boat buying – Cannons to Cruising

Going With Our Guts

love at first sight — Or in our case, a boat!

Conor and I met with our boat broker yesterday, and it went very, very well 🙂

Mike showed us the Bavaria 47 and the Catalina Morgan 44 that we had been eyeing for the last month (spoiler alert—they weren’t the right fit for us after all) as well as 4 other boats that fit our requirements. I don’t want to jinx the sale, so I’m going to wait to reveal the boat that we picked for our first home until after the paperwork has gone through. (Ok fine, I’ll give you a hint—we don’t need as much length as we thought we did!)

But let me tell you, SHE IS BEAUTIFUL. We are so happy, and just knew as soon as we saw her that she was the one. We put in an offer at 2:30 yesterday and less than an hour later the owners accepted it. This feels like a dream.

I was a little nervous initially on the drive over to New Bern, and wondered if we would feel overwhelmed and unprepared once we saw the boats, leaving us too doubtful to make a decision. Much to my surprise, I was able to compensate a bit for my lack of experience with all of the ‘book smart’ knowledge I learned from stalking blogs and forums. And, of course, our broker made us feel totally comfortable during the process and was very patient every step of the way.

Now that our offer has been accepted, we need to secure our financing, put a 10% down payment into escrow, and schedule our sea trial and survey. If any issues pop up with the boat, we can either re-negotiate, or walk away from the deal (not that we want to!). It will still be a few weeks (at least) until she’s all ours and we can move aboard, but we woke up this morning with butterflies of excitement and without any buyer’s regret, so I think we made the right choice.

Love,

Taylor and Conor

Starting Our Vacation (and Boat Search)

Goodbye, Oceanside…

And hello, San Clemente!

It’s official, folks, we are out of the house! Though I’m sure you will miss my posts about downsizing, minimalism, and moving…JK—even I’m sick of writing about it. Now that the PITA part is over, we can get to the fun part! I am excited to focus on our adventures in San Clemente and our boat search over the next few weeks.

As I mentioned in my last post, our boat broker has come back with two AMAZING boats for us already, and will be sending along the link to a third boat sometime this week once it has been uploaded. Right now, we are looking at a 42′ Endeavor (1989) and a 48′ Bavaria (2000). We are waiting to see the details of a 44′ Catalina (1989).

Both the Endeavor and the Bavaria have everything we are looking for—center cockpit, fiberglass hull, blue-water sailing capability. The Bavaria has room for us to grow into, while the Endeavor fulfills all of our needs right now, and is at the right price point. I can’t say which we are leaning towards at the moment, at least until we can compare the Catalina as well. We should be able to view all 3 of these boats in person once we get to North Carolina (if they are still on the market) before we make any decisions. I am confident that we will just ‘know’ once we’ve found our new home.

I have a feeling there will be a pro/con list for each of the boats posted sometime soon for you guys to see 🙂 Until then, we are spending the next month recovering and unwinding with numerous glasses of wine before diving into May. Thank you for all of your encouragement and sticking with us as we orchestrated the move!

Love,

Taylor and Conor

My New Obsession

It’s a dangerous one. It sucks you in until you’re so deep down the rabbit hole you have no idea how you got there. You stop yourself, hours later, and try to remember why on earth you are looking at a $1,000,000 yacht that’s in South Africa when you started off searching for a sailboat in North Carolina.

Yes, my friends, I’m talking about www.sailboatlistings.com and www.yachtworld.com. These two sites are great search engines for (trying) to narrow down your boat search. The only problem is, my imagination gets a little too carried away sometimes. It is easy to get caught up in the fantasy of the ‘perfect boat’ and focus everything you would be missing out on if you stuck to your pesky parameters like budget and location.

Despite its addictiveness, it is a fun way to educate yourself on the different boats that are out there and what the market looks like. Every few days I like to check and see if there are any new listings that would be a good fit for us. We have an ever-changing list of possible boats as our favorites cycle out and other options pop up. It can be sad to see a contender get bought by people who aren’t us, but Conor and I firmly believe that the right boat will be there for us at the right time.

Love,

Taylor and Conor

So many boats, too many options! I want them all