Well, I seem to
recall that at the end of the last blog entry we were in Deltaville, VA, had
picked a boat, picked a name, had a sailing program sketched out, and were
waiting on a survey of the vessel. Those
of you who follow me on face book know what happened next but for the rest of
you it can be best summed up with the old saying: Man Plans, God Laughs. Not to be sacrilegious but in this case God
laughed His/Her ass off. The survey was
a learning experience to say the least.
We started at 0830 at the boat and by the time we had finished at 1830
we were exhausted, overwhelmed, and facing some serious questions (not to
mention near two grand poorer). We
learned about hull blisters, no not one or two but enough to entirely cover the
two hulls. We learned about wet cores
and how, left to their own, bad things tend to get worse. We learned that when an owner knows that his
boat is about to be surveyed (he had two weeks' notice) and he fails to
commission the water system or fill the water tanks prior to the survey there
is probably a reason, such as, one of the tanks leaks and the water pumps don't
work. For my more technically advanced
readers who have vessels with an auxiliary engine we confirmed our belief that
the raw water intake should have an in-line strainer, and we should not depend
on the impeller to do the job. Other pearls of wisdom learned for our two
grand, when you turn on the LPG gas to test the stove and oven and you smell
gas, you don’t get to test the stove and oven.
Just because the inventory says something is there or it works, doesn't
mean it is either there or it works. Well I could go on but for the sake of
your enjoyment and my blood pressure I'll let the above lay the ground
work. I also remember talking about love
and lust in the last blog entry, and the idea of being "in like",
well at least I meant to. Yes I know I
could go back and read what I wrote but I am feeling bad enough about my
decisions so why punish myself any more by reading my dribble. Whatever the case may be, what I wrote,
dreamed I wrote, or wish I wrote, like is not enough, love and lust are
critical elements. At the end of the day we were facing a boat who needed a lot
more work than we had ever dreamed possible. It was not just the money, in
fact, the owner lowered the agreed price another $25,000 giving us the boat for
considerably less than we had thought possible, why then am I not writing from
the deck of that boat? Well if I were,
it would still be in a boat yard in Deltaville VA waiting for blisters in the
fiberglass or gelcoat at the worst, barrier coat and bottom paint at the best
to dry, and that is if the leaky water leak discovered could be repaired without
removing a head and the port cabin floor.
We had planned on putting $50,000 into the boat above the purchase price
but we could easily be looking at $100,000 or more not to mention 3-6 months
out of the water in hot and buggy Deltaville; this was not how we envisioned
the dream to begin. We had some
decisions to make, first, JABULO, yes or no and second if not that boat, what
boat? We needed to take into
consideration our budget and what was available to us at the time. We needed to judge our tolerance for pain and
disappointment and did we want this enough to continue or to just say that we
gave it a shot and it wasn’t meant to be, we were meant to be dirt-dwellers (no
offence to my land based friends.)
Well we quickly decided that 'this boat' was not 'THE BOAT',
but we were not ready to give up on THE Dream and after a quick look at the
yachtworld.com postings we knew that if we continued to look in our budget
range we could be facing more disappointment so we decided to augment our
budget with a little help from our or a bank.
Now this should have been no issue, I mean, we had just paid off a
house, have financed several cars, and paid off our credit cards each month but
two congress men named Dodd and Frank wrote some legislation that for some reason
the do-nothing congress did something and it was made law. Now I really don't know what all it says, and
I am sure it was mostly necessary since there is a law about jailing crooked
bankers but the one little part, I am sure an amendment put in there by some
senator from some landlocked fly-over state like Nebraska or Kansas (that’s for
my friend Mary Houswirth Norman) that forbid U.S. banks from financing liveaboard
sailors; you have to live on land, or at least rent something land-based; it
apparently does not apply to motor homes otherwise known as landyachts! So we
rented a place on land, we have a lease and we have even stayed there since we
signed said lease, so we applied for a little bit to help and although
it took about every kind of sworn statement and document we could produce and
some we couldn't we got approved…… except there was one more document the bank
decided it needed and that was a power bill with our name on it for our new
domicile. We are sharing the house and the primary resident
has all the bills in his/her name so this would mean we needed to cancel
service in his/her name set it up in ours, pay the bills - (a 30 day process at
best!), and then make the bank happy, maybe.
OK so the bank didn't really need to lend us money for their bottom
line, they are getting rich enough without our meager interest; (insert you
favorite expletive here _____________________).
Part of the loan process required us to actually apply for a
loan for a specific boat and it needed to be a U.S. flagged vessel, in the
U.S., not just U.S. waters but contiguous U.S. states preferred; this made our
task more difficult so I picked a boat I had never seen in Puerto Rico.
