One of the main reasons that I wanted to start a blog is because we are planning on buying a sailboat, living aboard in or near Seattle and eventually sailing here and there to places you can only get to via water.  I want a record that I can look back on to remember how the heck we actually went about doing this and something to remind me of our adventures that I don’t have to carry around physically in a big box.

I have purchased a boat before.  It was a Beneteau Oceanis 393 named “Orchid”.  It was the winter of 2008-2009.  I had just left my job with the host broadcaster of the Olympics and my prospects for employment were extremely thin (think “start of a huge recession”). And… winter in the midwest is FRIGID! I talked to a friend from college. He had just finished his PhD and was facing the same dismal job market that I was and we agreed that the best course of action was to buy a boat and head to the Caribbean!

The process to find a boat was simple that time. Some friends of mine from college were already living aboard traveling around the Caribbean. I asked them for some advice on costs of owning, how they went about finding a boat, what the process was to pay for it etc… They responded by saying “It’s easy!  We’ve been living in the BVI or 2 years, and cruising for the last 6-9 months and we’re ready to head home. Do you want to buy our boat?”

Uhhh… yes. It was that easy.  They were experienced sailors.  They were already doing the exact type of sailing that we wanted to do. We wanted a low maintenance live aboard boat that we could do short island to island passages on in the warm waters of the Caribbean. They had purchased the boat directly out of the Moorings . It was only five and a half years old. They had a survey done less than a year prior to us taking it off of their hands. And they made a few great modifications like installing a wind generator and battery monitor. We were sold.

This time around, I expected the process to find a boat to take a long time. I looked at over 90 condo’s before I found “the one”, so I was prepared for a similar experience with boat buying. I was afraid that Brian and I would be looking for different things in a boat. But the truth is that we’ve been discussing what we want the boat for and what attributes are important to us for quite a while. We had some differences in our individual expectations about what we wanted in a boat, but over time each of us has compromised to decide on the attributes of boat that will work for us together, which started as a great basis to narrow our search.

One thing we agreed on quite early is that we want a good solid cruising boat that we can take both north and south. We both agreed that we want a mono-hull as opposed to a catamaran or tri-hull due to a mono-hull’s generally better upwind performance. We wanted a boat that needed some love, but not too much. And of course, it had to fit our extremely limited budget. It also had to be comfortable enough for us to live aboard until we are ready to cruise long term.

We looked at exactly 3 boats before finding “the one”. Perhaps our expectations were so clearly defined already that the only boats we perused on the internet were ones that fit our parameters. Or, I can give credit where credit is due.  Brian is pretty good at research. Actually, he’s very good. The boat came through my search and I looked at it, but the make and model were already at the top of Brian’s radar due to the research he had done on makes and models that are trustworthy ocean cruisers. His uncle, who was also boat searching, put him onto the make and model and from everything we’ve found it’s very solid and very well regarded.

The first boat we saw was a Custom Cooper 37. It had some great bones, but just like in home buying, the pictures made it seem bigger than it was.  I’m very short.  And when I sat at the table, my knees were in my chest! So you can imagine what it would have been like for a normal sized person. We next saw a 1980 Formosa 46 and immediately after, a 1979 Formosa 46.

The Formosa 46 is a center cockpit cutter rigged boat. Pretty much every center cockpit boat that I’ve ever seen, it seems like the cockpit is 20 ft off of the water and sticks way up out of the boat to make room below. That isn’t the case with the Formosa 46 (which is based off of the Kelly Peterson 44), although we do sacrifice some headroom between the main cabin and the aft cabin, but it is in-between space where we don’t really need to stand up straight. Brian and I were both surprised, we never expected to like a center cockpit boat. It also has enough space to comfortably live aboard. There is a large master aft cabin and head, and a large v-berth cabin (for guests) and head. The galley is the standard U-shaped that works well for offshore sailing as well, which is also a plus.

Both the 1980 and the 1979 were in the right price range and both boats had very redeeming qualities.  The 1980 had low engine hours, looked less worn and for much of it’s life was a “marina queen” (meaning, she mostly stayed in the marina and didn’t get much hard time on the water). But the 1979 had obviously been cruised long distance and was already well set up for that.  Other than the engine hours, the one main difference between the two boats was that there was a soft spot on the aft deck of the 1979.  We made a list of pros and cons, but in the end the soft spot was really a deal breaker.  We really didn’t want to cut out a large section of the deck above our bedroom, especially given that neither of us have any experience with fixing it once we cut it out. We also wanted the opportunity to make the boat “ours” and put some of our own work into the boat.

We decided to take another look at the 1980. It was on the hard (sailor’s term for out of the water, in a boat yard and on jack stands.) We went through every nook and cranny on that boat.  Of course we were looking for anything major that we should be concerned about. The electric panel was antiquated, but we can fix that and didn’t find anything show stopping.

I remember sitting in the car after spending a few hours scouring the boat.  I asked “Did we just find our boat Brian Davies?” “I think we did Paula Bersie… I think we did.” “Woohooo!  We found our boat!”