Buying a boat!!

I’m not sure where the idea of our sailing adventure started. It’s always been something we’ve talked about over the years, initially as some abstract idea in the distant future, but gradually forming itself into a real and tangible plan, with spreadsheets and budgets and paperwork and route plans. 

There have been many steps in the journey which precede this point, but today I decided that I wanted to document our journey, so that hopefully, we can look back in years to come on what we did. 

Today was also a key date in the process – survey day. After doing a lot ( I mean really, a lot) of research on what types of boat we might want for our great adventure, it was actually by pure chance that a Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 35 came across our path. I should add at this juncture that very fortunately for us, Marty’s brother is a yacht broker here in Dublin, which opened up additional avenues to the traditional yacht search. Having viewed the boat a couple of times, we’d already made a provisional offer on the boat, which the owner had accepted. The offer was subject to a satisfactory survey, which brings me back to today’s key milestone.

It was a very cold and blustery day in Dun Laoghaire, and we met the surveyor at midday at the boat yard, where the boat had been hauled out on to the hard and was resting in the slings. Again, very fortunately for us, we had a sailing friend who was a qualified (and very experienced) marine surveyor, so the process, although very thorough, was very informal – if a bit chilly! The survey is carried out to determine whether there are any issues with the boat, including the structural soundness of the hull, keel and rudder, osmosis etc – generally, anything fundamentally wrong with the boat. The preliminary findings were very positive on the whole – we’ll wait for the full report, but so far, so good. We did find that there was water in the rudder, but apparently this is very normal, and in most cases can be resolved by drilling holes in the bottom, and letting the water drain out for a couple of weeks. We’ll have a better idea once the full report comes back but in general, we didn’t find anything overly concerning. 

Now that the survey is completed, we have to wait a few days for the full report, at which point it will be decision time!