Yes I did pass geography and I know PR is an island and not one
connected to the lower or is it from down here the upper 48 but it was my big
FU moment to the bank. It turns out
there was a boat in the 48, in FL in fact, but I am getting ahead of
myself. We left VA headed back to FL,
funny as it seems, I actually missed FL.
Before we left VA, I noticed a Leopard 46 for sale in St. Petersburg FL
at a price that put her in our new target range, in fact, it was the lowest
priced 46' I had seen so I contacted our broker who contacted the sellers
broker and we had a date to see her set, we just had to get from Deltaville VA
to St. Pete FL in 2-1/2 days. All was
going well until; in every horror story there is an 'until'. We had been in crawling traffic on I-95 due
to an accident, after an hour we were back up to speed except the Jetta would
mysteriously lose power and then regain power without losing rpm's. Hello Mr. Google! Mr. Google directed me to Johnson &
Johnson Import Repairs near Durham NC so in we limped and after one afternoon
and part of the next morning we were back on the road. We never came up with a definitive diagnosis
but the best guess was a gummed-up throttle body. If that was it or not it worked until later
in the story. Now we were behind on our
quest for the next boat so we did a very long 600+ miles to get within striking
distance of St. Pete's and the Leopard 46 by our arranged time. Our broker had called the owners' broker and
knew someone else wanted to buy the boat but there was no contract so we met
with owner who showed us around his boat and told us his and his families story. After a good 90 minutes or so we had crawled
around everywhere and I fit everywhere and it appeared to be the perfect
boat. As we were about to board the
owners' dingy to head back to the boat he, the owner, informed us that there
was indeed a contract on the vessel. I
said "written signed paper?"
He said "yes." Remember
the broker said "NO." To add insult to injury the sky opened up shortly
after that with one of the ever present squalls that dominate the FL coast in the
summer. We found a rest/bar with wifi (I
am finding the search for wifi as important as the search for clean diesel,
water, or cheep rum) and contracted our
broker who was not happy at the sellers broker but we decided to put in an
offer on this 46 just in case the other one fell through; at least we would be
in line. During that time it became
necessary for one of us to get back home to Lubbock ASAP after spending an
afternoon helping our broker move a boat from the marina it was being worked on
to its home marina; at least it was some relaxing time on the water, a treat we
hadn't had in a long, long time. The
next morning I dropped Jo off at the Tampa Airport and I headed to Lauderdale
via Alligator Alley to look at a boat our broker and my wife had no intention
of me buying but it was the right price and I wanted to look at another boat,
besides it gave me a chance to have breakfast at The Floridian in Lauderdale
with our favorite waiter, the Chihuahua on speed. I had also planned on flying to Puerto Rico
to look at the boat we had used for financing purposes with the very real
intentions of making an offer as a back-up to our back-up on the Leopard
46. The PR boat was represented by the
same broker group as the first 46, the one without a contract that had a
contract, yup, those guys. Well
surprise, surprise, there was a contract on the PR boat too this time so I
headed driving by myself the 1700 miles to Lubbock.
The trip to Lubbock was a good break and it allowed us to
get E settled in a new home with a new provider, a move that has proven to be a
godsend. It gave us the chance to help
daughter #2 through some difficulties and allowed a visit to my dad in Colorado
and Jo's family in Houston since we had a rental property there. Of course just because we were geographically
as far away from boats as we could get almost didn't mean we would stop
looking. While there the Leopard 46 in
St. Pete went to the first contract so we had nothing lined up, but there was
this boat in Grenada West Indies that was U.S. flagged so we made an
offer. This boat was listed by one of
the other agents from the same firm as our broker so he had more of a history
on the boat than we might have gotten had it not. On paper the boat looked like a good
opportunity and in reality might have been.
The "might have been" part had to do with delamination and
water intrusion in the vessel that had been fixed. OK for those you who don’t know the term
delamination, it is important. You see
when most modern boats are built out of fiberglass (FRP) not wood. There is an outer and inner layer FRP with a
core of some other material. Some of the
newer more expensive boats use foams, some carbon fiber, but a good number use
end-grain balsa that is often resin infused, which is light and surprisingly
strong. The outer and inner layer of FRP
and the core material are then sucked together (vacuum bagging) to create the
hull, deck, bulkheads, etc. forming a laminated surface but when that bond
breaks down, usually form poor workmanship or water intrusion (like physically
breaking through one of the outer layers) you get delamination. However it happened, the boat in Grenada had
suffered some kind of delamination which led to water from the outside getting
into the inside. OK, on the surface (or
in this case below the surface) this sounds like a pretty big deal and it is,
but, if repaired correctly it can be overcome.
