About Us
Welcome to Cerise Blog!
Welcome to our Boating Blog! We are Rocky and Tracy Gamble.
Tracy was raised in Taiwan. She enjoys travel, photography, playing piano and more travel. Rocky is a native Seattleite with variety of hobbies. He enjoys scuba diving, sea kayaking, working on garage project and of course, just messing around with boats.We both love boating and exploring Puget Sound, the San Juan Islands and beyond!
We had an open bow (Maxum 2100 SD) that brought so much fun playing in the water around Lake Washington. The years we had that boat, we realized we wanted to try a cruising boat. One we can use for overnight trips. This became an older 30 ft Sea Ray Sedan Bridge, named “Formosa Keys”, she took us cruising in San Juan’s and helped us discover a cruising boat life. We enjoyed spending weekends on the boat whether went out cruising or just hanging out on the boat at the dock. However, we have always had a sweet spot for Ranger Tugs. They have always been our favorite boat while we were boat “shopping” . It felt like dream comes true when we ordered our Ranger Tug 29s at Seattle boat show 2018.
Cerise is actually the boat that was on display at the show. We are looking forward to this new chapter of PNW boating life with Cerise. In this blog, we are excited to share our boating journeys, adventures, stories/pictures…,etc. Our goal is simple, Happy Boating! We truly hope you enjoy the
stories! Thank you!
About CERISE
Cerise is 2018 Ranger Tug R29S The S stands for Sedan. Meaning that it does not have a Command Bridge (or Flybridge, a second helm on the roof – for non-boaters) Not to be confused with an R29 CB, The CB (can you guess?) stands for Command Bridge. That model does have a Flybridge. Cerise is built by the Ranger Tugs boat company and she was brought to life in Monroe, Washington. Ranger Tugs (and Cutwater Boats) are a local company with a lot of history. Visit them at www.rangertugs.com/ . She is cruising boat. Cerise has a Single 300 Hp Diesel engine and a traditional straight shaft drive spinning a great big, shiny, propeller in front of a big rudder. To make this straight shaft easier to maneuver, she also bow and stern thrusters. To some, the thrusters are cheating- but hey, they do make life easier around the dock! Especially in a wind or in a current. She carries 145 gallons of fuel, 60 gallons of fresh water and 40 gallons of holding tank – for that “not so fresh” water. She is a cruising boat. She isn’t going to be a ski boat. She can ply through nearly any seas for hours at a time and be happy doing it! She has very comfortable forward berth, a smaller quarter berth that I call the storage berth, because that seems to have become our big storage area. She has very nice head with an electric toilet and shower. There is also a full galley, complete with an oven and microwave. The dinette is very comfortable as well. Cerise has 2 refrigerators and a small wine cooler (6 bottles). There are also two TV’s, one in the galley area that can be seen from the cockpit, and one in the forward berth that can be watched in bed or turned and watched from the dinette. One more wonderful feature is the abundance of cup holders!!! No spills in our boat!!
The cockpit (or aft deck) has 2 built in folding seats in the gunwales (sides) and 1 in the transom (back) that flips to face forward or aft – off the back of the boat. The smaller of the 2 refrigerators lives in the cockpit as well. This has been adopted as the drinks fridge….Beer, Soda, Beer, water and maybe some beer. The cockpit floor has several storage compartments and the engine hatch. The engine hatch opens at the touch of a button. This seems to impress a lot of people!! Aft of the cockpit through the transom door, is the big swim step and home for the dinghy.
Cerise has an abundance of modern Garmin electronics. This includes, Radar, Autopilot and they all display on either of the two Multi-Function Display 12” chart plotters. Ranger tugs provides two days of orientation to their new owners. (That was an amazing experience – but more about that later). When Kenny asked what my previous boat had for electronics, to gain my familiarity with marine electronics, I answered that it had an Ipad……. I think I could see him start to worry about how I would ever learn to operate this boat…… But he is an excellent teacher and now I am beginning to understand the capability that this electronics package really has. Kenny gave us enough information to be confident enough to learn more along the way. It is a pretty steep learning curve, but it is steeper at first, and that was the part Kenny got us through.
The engine is a modern electronic diesel. It also depends on electronics to operate. It is a “Fly by Wire” engine. There is no traditional cable between the throttle/shifter and the engine/transmission. These are controlled via a computer and wires.
Cerise will cruise, in most reasonable water condition, at about 12~15 knots, burning about 40% of the fuel that my previous boat would at a slightly higher speed. Marine diesel costs less at the pump than marine gasoline. Cerise is much more economical to operate than our previous boat. That is a good thing. This boat also enjoys going slow. It tracks a straight line going slow. That was much more difficult in our previous boat. Cerise is just as happy cruising at 8~10 knots also when her captains want to enjoy the journey as much as we want to arrive at the destination. Having the autopilot keeping an eye on the compass relieves some of the stress off the helmsman during those hours on the route. Like cruise control in your car-you still need to be very involved in driving, but it takes one tedious task out if the picture.
