA, so then we started looking for short words that we liked, we narrowed it to J words...since it's a J Boat.  Keith gave me a list, and I picked the one that resonated with me.  Jomo (JOMO) the Joy of Missing Out.  For me, the workaholic, I need to take a step back and enjoy the moment more, miss out on the chaos more, so it really clicked for me. 

So there you have it, a new boat, a new chapter for us.  More adventuring to come.