It is the 'repaired correctly' part that needs to be verified. We made an offer with a deadline to
respond. The owners (who live in Boston,
just saying) waited until after the deadline to counter, now the game was on. When this all began the vessel was on the
hard, i.e. out of the water, and EVERYONE knew from the contract provisions
that we were willing to pay extra to
have a hull survey done once we came to an agreement on the price to verify
that the intrusion was properly repaired and there was no more wet core
material. Now if I were that owner, I
would have done that myself and made it available to anyone interested in my
boat but as I may have mentioned, they were from Boston, just saying! I had contacted a surveyor and his partner who
had done the insurance survey on the damage.
Even though the results of the survey are the property of the person
paying for the survey there is some public information and that gave us some
more information. Negotiations drug on
but while we were in Houston I got a call from my broker that we were within
$5,000 in price but for reasons no one could explain, the boat in question had
been put back in the water, splashed as it is called, making it impossible to
survey the hull without it being hauled back out of the water then set on the
hard long enough for it to completely dry out again (4-7 days.) Of course the owner said this was scheduled
and since we had not reached an agreement he went ahead and authorized the boat
being put back in the water and no he would not pay to have it re-hauled out or
stored on land. By this point Jo and I
had become fairly paranoid when it comes to boat peoples' actions, especially
owners and this was just a little too, too coincidental and our broker agreed
but wanted us to not over react; yeah me overreact, HA! Well after a good bit of back and forth we
decided to submit our final offer that included the stipulation the owner haul
out the boat back out and leave it on the hard no less than 7 days at which
time it could have a hull survey and only if that was positive would I fly to
Grenada for a pre-purchase survey and sea trials. Our deadline for Boston Boy came and went again
so we decided to move on. Besides, there
were no flights available in or out of Grenada for all of August, and no ferry
to the island, not that there are that many during any other months but between
Carnival and Med Students returning to school every seat was taken. The up-side of this is we may have avoided a
disastrous boat, another JABULO, the down-side of this is we may have missed
out on a wonderful boat is a perfect location.
Given all the facts in play we decided to pass this one by though and continue
our search. I have to agree with my
former neighbor, I never thought it would be this hard to buy a boat!
We had to formulate a plan, this meant a making a list with
options, numbers; circles and arrows and diagrams on the back….. The plan we decided on was to pack a couple
of bags and fly to the Virgin Islands and not come back without boat
papers! I did some research, came up
with a list of boats in the British Virgin Islands and looked at flight and
hotels. Our desire was to just stay in
the BVIs but as with Grenada our trip coincided with their two week long version
of Carnival that celebrates Emancipation and of course all hotels were
booked. There was also a tropical system
that was in its beginning stages off the coast of Africa. So, change of plans, fly to St. Thomas in the
USVI, stay there until we can get a hotel in the BVIs and search via the ferry
for boats. We found a condo online to
rent for 11 days and things were falling into place. I remember as a kid flying on an airplane, it
was magical. You got dressed up, people
were nice to you, and gave you food and even though you were flying in
something relatively "new" technology you were excited and couldn't
wait for the adventure. Have any of you
flown recently? Well if you haven't let
me tell you times have changed. I hate
to fly, not that I am scared of crashing or my luggage being lost (well maybe a
little of the luggage thing) but because the "event" that has become
flying has so devolved into being one step above cattle herding except you pay
for the privilege of being abused. Last
time I checked, paying another person to abuse and humiliate you was against
the law except in Amsterdam and Nevada.
It begins with the Chinese menu that is purchasing your ticket. You know, one for column (a) you have baggage
well that will be $$ and one from column (b) you want an aisle seat, well that
will be $$$-per leg of your trip; well you get the idea. I made basic reservations on an American
based Airlines that would be
three legs to get us from Lubbock to St Thomas.
For my "basic" ticket I got my selection of this middle seat
or that middle seat so I started my "upgrades." Not being what one might call petite, an
aisle seat is most desired and since what is good for the goose… I was not
going to leave my bride stuck in the middle.
So that was anywhere from $58-$62 a leg for two non-middle seats so
column (a) just cost between $174 - $186.
You are going to be gone how long?
You need to take clothes with you, well have we got a deal (add-on) for
you here in column (b). At least the
airline we were flying didn't charge for overhead space, that would have
further deflated my Spirit for flying. Well fingers were flying on the
adding machine and totals were reached and our "basic" ticket, which
was no real bargain, was now anything but basic. Oh yes, we were only booking a flight one-way
which you would thing would be half as much as a round-trip ticket, but you
would be incorrect in that assumption.
