Buying a boat during a pandemic...

 So our bid was accepted by the current owner. Which is quite amazing in and of itself. The boat is down in St. Augustine, FL so it is like working with long handled tongs. But just convincing the current owner to sell me his baby is just step one of many steps to getting the boat up here. I'm currently polling my friends to see who is interested in helping drive it up here. It's some 800 miles, or more I haven't laid out the full track yet. 

So boat inspection is the next step. I will be there as a fly on the wall for the inspection. Need to inventory all the various cabinets and see what's on the boat and what will need to be sent down. Bedding, vacuum, pots, pans, coffee maker, charts, and a billion other things I am not thinking about right now.

Had a virtual walk through the other weekend, it looks very nice, doesn't look like it leaks, except for a bucket in the middle of the salon table(??). 

Anyway next is to rent a car and drive down there. I am still hoping to live through this winter so am working to minimize exposure. 

Wow so much empty

 Hello and welcome back!

It's been a few years since I have had much to say here. We have sailed some, but lost the last season to the boatyard. Evidently if you are just asking for a small repair, IE under 5K, you will never ever get your service complete. I needed the starter rebuilt as well as the high pressure fuel pump. The fuel pump was spewing diesel into the bilge, which on a number of levels is just a bad thing. Then the starter would just randomly not work. And frankly I am not going to sail into my slip. So I just needed those things worked on. The boat has been in pieces since February. Granted we are also having a pandemic, but seriously, it's freaking September.

In other news we are looking at buying a catamaran! A sweet Manta 40'. I have been enamored with the Manta line for quite some time. We really like the up galley, the owners stateroom with crawl in vs. crawl over bed. As well as the Camberspar jib. It is quite a bit of boat and will be a nice step up from Amadeus. Really wanted the Manta 42', but can afford the Manta 40', so there we go. Not really sure if I'd miss the "extra" 2'.

Been doing quite a bit of research into the boat and it's parts, especially the sail part. In examining the electronics the autopilot and the sails are all integrated to work together. With the self tacking Camberspar up front to tack under autopilot all you need do is press a button. There is also the option to set a course with way points and have the boat motor to the end, making all needed turns to accommodate the path. Which frankly sounds like huge fun. Get it out of the slip, then engage the auto, motor out to where ever the wind is, and go! We always had a fairly long motor to get out of our slip and out to the bay, so this would make it a bit easier. With the autopilot you can also set the offset to the wind to 0' and it will keep the nose into the wind so as to make raising and lowering sail as simple as possible. Has lazy jacks for both the main and jib. Might also have a permanent spinnaker, but not to sure about that. 

Just found an owners manual as well as an owners club on line.

Anyway we are still in the early stages here. Will try to stay up to date on this process. 

Fair winds!

Edit: So it has been a few weeks since the boatyard returned Amadeus to me. And FFS. They left the boat floating for 9 months with no trickle charger on the batteries, so they are all dead. That is 3 $215 batteries. They put it back in the wrong slip, and used some sort of what looks like twine to moor it. The bill was outrageous and frankly I will never do business with them again.