Where did it start?

Where did it start?

By: Mat

Maybe 5-6 years ago we started to look at sailing channels, one I still remember was titled: “Do not buy a sailboat” which convinced us ironically to start the rabbit hole of boats. We went from looking at the adventure to people restoring wooden sailboats with Fiberglass repair. We were always more interested in how things can build & the process than the adventure itself. So when we started looking at the market, we were looking as much as Project to Perfect sailboat. This also creates a problem in that there is a lot to look at and it's really hard to compare one vs the other.

Finding a boat:

We thought the price was really expensive just before Covid, but we were up for a surprise when we saw the price go up during the pandemic 😷. We looked at a super cheap project boat on the north east atlantc coast, but this also mean all weekend doing fiberglass job in a boatyard instead of enjoying it. At this point we had 2 diverging options, go all in into a bigger project boat (hurricane damaged, badly maintained, etc…) and dump a lot of time into it, OR keep working in high paying job and just buy a well-maintained boat.

Scouting for boats into “exotics?” places.

• Puerto Rico
• US Virgin Islands
• Croatia 2x
• Florida (keys)
• Greece
  Every occasion is good to look for what is out there and how marina works.

The patterns we found:

Boats in the USA are about 1.5x more expensive than boat in the Mediterranean.
There is a lot more boat in the Med than US/Caribbean.
Boats in the Caribbean gets cheaper around summer (June-Sept) to avoid hiding the boat for the hurricane season.
Boats in the Mediterranean are cheaper between September-December to avoid Haul-out costs & for company to rotate the stocks.

So...?

On a cold night in the hot tub in Daytona beach, the subject came back to “Oh I wonder what is out there now”, so we looked for fun. We were not expecting to find anything since it's supposed to be the low season for selling boats, and all the good boats that were cheap as a bargain would be already gone by October. But we found a Hanse 41 for 74k (Euro) in Greece, It was a good price since most boats we looked at were ~100-150k So even if we would give a bit of love it should still work. The same idea as our house, the foundation need to be good. So we can fix small details but any structural damage we are out (especially for the first-time owner). So for the first time, we contacted the agent and started to talk and see what was the process. We might do a whole blog about what the processes later. But basically they wanted us to inspect the boat before we even put in an offer, in so we schedule everything and because we half crazy and flexible, Cesine decided to be present for the inspection of the boat increase the next week. With the limited info from the agent and a few outside pictures, Crazy details oriented was able to find details like the hill behind the boat to reference google picture and find where the boat was located IN GREECE!!! was also able to find out who owned the boat and who sold it to who without any detail from the agent… Hard to hide stuff from 🙃.

The inspection

We found an inspector Walsh that is super good at inspection, if there is a defect he will find it. Cesine was there for the inspection and of course, also found details that Walsh missed 🤣. There were some red flags for the boat like structural and oddity so we wanted to make an offer of 61k since there were so many red flags, but the agent convinced to made at least a higher offer of 64k. They rejected it so we move along. As simple as that. But was in Greece now so she kept going and scouted all corners to find the “perfect boat”. We found 2 but by the time we made an offer one was gone. We looked at another one JackAnne owned by a French couple. Again found where the boat was without any help from the agent. It surprised the agent again to see there without any help 😂. We inspected and saw it had a few items to fix, but nothing major, so we made a cautious offer around the asking price of 74k. And… we got it. But… we could not make the inspection now since it was not ready so we had to wait 1 month before we could do it. was already there for about 1 month, so she had to exit Greece (Schengen zone) until they were ready for an inspection. We both flew back for 1 week for the inspection and all went well since spotted most of the items already.

Result: