Do we take on a project boat, or not?

We had the first part of our boat inspection last week. 

There were a few pleasant surprises, a lot of confirmations that our areas of concern are areas of concern, and some are worse than we thought they’d be.

We thought we’d get a chance to have our surveyor shimmy up the mast and we also thought we’d be able to do a sea trial. High wind and lines too damaged to safely hoist our surveyor made the full mast inspection a no-go. The sea trial was a non-starter because a diver was supposed to make sure the propeller was operable beforehand and we were told there were too many alligators in the area for a diver to check the prop.

Meanwhile, we’ve already spent ~$500 for the first part of the survey, and the next part is much more expensive as it requires our paying for a haulout. So we’re running our numbers and making sure we’re fully on-board for tackling everything that would need to be done to safely sail away to the Bahamas this year.

These are not easy decisions.

Is this the boat we’ll go with? We’re not 100% sure yet. We’re still working on our spreadsheets.

We don’t want to take a whole lot longer. Every day we spend deciding is one less day we spend getting the boat ready to go, but still, it’s a big decision.  

Time is of the essence!

We’ll keep you posted.

Location Location

We’re still on terra firma in Ft. Pierce, Florida.