I think the man of the dock of O has the right idea. I've been looking at some of these coastal cruisers, with their fancy wine racks, down at the yacht broker's docks, and they just don't seem to be working out. The Dread Pirate O recommended a nice looking older boat up in Washington. I think we are going to look more heavily in the Bay and Seattle/Canada, rather than around here.
It seems like we might be able to find something more suited to our current/future needs in the larger markets. It also seems we might be able to avoid dealing with a yacht broker, which, so far, doesn't seem to be a very satisfying experience.
We've made a couple of offers on boats and it has felt like we were serving their needs as foil, rather than them serving our needs with a little more transparent communication about the process. This last one was sorta odd and unsatisfying, although test sailing the boat was great.
6 comments:
Is the market for buying a boat right now anything like the market for buying a house?
Didn't want to put a damper on your plans. At first, I thought you were considering the Beneteau for long-term cruising.
But if you ARE planning to take off in a few years, I'm wondering if you shouldn't just start with a boat you can cruise in. It will take a while to set up any boat the way you want, so by the time you've got you're 'interim' boat sorted out, you'll be starting all over again on the second boat, and will probably lose a lot of $$$ in the process, since you never get back what you spend equipping a boat.
My own take is that the IP 45 you were first considering is more boat than you need - maybe too much boat for a couple to handle in difficult conditions. I'm thinking something in the 38-40' range would be more manageable.
But those are just my ideas. I've done no blue water cruising, and I'm not you. I think the best thing you can do now is to talk to as many experienced cruisers as you can. Doing the Baja Ha-Ha as crew on someone else's boat is probably the best opportunity to do that on the west coast. You could probably hook up with someone from Portland or Seattle who's looking for crew. It may even be worth a trip down to SF for the Latitude Ha-Ha crew party, although most people connect beforehand through Latitude's online crew list.
Boat brokers may be no better to work with than car dealers, but I had good luck with Yachtworld when we got our boat. I knew what I was looking for and checked every few days for six months until I found it - and it was in a Bay area brokerage I never knew existed.
You've got a lot of work ahead of you, but the whole process of finding a boat can also be a lot of fun. And this is probably the best buyer's market in 20 years. Good luck!
Hey guys, I have links to 3 blogs where the people have 'been there, done that' with the Baha Ha Ha... you may want to chat with them. They are the Catamaran "Meerkat", Sailing Knitter, and First Mate. Meerkat is somewhere down between Mazaltan and Puerto V, First Mate is on her way back to San Carlos and Sailing Knitter is off the coast of Panama. I think they would be a wealth of info.
And the links The Beach House and Me Voy are on the East coast.
HEY YALL!!! SORRY IVE BEEN NEGLECTING YOU! im back.... keep on keepin on...
We don't feel neglected at all. In fact, we are looking forward to our next KW trip, mostly because we're following your adventures on facebook.
:)
Rock on, schooner kid!
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