Our survey, which took 10 hours over 2 days ("thorough" is the word of the day if you plan to make such a huge purchase and want to know without a doubt that your future home will, in fact, float while you are living aboard it) turned up various issues on the boat we are under contract to buy. Some of them we knew about and some were a surprise (not the good kind, mind you!). We used a gentleman out of Green Bay, WI named Ben Miller (who I highly recommend. I am happy to pass along his contact info for those in the market for a survey.) and after lots of discussing with him and between us, we approached the seller/brokerage with our list of "issues". We fully expected they would fix at least the very minimum problems in order to move forward with the sea trial. Those issues were more safety and structural in nature and ABSOLUTELY HAD to be addressed before putting the boat in the water, mast up, sails on, etc. Surprise of surprises, they have agreed to fix almost all of the items on the list! We should hear back today or tomorrow about the schedule of the maintenance and when we can get her into the water to complete the sea trial. We are beyond excited with the response and are already making our own little "to do" list of things we want to upgrade once she is ours :-)
After a long day at the boatyards yesterday, I think we have a winner.
We have been looking pretty carefully over 2 different boats. One was Serena, the 38 Morgan from the previous post and the other was Hopscotch, a 36' Canadian Sailcraft. Hopscotch was the very first boat we looked over during our first soujourn to the south side a few weeks ago. It was a fluke that we even got to see her. She's not even been put on the market but the lovely people at Skyway Yacht Works happened to be friends with the owner and knew he was looking to sell. Long story short, we boarded her and found she had lots of what we were looking for in a cruising boat.
Do you know how exhausting it is to look at boats?! There are so many things to be on the look-out for. They'd all begun to blend together, so we went back a second time and saw all the boats we were definitely interested in, and took some photos. Yesterday was the third and final visit. We took our trusty checklist of things to look for while combing over both Serena and Hopscotch. Nigel Calder's Cruising Handbook: A Compendium for Coastal and Offshore Sailors has been a huge help in moving forward in our plans to cruise. At the back of this book, Nigel has this monstrous checklist of things to look for when purchasing a boat. We are talking 15 pages long. Single spaced. We embarked on the checklist for both boats. I sat at the navigational station of each boat and read all the items aloud and we investigated every single one of them. Josh had come prepared with magnets, a head lamp, a pen light, and an inspection mirror. What we thought might take a few hours ended up taking six when all was said and done. Whew! Both vessels had some issues that need to be addressed but in the end, both Josh and I were leaning towards Serena. We are currently doing the math upgrades and repairs that will be needed on this hot little momma and will hopefully be making an offer on her very soon.
