Sailboat shopping, a lot of work

A week of shopping for a sailboat makes us tired. From one marina to the next, driving to unknown locations and meeting new people, is interesting, intriguing, and tiring.

Our first boat of the week is a tragedy, the dealer was quite nice though, a true sailor. He wore no socks and couldn't wait to get out of the cold, and selling boats was a means to that end. The boat itself needed a lot of TLC and new diesel tanks, as it had a major corroding lead tank that held the diesel. It smelled really bad of diesel, phew. We could hardly stand being down under and had to get out into the cold fast.

The second boat on our list wasn't much better, but the more professional dealer turned us onto two other boats for sell there at the marina. This dealer was another character all together, a sail maker by trade and salesman for all the other stuff. He was very knowledgeable about sails and sailboats. The boat we saw had a horrible design and needed too much work to list. The two other boats were placed on our list of potentials because they seem sturdy and seemed to need less work than the first two.

The third boat (or fifth if you count the two extra at prior marina) we thought was a true potential contender with good motion comfort, it turned out to be a disappointment. The design sucked, we explained this nicely to the broker. This broker kindly told us he mainly deals with boats in upper 100k price range, so we basically are out of his price range. Then further told us he was having a custom wood boat made because wood are better than all the rest. We did enjoy visiting this marina because it is the biggest live aboard marina in the area.

The fourth boat was a disaster.  It needed just about everything replaced, one could take years and thousands fixing this just to get it off the hard. We drove an hour and a half to see it, however, it wasn't a wasted drive because we stopped at a couple marinas and got a good feel about this northern area.

The next day we were sort of burned out and let down with all these train wrecks of sailboats.  Pretty much all of them need a ton of work and look worse in person then in the pictures. When we are on the boat we can smell (the diesel moldy stuff) and feel (the spongy decks and corroded metals), so it gives a much more telling picture of the boat's overall condition. Under hubby's burnt out protest, we went to see the next boat. It turned out to be pretty nice, not ideal, but well taken care of. You can really tell when the owner spends time on their boat and maintains it, rather than letting go all the maintenance. This was a comfy boat, just a little too small in the cabin and no aft berth. It was placed on our contender list.

We took a break from shopping for boats the next to last day, had some fun. Rode the monorail and ate good food. We also played phone tag with a well traveled boat owner who we worked out a boat viewing for our last day of boat viewing, it would be the sixth one on our list or eighth one viewed on this trip.

The sixth and last boat we viewed was another project boat. It had potential, but a lot of work needed. It had an owner who once loved her, but could no longer do it.  It was a little too small and short inside, so basically a no go. We spent time in this boat, about two hours, because we mostly just talked with the owner about everything. He was the most interesting person we came across in our boat shopping adventure.

Now here we are, a grand out for the trip, days of being cold, wet, and tired, and maybe we found a boat that says buy me, love me. Then again maybe not. It will all be determined by the money, how much are we willing to give up, and how much the owner is willing to give up too by taking our low ball offer. Or do we try another plan, take all our money elsewhere, give up our dream of sailing and traveling the world? Heck no! We need a boat.