First Blog Entry: August 12, 2015: Love at First Sight

This story starts the way a lot of stories start.  I was happy in my relationship, but for some reason my eyes started wandering off to the side.  I was looking at bigger boats on the internet.  My Grampian 26 was starting to feel a little cramped inside and we had nearly reached the limit of reasonable improvements to be made.  It started with a Contest 30 on Craigslist almost two years ago.  She looked phenomenal in the pictures, but in person she was a wreck.  It's funny how deceiving pictures can be.  Next came a Bristol 32, also on Craigslist, for a steal.  But the atomic four was steaming like mad and it was pretty clear that the seller had been fleeced when he bought the boat.  All the good stuff had already been taken.  Then there was a Carter 33 upon which the seller had done such an egregious job with re-coring the cabin house that he deliberately kept us on the dock chatting until the sun went down so it would be harder to see his handiwork.  This boat was otherwise rock solid and frankly, she was tempting.  With a five foot six draft though, it was going to be a tight fit in our home port so we moved on, promising each other we wouldn't look at any other boats and we would just enjoy ourselves on the boat we already had.

In the name of doing so, we set about having a lovely sailing season.  Then, in late June, we anchored out in Worton Creek.  To our amusement we got to watch a Westsail 32 make a forty point turn to try to get into its slip.  After the owners had gone we decided to dingy over to their marina and just cruise around looking at the big boats.  We spotted something with a tall mast and a full set of mast steps, so we wandered down that fairway and had a nice chat with the owner of some fairly unique and gleaming vessel.  Then on a whim, we went down the next fairway, and there she was.  She was molded to look like lapstrake, had 8 inch bulwarks, a huge anchor roller, and a lovely flourish at bow and stern.  Bronze port lights and hull mounted chainplates completed the picture.  There was a for sale sign zip tied to the bow rail.  Convinced she was out of our league, we went back to our Grampian to cook dinner.  Having an internet connection there was probably our downfall, since I was able to look up the marina's boat listings and found her.  She was a bit outside of our price range, but not nearly as much as expected.  The interior photos evinced a Hans Christian or the like.  The ad didn't provide much information outside of her actual specs so we called the broker to arrange a showing.  The broker warned us that the interior was rough.  Of all the boats he had listed, this one was garnering the most interest until the showing, when prospective buyers were actually getting angry with him over the condition of the boat.  He said "I wouldn't wear my regatta clothes on her." We set up a showing, and we turned up but the broker didn't. The boat was open so we made ourselves at home, snooping about on what was probably the hottest day of the year.  While we were there we convinced ourselves she was too big, too beautiful, and too much for us.  Sure, the diesel was as old as me, and the cabin liner was rotting into mulch, but the important stuff was sound.  When we were leaving we found a string of acrobat ants walking along one of the interior hand rails, bold as brass.  They like rotten, wet wood so it made perfect sense that they were hanging out.

We headed back to the Grampian 26, which suddenly seemed even smaller than before.  We spent the next few days staring obsessively at the photos in the ad:

In which none of the problems were visible.  No wonder people were getting mad.  These pictures had to be several years old.  As it turned out, the boat had been on the market for years and the pictures probably were quite old.  Nevertheless, we decided to make an offer.  It was accepted.  Because of the price, we decided to have a survey conducted.  We brought a friend with us for moral support, and waited while the survey waled away with his little plastic hammer and went over everything with a moisture meter.  In the end he said "If you're thinking about buying a boat, you might want to think about this one," and "She might not be the right boat for everyone, but I think you are the right people for this boat."