Our Boat, Rhythm

Rhythm is a Hallberg Rassy 38, made in 1981 in Sweden. We picked her because she provides a good balance of seaworthiness, sailing qualities and interior living space. Not quite a pirate ship, but not a racer either, she has worked well for us so far and we have been amazed at how dry she keeps us even in large swell and high winds.

The interior layout is special because our boat has an aft cabin, which means that it has a small "bedroom" in the very back of the boat where most boats this size usually only have storage space. So we have the typical v-birth "bedroom" at the front of the boat, and the "master bedroom" at the back. The galley (kitchen) is very small, but we have managed to make some good meals in it. There is also a TON of storage space everywhere.

This is our "main salon" which can fit quite a few people around our little folding table. The back of the  port (left) seats also fold up and make a very large bed.

This is our little galley (kitchen). The refrigerator is way in the back corner and is accessed through a small hole in the top of the counter. It's actually pretty annoying because we have to stack our food inside there and pull out half the fridge if we need to get something from the bottom. Not sure why boats still come with this design.

Looking aft, there is a little hallway that leads to the aft cabin which is our "master bedroom".

Rhythm originally came with a Volvo MD21b engine from 1980, but after spending absurd amounts of money and time on spare parts that are no longer being made, we decided to get a brand new Yanmar 54 hp diesel engine before we left.

We have pretty much everything a house has... running hot and cold water, 110 volt outlets, a stereo, refrigerator, freezer, oven, stove, toilet and a shower. However, we have to tend to all of the various systems much more than in a house. For instance, when we are anchored we need to generate our own electricity and store it in a large bank of batteries via a solar panel, the engine, or a little generator. We also need to keep tabs on our usage so we have a small instrument that measures how much electricity is going in or out of our batteries, and it even calculates how much time we have left until our batteries are dead at the current electricity draw. Another example is water. We have a 100 gallon tank that we fill up via a garden hose from a dock. Then the water goes through a 5 micron filter that we must regularly change to make sure our water is tasty and healthy to drink. Our hot water is heated by the engine, so we need to run it every few days to re-heat the water in our 15 gallon hot water tank. Taking care of all the little systems takes a lot of time, so if you think we are sipping frosty drinks and lounging around in hammocks all day, replace that image in your head with Kathy rebuilding our toilet pump gaskets and me changing the oil in the engine compartment... :)

-T