For Sale: Cascade 36

Selling Bettie really sucks. If we had the cash, we would probably keep her forever. She's just that good of a boat, forgiving to novice sailors and strong enough to go pretty much anywhere. Even in heavy seas with ten to twelve foot waves slamming into the hull we always felt safe. That's the kind of stability you get with a solidly built boat, a seven-foot, three-inch draft and a heavy steel keel.

Bettie was specially commissioned from Cascade in 1979 with a flush deck and 14 extra inches of freeboard. That's right, tallies! There's no hunching inside this boat, even for my husband who is six-foot, three-inches. The hull is hand laid, fiberglass mat, and the deck is solid, marine grade birch plywood with a fiberglass top and maple stringers. And there are no leaks, which is almost unheard of in the boating world. 

Vlad just redid the bottom, which included sanding off all the old paint, grinding and faring the keel and repainting with three layers of epoxy primer barrier coat and three more layers of bottom paint with extra copper. And he didn't find a single blister. Not one. People in the yard kept commenting on how good the bottom of the our boat looked.

Bettie is cutter rigged with three head sails - a hanked-on staysail, a yankee on a roller furling and a genoa on a roller furling. The main sail needs replacing but is suitable for short cruises, though not an ocean crossing. In the storm sail department, we have a trysail that runs up the mast on a separate track, a spitfire and two other storm jibs. The boat also comes equipped with a spinnaker pole and a whisker pole.

The electronics we have onboard are reliable - radar, a chart plotter and a GPS - but honestly, we mainly used Navionics on our iPad. Also, we have an Icom VHF radio and an Icom 7100 HF with a Pactor modem. The autopilot is Raymarine and comes with a spare. We also have an aged but perfectly functional HRO watermaker. It is fully manual and has to be run off of a generator. There are three solar panels equaling 250 watts of power and a brand new battery bank consisting of eight golf cart batteries. The engine, which runs perfectly, is a Yanmar 3GM30 with 4,001 hours on it.

Inside, Bettie is open with great airflow and lots of fans. There's no stuffy boat smell here. The galley comes fully equipped with a two burner stove, oven, griddle, and broiler, a two-basin sink, and a built-in refrigerator with a separate freezer. The boat sleeps five with a pilot berth and two settees/double berths. The head includes a sink, a shower and a manual toilet. The v-berth area is both a workshop and a massive (for a boat!) storage space, complete with drawers, cubbies and a workbench.

We are selling the boat in Mexico for two reasons. The first is that Puerto Vallarta is a great stepping off point for anyone who wants to cross the Pacific or to travel up into the Sea of Cortez. And the second is that we figured why put the wear and tear on the boat bashing back up the coast to California. Wouldn't someone rather buy the boat down here? If you're interested in doing just that, send us an email at bettiedelmar at gmail.com. We are asking $34,000.

The galley

The nav station

Companion way and pilots berth

Settee

Double berth

Salon

Workbench

V berth

Head

The engine

Bettie's bottom

The cockpit

Bettie at the dock