A Sail of Two Idiots (7 page)
Read A Sail of Two Idiots Online
Authors: Renee Petrillo
We amended the contract, lowering our price and asking for a few things to be fixed. Incredibly and unexpectedly, our final offer was accepted. What?! We had just bought a 37-foot 2001 Island Spirit for $187,500. AACK!! If you're doing the numbers, that meant we had to put down $37,500 (20 percent of the boat price). With the house sold at $340,000 and the home loan and realtor paid off giving us a $199,000 net, we now had $161,500 to spend (and owe). Three years of sailing still seemed feasible.
I'm not sure which emotion was more pronouncedâterror or excitement. The closing process was slightly bittersweet as we were now going to have a higher boat payment and less cash to play with. Could we have waited? Should we have?
Sure, but for what exactly? Prices could have gone down, or up. If you have a crystal ball, use it; otherwise, heed the following lesson:
LESSON 7: YOUR EYES SHOULD NOT BE BIGGER THAN YOUR WALLET
We
did
get a great deal on a great boat, but it
was
out of our price range. And we still had to make repairs and personalize our new home. Our boat payments ended up being so high that there was no way we could pay the boat mortgage plus afford a land-based rent, a hotel room, or even the haulout/boatyard fee, so we would have to spend all our time on board and wouldn't be able to move off until she was sold. Good thing we liked our boat! Choose wisely, my friends.
Did I mention we now owned a boat? AAACK!
Travel Lift and Haulout
Galley
Salon
Head
Aft Cabin
Spinnaker
Helm
Navigation Center
The Best-Laid Plans
S
ailboat owners ⦠Michael and me! Who'd have thunk it? With the purchase complete and the house just weeks away from closing, we made some plans. I repeat,
plan
is a four-letter word. Michael would quit his job first and join the boat in Florida. I'd keep working and deal with the house closing. Once the house was sold, I'd quit my job and head to Florida, where we'd take lessons on our new boat. Then we'd take off for the Bahamas. Had it happened that way, I think it would have been perfect.
In August 2006, just two months after we'd first seen our catamaran, Michael did quit his job and drive to Florida. You have never seen so much stuff packed into a Mini Cooper. We had to pack everything we wanted on the boat (such as tools) because I wouldn't be able to take them on the plane later.
You can imagine Michael's first thoughts when, after driving for three days, he came upon the boat in such deplorable condition that he couldn't move onto it. Turns out, the portable air-conditioning unit that the owner had promised to leave in the hatch had been removed, so the interior was molding and rotting. All six house batteries (which store energy to run things such as lights) had swelled from the heat and needed to be replaced. The once-white exterior was now brown and covered with iguana poop and looked as though it would never come clean. The white vinyl cushions were now black with mold and actually had green plant shoots growing out of them. The metalwork, inside and out, was rusted. Welcome home, honey!
LESSON 8: DON'T COMPLETELY ABANDON YOUR SHIP
Once you own your boat, make sure someone checks on it for you if you can't do it yourself. Boats do not like to sit unattended. It was bad enough that this one had been at a dock for almost two years, but two months of no care at all really set it back.
Michael ended up moving into a nearby crew house, bought $500 worth of cleaning supplies, and started scrubbing. Meanwhile I was balancing our checkbook and yelling at Michael for spending so much money (you spent
what
on stain remover?).
Just two weeks before our house was supposed to close and I was about to give notice at work, the house sale fell through.
Our house sale fell through
! Yep, we now
had loans on our house
and
our boat, and I was the only one working. We had also put our boat down payment on our credit cards, expecting to pay them off with the house proceeds. AAAAAAGHH!!