[Daves911L]

Mentioned this adventure in the Maine vacation thread, and a couple of people said they were interested to hear more, so here goes…

Mrs Dave and i bought a sailboat . In Maine. And sailed it to Florida . Well, more correctly Georgia. But we did briefly touch Florida. And, i suppose i should mention, we were not sailors. I guess we are now🤣.

By way of background, we sailed, 35 odd years ago. On Hobies. A Nacra. A Catalina 25. On lakes, in Texas. When we were young newlyweds, without a pot to piss in, we loved spending evenings and weekends out on the water with cheap boats, no gas required, a bag of sandwiches, a few beers. We had great tans. I even took up windsurfing, and became pretty good at it. Then…we moved west, where there was no water. Had a kid. Got careers. Became respectable🤣.

Two years ago we started thinking about a boat again. It was time. We both missed the water. My career had become very flexible. Mrs Dave retired from hers. We started looking online. Reading. Found several good candidates. Modern and sleek. Not brand new, but not very old either. Big enough to live on, and have guests. We started talking about all the places we could go. A bit over a year ago we flew down to Florida to see a few in person.

Oh, they looked so beautiful sitting there at the Marina, gleaming in the sun. And we went aboard. It didnt feel right . All the charm of a McDonalds. We went to another. And another One of the brokers we were with was funny. I liked him. A southern boy, with a heavy drawl. He kept calling them Benetoads and Jeaun-Nos. After a while i started to realize it was more than his accent. He was showing us what we had asked, but there was derision in his tone. So finally i said, ok, smart guy, why dont you show us what you think is a good boat.

Her walked us over to a derelict looking old thing. Varnish peeling off the wood. Hull hairy with green fur. Lines running all over the place. We went below deck. Thick and musty. It smelled like a forest. Dark, and wood. Real wood, not veneer. Stuff everywhere. Underwear snd t-shirts piled on the berths. Big bags labelled with various names i guessed must be sails. It was….interesting. I had to admit there was something “real” about it. It had charm. The broker told me it had been around the world already. Had just come back from S America. I asked the price. It was less than 1/3 of what the sleek white things wed been looking at were . I asked him what it would take to make it seaworthy? He said it already was. That he wouldnt hesitate to take it across the Atlantic right then. He explained the hull, the keel, how it was built, the engine, the electronics. No showpiece. A workhorse. Built like a tank. Suddenly i knew why those shiny things had no charm. I didnt want one anymore.

Part 2 to follow.