Wow oh wow! What a whirlwind year!
November 2017
My boyfriend Mike, and I took a sunset cruise in Hawaii. It was super romantic! This was our 49th state to visit in one year! 2017 was an amazing year!
During the sunset cruise, we were talking about what we wanted to do after we saw all of the states. We both agreed that this might be a fun way for us to start traveling and see the world. We spoke to the Captain that allowed us to come up to the helm. He showed us around and we asked a hundred questions and one of them was "Can people live on a catamaran?" He said "YES"! He told us about the cabin set up but we still didn't understand. We started Youtubing sailing on catamarans a found several couples living on their cat and loving every minute of it. This became an every night focus, one, can we live on a catamaran and two, would we want to?
April 2018
We were in Washington D.C. and I found a boat show that had catamarans to view. We drove to Annapolis, Maryland and saw our very first real, cruising catamaran. Man oh man, we fell in love!!! There were several models of the catamarans and we really felt fit our needs. They were beuatiful and super pricey. Woah! What to do next?
We really didn't know where to begin. I started doing a lot of reasearch and found that we could take a seven day live aboard class and get our sailing certifications through American Sailing Association. We were planning on doing an Alaskan cruise for our big summer vacation but we talked about it and went for the Catamaran live aboard classes.
May 2018
We signed up for the seven day ASA Blue Water Sailing School Catamaran Lesson.
It was so exciting. We were with Captain Jen and two other guys that were brothers that wanted to learn to sail a catamaran. They both had sailing knowledge so they really helped us along the way. We sailed from Ft. Lauderdale to Biscayne Bay Florida and back. It was a bit each day so we really learned what to do when there are leaks and how to lower sails quickly in the rain. We nothed passed the certifications in ASA 101, 103, 104, and 114.
July 2018
Mike found a sales agent for catamarans sales on Youtube so he contacted Gary and he put us in touch with a lender and Yacht World to start looking for what we wanted. Everything was so pricey! Yikes. We talked with several lenders and banks and we were neveral going to be approved with a full loan. We needed to have the same amount in collateral or loans equal to the purchase proce of the boat. Well, Mike and I both gave up our houses to our ex-spouses in the divorces. Mine was thirteen years ago and his was eleven years ago. Neither one of us ever owned a $400,000 car so that's it. We can't get a loan. So, we set up the Ten Year Plan.
I created a spreadsheet with everything that we wanted in a catamaran. Everytime we found a catamaran that we liked, I put it in the spreadsheet to compare the vessel and ammenities. We started only traveling near where we were located so we could saved some money for the Alaskan cruise and future big trips. We would just keep doing the same and keep saving as much as possible for the next ten years. We were focused on communicating in the catamaran forums, watching our Subscribed catamaran channels, learning everything we could, and constantly talking to people on sailing crew finders groups. All of the catamarans that needed crews were in the tropics while we were up North. We never gave up searching for a catamaran to get on.
December 2018
We were visiting our families for the holidays and while on holiday I started looking at catamarans again. We had not seen any used catamarans because we were in the North and evidently, all the catamarans are in Florida. We decide to just call our agent to see if he could arrage for us to see a couple. Gary sent his agent Rudy to show us some catamarans. We zeroed in on one that had everything we wanted. It wasn't as big as what we needed but it was a really good size. We arranged a meeting the day after Christmas. We drove four hours there and four hours back. What can I say, we loved it. This catamaran had everything we wanted and we loved the seller Mike. He didn't want to sell it but recently had heart surgery and his wife was soon having hip surgery so he had to let her go. He was selling it with EVERYTHING on the boat. Lines, life jackets, pots, pans, fire extinquishers, sailing guides, radios, etc. It's a 30 year British catamaran and he just wanted to sell it right around $100,000. On the drive back we looked at each other and I called Rudy and we made an offer.
January 2019
After much negotiaion we settled on a price. Then we scheduled a surveyor to inspect the vessel in and out of the water. He said everything looks great.
He did suggest we get an engine inspection since the engines had some age. We did as he suggested and met our new mechanic. JR dropped everything to do a last minute engine inspection on both engines. We got the estimate and back to price negotion for the catamaran. It took an entire moth for negotiations after the inspections but it was worth it.
February 2019
We were able to convince the bank to give us a loan if we put down half.
It worked! We got insurance, a loan, seatow and now we own a catamaran!
So much for the Ten Year Plan but thank you Law of Attraction!
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