We bought a boat

After all the frustration and back and forth we were exhausted and tired of negotiations. We booked a flight down to see the boat again, assess the gelcoat repair and check out the new prop ourselves. The brokers sent over a receipt to show one had been purchased as I was not excited about diving on the boat while it was in a canal in front of someones home we agreed to take it out of the dock and try running it to see how it really performed. Seems there was enough contention in this that we again had both brokers, their manager (The president of sales), a captain and a surveyor on board for this little show. It felt like everyone was there to ensure a sale as they all seemed to understand we were done and willing to walk away. The good news is the prop worked.. The bad news is they were not running the same RPM's on the two engines. One engine was 75 to 100 RPM off regardless of how many times we attempted to shift the blades from standard to overdrive and back again. The gelcoat looked ok but needed another coat and maybe a bit of wet sanding to be finished. We agreed to close, we would figure out the prop issue and asked the owners to concede $500 to get the gelcoat guy back out to finish the job. The owners broker agreed I signed the form electronically while we were on our return trip and we now officially owned a really big catamaran.

The next question is now what? We had talked with the fellow (Bill) that owned the house it was in front of. He was willing to let us continue to use the dock for a somewhat reasonable cost (for the area) as long as we wanted. Our insurance company told us we needed to get it out of Florida before July 1st and north of Cumberland Island somewhere. We would like to get it back to Lake Erie but really don't have the time to do a 4000 mile trip with it this summer.

Picture after our purchase with our broker Darla

We decided to do a shake down cruise with it and head over to the Xquisite Center in Freeport Bahamas. We closed on the boat Wednesday night. Booked a flight for Max to come join us Friday and planned to do the 90 mile crossing Saturday if the weather window held out. Luckily we bought the boat as we had not booked a hotel room and Bill was ok if we stayed on the boat for a couple days while we got it ready to leave. Unfortunately living on a boat while docked at a personal residence is frowned upon in the area but Bill understood our situation told us to not make it obvious and do what we needed to do to get ready. He was really friendly and turns out just liked meeting all the boaters that used his dock and hearing about their adventures. He is a pretty interesting guy and I would have liked to get to know him more but unfortunately time was against us and we had arranged for 3 days of training on the boat over in Freeport. So all day Thursday and Friday was spent buying basics like life vests, flares, extra lines, coast guard stickers (to ensure we will pass a safety check), pans, toaster, towels and some basic food. While our purchase contract had stated anything on the boat as of the sea trial would stay with the boat, it seemed the previous owners had ignored that and pulled a bunch of stuff off the boat that we now had to reinventory and replace. I figure they probably took about 1-2k worth of stuff. During our survey we had taken pictures of everything on board as we had been been surprised by how much the previous owners of our tug took off the boat (including the furniture, manuals, and pictures of the boat being built) but at this point I was just done and because we only brought an overnight bag with us we got to buy all this stuff new that we also already have on our Tug back at home :(. I don't feel like we are contentious buyers but this is the second boat we have purchased that was just a pain in the rear to get to the finish line even with two full time experienced professional boat brokers moderating the tone. Maybe it is us.. guess if it happens a 3rd time we are probably the problem :)