We Need A Boat!

With Pelagic not yet on the market, we haven't yet been searching systematically for the next boat.  But of course I've been trolling the internet occasionally, looking at what's on offer, but not feeling any urgency, and not getting particulary excited about anything I see. 

Last week, that changed.

I found an ad for a six year old boat designed by Denis Ganley, a respected New Zealand naval architect.  She had just finished three years of Pacific cruising, and was sitting in Queensland, waiting for a new owner.  The gear looked good - a fleet of Anderson stainless winches, a low-hour Yanmar diesel sitting in a proper engine room.  Forty feet long, looking a good fit for our growing family, and with drawbacks, like a fugly center cockpit, that we could live with.  And, most notably, we could afford her, if the 'negotiable' tag on the asking process was a guide.

Suddenly, Alisa and I were entranced.  Could this be the one, the boat that would (inshallah) carry us hither and yon until high school beckoned Elias?  Our pulses raced, our pupils dilated.  We suddenly felt how lovely and relaxed it would be to just fly up to Queensland when this housesit is over and move onto our new boat, instead of taking the family to the other side of the world, our future in limbo, to some place where yachts are meant to be 'cheap'.

Unfortunately, a call to the broker revealed that she was a full keel design, something that is on our list of deal-killer criteria.  There was a comic interlude while he trotted out his Sales 101 techniques over the phone in an attempt to convince me that he, a man saltier than Poseidon, would never cruise in anything besides a full keel design.  ("And if the tide goes out on you some time, and you go aground, the rudder will be protected.")

So that was not the one.  But now our appetite is whetted by the whiff of success, the feeling that in all those overpriced dogs that are the world of used sailboats for sale, in all those other people's broken dreams that masquerade as deals, Our Boat is out there.

We'll let you know how it goes.

~~

Meanwhile, Alisa had something to say about my last post. 

"Playgrounds and beaches?" she asked me.  "How about taxes and sewing projects and a three year old all day long?"

"But I only put that thing about playgrounds and beaches in there because you're such a hard worker," I pleaded.  "Otherwise it wouldn't be funny."

Here she is as I found her at eleven o'clock last night, as I was going to bed, learning the ins and outs of a borrowed sewing machine in preparation for getting deep into the new sail cover project: 

And for the record I am now of the opinion that she will finish the sail cover before Little Baby Brother is born.

But it might be close.