At this point smoke was coming out of the calculator and my ears as I
looked at the computer screen and then I saw it; Business Class that for these
flights was also First Class. There is
something about the words 'First Class', I bet that's why they use it instead
of 'pay-us-more-to-get-there-on-the-same-plane' class. In this case however, the more was only a
couple of hundred and came with conformable seats, leg room and free
food and booze, you got three free checked bags, each up to 70lbs! You know the saying, "how will you keep
them down on the farm after they've see D.C.", yup the same is true of
First Class vs. Stowage I mean Coach. I
knew there was a reason that I resented those people sitting in First and
Business Class. Yes it could be because
the flight attendants bring you hot towels, snacks, meals and drinks, the adult
kind and don’t ask for a credit score or your first born. Yes it could be that the seats are
comfortable even for someone my size, but what I really think it is, is that
you know how bad those poor bastards in the back have it and they can't even come
use your head. Like many things in life,
this will undoubtedly be a onetime thing and I will be forced to take the long
walk of shame back to the back, but for one flight (well technically three legs
so three flights) we were First Class!
OK back to boats.
Remember this is about boats and we were 0-2 when it came to boats. We did still have the option of the boat in
Granada as the owner had come down to out price point but I had turned a little
sour on that deal and we set off with our new list. The first boat we were going to look at, Caribbean Dream, just happened to be anchored for a day just a
quarter mile walk from the condo we were staying at in Red Hook U.S.V.I, a
quarter mile down a narrow steep hill with no sidewalks, curbs, or
shoulders, and drivers that didn't care if they hit you or not all in tropical
oppressive heat. The only thing worse
was the thought of the walk back up the hill to go home with the drivers coming
with gravity aiding their speed as they came at you. We met one the owners at a local
restaurant/bar at 10am. Now we had done
some research on this boat, like the others and the model hadn't been what we
were thinking of. She was bigger than we
had wanted, more complex, and had engine rooms that took a contortionist or
someone much smaller and more flexible than me to get into. I saw a post from the owner a while back on
the Leopard owners' group and had corresponded some. He and his wife had read this very blog and
knew some of the issues with the Dean in VA and she went about measuring things
and he assured me that there were holding tanks as well as gave me a wealth of
information. We did one of our
spreadsheets with all the information we could gather on the boat off the
website had our tape measure and camera (although we never seem to take any
pictures) and we were ready to see this as one of several boats we had planned
to see. The owners took us back to the
anchorage in their dingy and the visit/inspection began. The owners toured us through their boat and
while not unheard of, it is usually the seller or our broker that is showing
you the boat. We knew that the boat had always
been a crewed charter boat, always with a professional captain and crew and had
never been a bareboat (no professional captain usually) charter. In fact, we had reviewed their website and
she was a high-end charter complete with chef who was also a massage therapist. Both were scuba instructors and he was a dive
master so the boat was loaded with dive gear; everything was First Class. Being set up to be a once-in-a-lifetime
vacation adventure for most folks it did lack some of the items we would want
in a cruising boat; but most of that was easily, if not cheaply added
later. She was however, the cleanest,
most well taken care of boat we had seen up to this point and we were duly
impressed. You might ask, why didn’t you
stop your search there? Fair question
but for two big issues; maybe three.
First the aforementioned engine access.
Boats are complex, big boats are more complex and the engines, even
though it is a sailboat, are helpful in providing safety in maneuvering in and
out of a harbor, to or off a mooring (although a skilled sailor can do this
under sail), charging the batteries since you supply your own power, clawing
off a lee shore, and simply getting from point A-B , when there is no wind or
it is from the wrong direction which it always seems to be. There are two diesel engines in most
catamarans, cooled by seawater passing through a heat exchangers and then
exiting the boat as wet exhaust. That
means there are at least two holes in your boat to let water in, in an controlled
manner. Controlled is the key word, for
be it uncontrolled, well let's say your day got a lot wetter and more
expensive. Being our oceans are not as
clean as they used to be, there is also the possibility of other peoples
garbage being pulled up into the heat exchanger that helps cool the engine (if
it gets that far) and making your life harder and wallet lighter. Now I'm not even mentioning fuel filters,
systems and the havoc water in the diesel tanks can cause or the half a dozen
or more other holes in your boat designed to let water in and out, in a
controlled manner. It's enough to say access to all those things are critical but
space is limited and what is given over to mechanical room is taken away from
living space. The other issue was the
berths (beds) and would I fit (head to toe) and would we have to climb over
each other to get in or out of the berth.
