Boat Shopping

 

I'll start by saying I like almost every boat so narrowing one down might be hard.  I think they are all sexy in their own way.  I'm not sure what it is but since I was a kid helping my dad wax his boat I've been in love with the idea of boats and the adventures one could take with them.  My dad had a 20ft Sea Ray for almost 20 years and we took that boat a lot of places.  It seemed like I must have water skied about a million miles behind that boat while growing up.  

After clicking though every boat on the east coast of the United States at least a few times over the period of a couple of weeks we finally decided it was time to go see a couple near us.  We decided to pick a Hatteras & a Azimut to get an idea of two different types of boats to start with.  Both boats seemed to check a lot of boxes with the most important being the 3 staterooms & livability factor.

The first boat we saw was a 53 Hatteras.  It seemed like a huge floating apartment.  The owners had updated it but had managed to loose the nautical or ship like feeling with the updates instead turning it into a high end apartment.  It seemed weird to me that there was a lot of port lights but none of them were clear, it felt dark down below, the engines were huge and frankly a bit intimidating to someone used to a 50hp diesel in my sailboat, while I loved the livability of the back deck I could not envision how one would get from the boat to the dock to deal with lines when coming or going.  It did have a boarding ramp but that seemed like a pain but would make it easier to bringing groceries back while at the dock.  I have no idea how owners might do this from a dingy and having to climb that ladder in the back while the boat is rolling around at anchor?  While a very nice boat, this was not a model I thought I could fall in love with and I'm still perplexed at how the heck a couple might dock this boat on their own?

While visiting the 53 we found out the Hatteras Convertable right beside it was for sale and also happened to meet most of our requirements.  Unlike the previous one that had spent the majority of its time on the Great Lakes this one had spent many years in salt water.  Even though it had been painted you could really tell the toll the salt water had taken.  It was much less roomy inside than the other one but I liked the layout a lot more and could envision a way to jump off the back of it onto a dock when coming in.  This one had not seen many updates over the years but the asking price was about 50k less.  It had a decent sized galley, the fly bridge had room for folks to sit in front of the Captain rather than behind so they might be better engage in the conversation.  Between the two I liked this boat a lot better but it didn't excite Amy in the least.  She missed the safety rails going all the way around, the comforts of the other, and felt this one might be too much of a project in the time we had.  So off to the next one.

As we were walking over to see the Azimut the broker got a call from the owner saying he was not ready to show it yet and wanted to clean it up more.  I attempted to convince him to let us see it anyway but it was not until a few weeks later that the broker called back saying the owner was finally ready to show it.  We did walk by it in the storage barn but Amy has never really been a fan of planeing boats in general so we decided to skip it for now.  Two weeks later we found out it was under contract and did not survey very well.  For almost twice as much as the Hatteras we saw we were not very excited about it and hope its the right boat for someone else.

What did we learn?  

1. I don't think I want a 1980's era boat
2. I think a fresh water boat will be a better value & will most likely will have aged better than a salt water boat
3. Apparently you can put residential furniture in a boat without nailing it down.  Seems all these power boats have sectional couches, end tables, and picture frames setup.  I can't imagine they leave the dock much or go out in the same conditions we go sailing in.
4. I don't want a boat so high I can't easily get to the dock.  I really don't want to have to climb a ladder or deal with stairs/boarding ramp everywhere we go.

In the future we would like to see some Carvers.  They make me think of an RV on a lake.  Amy has never been on a trawler and I would like to go out on some of the hybrid semi displacement hauls like the newer Grand Banks or Katie Krogen Express (Saw a couple of these in Cape Coral this winter and loved the idea of them).  Bottom line we didn't fall in love and want to check out some other options.