S/V Mother Jones

S/V Mother Jones is a 1993 Gemini catamaran 3400.

(FYI, “S/V” stands for “Sailing Vessel” as opposed to “M/V” for “Motor Vessel”, etc)

She is 33.5 feet long with a 14 foot beam (width).  Below is a great illustration of her layout:

 

 

 

 

And, here is a handy video where you can tour S/V Mother Jones.

(we’ve since upgraded all of our fans to Hella fans – how cool is that!)

Also, for any of y’all that are fans of before & after videos (or Highlights magazine), you might be interested to challenge yourself to a game of “how many differences can you point out?” from our old walk-through video of Mother Jones. Or, maybe that’s just me fishing for compliments about her DIY makeover . . .

She drafts 18 inches with the centerboards up and 6 feet with the centerboards down, which allows us to get in a lot of cool spaces (read: shallow spots where others -crowds- can’t easily go).  We’ll likely be posting more pics and info soon, but for now, if you’re super-interested in learning more about the boat,  click here for some great resources on Gemini cats.

A little background on how we came to live aboard “Mother Jones”.  The previous name was fine (“Sandpiper”), but we were looking for more than “fine” – who isn’t, right?  Plus, given my Southern accent, especially after a few sundowners, I just knew I’d have the tendency to say: “Yeah, we live on SandPAPER”. Umm, no.

So, at our going away party, we put out a bowl, some slips of paper (correct use of the word “paper”) and asked for suggestions. Some were good, some were awful (mainly Chad’s 😉 and one was clearly “the one”.

“Mother Jones” was suggested to us by a dear friend and it totally clicked given both our backgrounds with two amazing Mother Jones:

Daphne and David Jones

Damon’s mother, Daphne, passed on early in his life. Her amazing impact could never be summed up on this blog.

Mary Harris Jones aka Mother Jones.

And, of course, Mary Harris Jones aka “Mother Jones”. Her fiery consternation and grassroots skillz remain an inspiration to progressive organizers like me. (In 1914, she was called the “most dangerous woman in America” by President Theodoore Roosevelt and she was 83 years old! “Now that’s some kind of dangerous!“)

We are proud to have the spirits of these two tremendous women with us on the high seas.