Ideal is an island or semi-island berth with lots of room to get in and
out of either said at the foot as well as from part of the sides. Also, some berths are 4'-5' off the floor and
some aren't. Here the fit was
questionable, we would have to climb over each other, and if you fell out of
bed it was a long way down. The final
thing was the head/shower. A lot of
newer boats have separate heads and shower arraignments while most of the older
and almost all of the boats used in charter have the head and shower combined
and they are just a little larger than in an airplane (even in First
Class). We had wanted a separate
shower/head arraignment but in this model that was only found in the owners
version. So we took the ferry from Red Hook USVI to
West End BVI where the broker of another boat picked us up and took us to see
the first of the two boats we were scheduled to see that day. Now this one had been a bareboat charter boat
and was pretty basic in equipment, however, for a charter boat she was in very
good shape although the heads had not been thoroughly or effectively dealt with
and if you know boats you know that smell.
It had four semi-island berths low to the floor and separate showers,
she also had headroom to spare. Her name
had to go, MARTHA R, owned by two brothers one of whom passed away recently and
most likely named after their mother.
She was a Lagoon 420 with relatively new engines and low engine
hours. The engine rooms were outside the
main living area in the steps up the back of the boat called sugar scoops. You might ask, why didn’t you stop your
search there? Again, fair question and
in all honesty I had intended it might be "our" boat, but it
was heavy, boxy, and with the exception of a few points of sail very slow. She would really be considered more of a
motor cruiser, which is fine and she could take us around the world very comfortably. As she was in a charter fleet, the company
would have preferred if we had agreed to leave her in charter, at least long
enough to fulfill her 2014-2015 obligations but that would mean no boat for us
from mid November through the new year and into May. Now we could say no and would have if we went
with her. She was comfortable, what some
call a floating condo, but damn it I fit everywhere. We walked from there to over to another
charter company who had the same model for sale as the boat in Granada except
it was a four cabin charter version instead of the owners version. In all
honesty we were looking at her mainly to see if we should continue on the boat
in Granada, but, if she would work, she was a lot cheaper and could be done without
the assistance of a bank. She too was a
bareboat charter vessel being readied to be placed in a hurricane hole for the
rest of the storm season. In that process
all the sails and anything that could catch wind are removed. This particular hurricane hole is used by
several charter companies and is what a good hurricane hole should be,
windless, surrounded by mangroves so it is buggy, and completely cut off from
the ocean swells. She was ok, also had a
number of charter commitments for which it was implied, that if we didn't agree
to honor them we would be responsible to pay any upgrades needed to move
charterers to other boats, yeah right!
If you asked, "why didn't you stop your search there" then you
aren't paying attention. We spent a respectable amount of time on her, but
mostly talked about the Leopard 47, the boat we saw in Red Hook. We knew she had been moved back to the BVIs,
to a marina which is rated for hurricanes accepted by insurance companies (very
important) so we called the owners to see if it was ok to go look at her again
since our memory was foggy on a couple issues.
So we grabbed a cab and went to Village Cay Marina to look for D dock;
ok there is no D dock, that’s why you don’t let the deaf man take the
directions, it was B Dock. We had
limited time since we needed to make it back to West End and catch the ferry
back to Red Hook but we made the best of the time we did have and mostly visited
with the owners and an owner of a predecessor of the Leopard 47, the Leopard 45
that is the same boat except for 2' added to the sugar scoops that gives it a
smoother ride. We asked a lot of
questions and just had a relaxing afternoon.
Of course we felt a little bad knowing that the owners were trying to
get the boat closed down for storm season and they were scheduled to fly out to
Hawaii in a few days to start a life on land but no one seemed rushed except we
had that last ferry out to catch so when the time came we were shown where to
catch a cab and off to the West End and except for me failing to formally check
out of the country before I got in line for our ferry the ride to St. John
where we checked back into the U.S. of A. was uneventful but long day and we
were exhausted. There were at least
three other boats in Tortola to look at and it is not a cheap ride. First of all the round trip ferry is around
$120, then you have to pay $20 per person to leave the BVI and a cab ride from
West End to where the boats are is around $28 so it all adds up but for now we
just grabbed a cab to go up the hill, $8 +tip, and a drink. Now thankfully the condos at which we were
staying had a bar/grill and a nice pool, it was also a short walk to the beach
so we decided that the next day we would just chill by the pool, eat and drink
at the bar and forget about boats; yeah right!
Next Time:
The conclusion to this thrilling, exasperating, frustrating, and expensive quest. OK spoiler alert, if you follow me on the Face Book you know the conclusion but read it anyway, I need to justify my efforts with her who must be obeyed.
