After making the decision that we wanted to be a part of the World Arc I spent almost every night reading about peoples journeys. I was interested in the journey, what kind of boat they did it on, what kinds of issues they had, what made it great, and what was not so great. Luckily with all the youtube channels and Blogs out there this is pretty easy. I soon found myself corresponding with a lot of folks that were happy to discuss their adventures with me. A few years ago I had stumbled across the Nordhavn Motor Sailer and always thought it would be the perfect boat for a circumnavigation. Not only does it sail, it carries enough fuel if you just wanted to motor across the Pacific Ocean and at 56ft seemed like a boat a couple could manage. Even if we didn't cross any oceans its still seemed like a fantastic option. When doing our Loop trip one came up for sale and was on our path as we were traveling down the coast of FL. After a little talking my wife was up for looking at it so we stopped in Sarasota and spent a couple extra days there which would allow us to see the boat. We both walked away pretty impressed but at the time we still owned the 47ft Beneateau that we put in storage to do the loop and the 42ft Nordic Tug we were currently doing the trip on. What would the logistics be like if we bought that boat. Coming to our senses we decided to let someone else's cruising dreams come true. With that said we kept talking about it and almost did call back to make an offer a couple times over the year or so it was on the market after we got home. Needless to say this was my go to boat when we started seriously talking about this trip. Well after a few discussions my wife pointed out that it might not be very comfortable spending weeks at a time crossing oceans while heeling at 7-20 degrees.
Having enjoyed the ease of having a trawler I could point any direction and go in we started talking about long range trawlers. I started making internet friends with guys that owned big trawlers and had made ocean passages. Frankly all the systems, size and weight of the boats were a bit intimidating but hey they have stabilizers which should fix the heeling concern. I have always admired the Nordhavn 62. It looks like a little ship and by all accounts is quite sea worthy. I even called the ARC folks and asked if I could do the trip with a trawer and was surprised when they said yes if it met the necessary requirements. Amazed by that answer I dove into all the long distance trawler options I could find. We even talked about going to see a 62 that was for sale in Newfoundland. I obsessively talked with folks I never met that owned these boats about fuel burn, comfort at sea, reliability, running the boat as a couple, and everything else I could think of. During my search I found a fellow that had owned and crossed the Pacific in both a 50ft Lagoon catamaran and a 50 some foot Nordhavn that said next time he would rather do it in a monohaul? He said the biggest problem was find places that could deal with the width of the catamaran and the weight of the trawler (most the big trawlers weigh well over 100k lbs). It would be easiest to stick with a mono haul. This comment helped center me a bit and I came to the conclusion that while its a good option and frankly might be cheaper then doing it in a sailboat (after you figure in the cost of new rigging and at least a couple new sails along the way working out to be less then the fuel costs). We both liked the idea of doing it in a sailboat where if something went wrong we would have the choice of an extra engine or sails to get us somewhere.
Having now removed the trawler or mono haul options we started talking about catamarans. Our new friends that had completed the ARC had done it in a 50ft performance cat. After doing some homework on that we decided we didn't want the more spartan conditions that come with those kinds of boats, probably are not enthusiastic enough to want to push a boat to those speeds while staying alert enough to safely manage it and thus focused narrowed our search to boats in the cruising class. We took a trip in October to the Anapolis show once again determined to take a good look at Catamarins to see what we liked and didn't like while talking to the manufactures about various design philosophies. The first boat we saw that we both really liked was the Nautitech 48. Build wise it was nice but reminded us of a production boat like our Beneteau which was nice but not to the quality level our Nordic Tug had been. Also it had the outside exposed helm stations which one fellow told me was not a big deal after sailing his around the world as he only used them for docking. Having had the duel helms on our Beneteau I could see the advantages for the position. But I also looked at those as making it hard to see what is in front of you. Would I be able to see any logs or crab pots from that position. I enjoy sitting at the helm while underway and ultimately don't want to be in the sun that much. While it was the first boat we seriously considered buying we ruled it out because of the helm stations. After a couple days spent getting on most the boats at the show we had narrowed our search down to something in the 45+ ft range and really liked the FP's, Xquisite, and Privilege brands. Unfortunately Privilege only had a 580 on display which we agreed was too big but there was a 2022 for sale nearby that we were able to get on. That boat seemed to have everything we were looking for. Unfortunately we didn't really need a boat right now. If we were to follow our plan we would be waiting until 2026 or 2027 to buy the next boat. We drove home talked about it a lot.. one can do a lot of talking over a 7.5hr car ride and its easy to walk away from a boat show excited.. we called the insurance company confirmed they would insure us, found a dock that would fit it on Lake Erie and maybe even a marina in Lake Michigan that could haul it out (seems not many marinas in the Great Lakes are set up to deal with a 26ft beam). So we got brave and called back to make an offer only to find out someone was faster than us to the punch. We took this as a sign and went back to our initial plan to buy a boat in a couple years. Ultimately, at this point we had decided a catamaran should be our next boat and that's what we should focus on going forward.
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