Honey, let’s buy a boat!

In a couple of years, the boat fund was getting fairly substantial. Time to go shopping. Our cruising plans in retirement were pretty typical – we wanted to do the Great Loop, spend a lot of time in the Bahamas, and migrate snowbird style up and down the east coast. From those plans, we made a list of the attributes we wanted our ideal boat to have. We wanted shallow draft and well protected running gear. We wanted low bridge clearance and walk-around side decks. We wanted good economy at displacement speed but also the ability to cruise 10-12 knots at need. We wanted a boat that could live independently at anchor without too much reliance on a generator. And the list went on and on.

In closing in on the ideal boat for us one of the best books I ever bought was Ed McKnew’s Boat Buyers Guide to Motor Yachts and Trawlers. It was a 2006 edition, but the boats in our price range were older than that anyway. Paging through the book looking at descriptions and floor plans, we made a list of boats that fit our criteria. Then off to Yachtworld (www.yachtworld.com) to search for those models, with the search filtered by our geographic area and price range. We spent close to two years kicking hulls and wasting the time of many a patient yacht broker. At the end of the process, we knew the model for us – the Endeavour 36 Trawlercat fit our needs to a “T” and examples were available in our price range. Endeavour made twenty six of the 36 Trawlercats from 1998 to 2005. Every so often we would see one pop up on Yachtworld and we would go see her. But now when we went to look at a boat, we were looking with checkbook in hand. We of course fell in love with the very first candidate. After doing the offer/counteroffer dance, in what seemed like the blink of an eye we had a deal, for a whole $1000 less than our price limit. A bit dazed, we arranged for the survey and sea trial.

The survey was a bucket of cold water in the face for two rookie buyers who already loved the boat and thought she was perfect. Of course no boat is perfect, and any 17 year old boat is going to have some deficiencies. But the survey process did provide time for reflection, and we came to realize perhaps in our enthusiasm we had been a bit hasty. When we looked at the list of things we needed to go to get the boat cruise ready, including major items like a tender and adding a generator, we had to admit we had bitten off more than we could chew financially, and we reluctantly decided to pass and wait for the next opportunity.

That next opportunity popped up sooner and closer to home than expected. On Craigslist, of all places, I found another 2000 Trawlercat 36 for sale in Merritt Island, just an hour or so up the coast. We were very reluctant at first to consider a boat on Craigslist. For newbies like us, a for sale by owner deal was intimidating, with no broker to hold our hands and guide us through the process. But we quickly built a rapport with the seller and together we made it work do-it-yourself style. I downloaded a standard Offer to Purchase form off the web, and we modified it to fit a private party sale. We agreed on a deposit to accompany our offer and how to handle it, and we were able to come to an agreement on price over the phone. 

And just like that, less than a week after passing on the first deal, we had found an almost identical boat, better equipped with a tender, generator, and more modern electronics for an agreed price of twelve thousand dollars less. It was a rebound relationship, but we were in love all over again! Our offer to purchase was of course subject to sea trial and survey, and of course the survey came back with some deficiencies. But our recent experience with the first deal gave us a more realistic picture of what to expect from a survey, and at least some vague idea of how to proceed from there. Lacking a buyers broker to negotiate with a listing broker, we prepared a letter to the seller listing the survey items we wanted him to address. When we came to agreement on those, we both signed the letter, which we incorporated into the Offer to Purchase, and we set a closing date. We were able to find an online site (www.marinetitle.com) to search the title and lien history on the boat but it still felt like a leap of faith when we went up to Merritt Island with our cashiers check in our hand and our hearts in our throats to conclude the deal. At least our transaction was  less complicated than most since the boat we were buying was state titled rather than documented, so we did not have to navigate that process. We did not finance the purchase, so that removed another layer of complexity from the deal.

Expectant parents were never prouder as we made all the arrangements for insurance and dockage and a hundred other details before we could bring baby home. The first step to becoming a cruising couple was done!