The struggle of the search for the right boat

2023.12.01 - AYB - Reading time ~9 Minutes

This is the amount of boats I had to look at to find the one

So, by the Jan-Feb 2023 I got a strong impression that I want a boat. The think-flow was trivial: * I don’t want to pay $2k+/mo for the apartment in the ruined house in Ramat Gan. * I don’t see any way to obtain 1-1.5 million dollars to buy my own apartment in Israel not at the middle of nowhere. * I hate israeli food pricing, especially when israeli fruits abroad are twice cheaper than in Israel itself and way better quality. * I don’t have any passion to learn crypto-language called Hebrew. Just see no reason to because I work in English, friends are russians and I have no interest in local news or entertainment. And overall, spending thousands hours to speak the language with 10mil Earth population coverage? No, thanks. * After all these years in Israel I don’t see any opportunity to entertain myself anymore. * If I move anywhere in the world on land, in few years there will be the same thing – nothing to do, and nothing new to see. * Every relocation equals to fire and flood combined. Stopped having fun with that, so I need to become a turtle to have my home with me always. * True “digital nomad” lifestyle isn’t for me, at least because I have a 30kg dog, that impairs me with the required mobility. * RV isn’t a real variant because it’s too small to live in, and the big ones are too expensive. * Also RV can’t move itself to another continent to escape the full-scale world war. And I suspect that it’s not far away in the future.

So, here we coming to a straight and shiny idea that the boat is the right choice for the task. It’s quite big to host me, my dog, couple of friends and deliver me almost anywhere on the planet. Also the boat can be fitted for the almost full autonomy, where I’ll just need to buy some food ashore once in a while. Also, boats are available within any budget (sad I don’t fit into the “free tier” with my goals).

About a half-a-billion dollars afloat at the Tivat marina. I am happy that I can’t afford any of these yachts – I’d kill myself on receiving the first monthly bill.

So I started my search right after having my skipper license approved. And that’s the exact moment when I found that people selling boats are mostly the same nasty greedy assholes that sell wheeled trash called cars. When you have a boat and meet another sailor, you’re the best friends in no time. But when it comes to a bargain… I found dozens of boats with obvious defects and the brokers or owners were like “no-no, you see it wrong, it’s just a little thing that doesn’t worth even being noticed!” – especially about osmosis. About the picture below – broker said that it’s not an osmosis that’s a filthy antifouling work by contractors and it has to be fixed. A-ha. I am an absolute newb in yachting and I see that this is an absolutely catastrophic osmosis all over the hull!

Do you see these small bubbles on the black belly? That’s osmosis and it’s everywhere on that boat. Curing it will take half a year time and $20k money at least.

Also, it’s somehow and absolutely “normal” for the mediterranean brokers to piss you off. Either ghosting you by not giving a reply to a question for a week or more, or forget that you’re flying 4000km to see the boat and leave for the several days somewhere. Or “I forgot that the boat isn’t in this marina but 50 miles away” – “Ok, let’s go there” – “Oh, no, I don’t have time to go there”. My face once got whole-rainbow-colored because of facepalms. Literally. I forgot I’m holding a water-bottle and did a facepalm, effectively hitting myself with a liter of water in a bottle. Almost knocked out myself.

Another thing I found – I am too tall for the old boats less than 13 meters long. I am 193cm at the morning and my most disappointment about the old boats is that they’re all built for hobbits. Really, having a ceiling of 180cm at most, next to the stairs, and 165 at the cabin!? WTF!?
So, since then my communication with the sellers always started with “Could you, please, specify the exact headroom of this boat next to stairs, next to galley and in the head?”

This was a beautiful Peterson-34 with a brand-new engine with just few dozens hours on it. And it became my first disappointment – I barely fit in the salon standing barefoot and have to crouch everywhere else in the boat.

Another remarkable boat I met in France – it was a 38ft vessel built for living. Current owner lives on it and it already had almost anything I could dream of for autonomous being: desalinator, solar batteries, lithium batteries, powerful alternator and the folding prop, bunch of sails in a decent condition… But when I took the boat out of the water for inspection I found 58 (fifty damn it eight) repairs on the hull. It had severe damages on the nose and at the stern that were fixed but so badly so I could see delamination of the hull from inside. That was my biggest disappointment of all the time I’ve been looking for a boat. Owner asked 62k euros for it. Before taking it out I was ready to pay 55. After taking it out I told him that I’m not going to offend him with the honest price, because it will be miserable for him. I advised him to invest time and some money to, at least, re-paint the hull to cover up the repairs. He asked how much and I told him 40k. He was embarrassed and offended, so I left.

Among the other old boats I found some very special: Dehler 36CWS. That’s a magnificent boat that has interior design 20 years ahead of her time and the skipper’s post engineered to sail single-handed!

Just look at it! It’s 1988! Absolutely gorgeous salon

That interior hooked my heart and I started looking exactly for these boats. Moreover, Internet said that the headroom of this boat is 195cm which is really great – that means that I fit in it!

So I found one in Holland and agreed to fly there to see it personally. And when I stepped in… I found that I don’t fit. A little-bit, 5-6 centimeters, but no. That was frustrating. I was trying to stand this way and another but all I felt about the future – the very nasty osteohondrosis in half a year. Almost crying I left the boat.

Later I found that Dehler raised the ceiling in this model several times and 195cm are the boats only since 1993. The one I was looking was 1985. So I started hunting for the right age. And I found the ad about the right boat in the Spain. I immediately wrote to the seller that I’m interested and willing to see it. Got a reply two days later that the boat didn’t arrive yet. Several days later I got the confirmation that the boat is arriving and I flew to Alicante. Upon arrival I started messaging to the seller but he was silent. I had nothing else to do than just go blindly to the marina. There I kissed the closed doors of the office and that broker finally replied. The reply I got was, literally quoting: “I am at the sea trials, will not come today nor tomorrow, see you next week. BTW, the owner of the boat decided to sail to Ibiza for this weekend.” He should celebrate this day as his new birthday, because I was at rage.

Overall I flew to Netherlands two times, three times to Spain, one time to France and seen in person about 10 boats. Some boats were inspected remotely if I had an option to find a trusted person there or convince someone to make a very detailed photo-album of the boat. I remember one boat somewhere in Greece. It was a somewhat good looking Benetau 39 but I’m glad I didn’t fly there – I agreed with marina for 100 euros to make a detailed photo-album and found that this boat was priced twice of it’s real value at least – it was abandoned for years and was in a really miserable condition under the hoods. Overall I spent on travelling and other inspections about 5-7k dollars and, according to the internet, that’s not the worst case. There are people who spent over 15k during the search for the right boat.

On my way back I was searching for an inner peace staring at the beautiful clouds down below

Shortly after my return I got a message from a friend that there is a Bavaria 39 sitting in Valencia, being sold cheap by the owner but two trusted people inspected it very carefully and can guarantee that this boat does worth requested money. After a short thinking, I decided to give it a chance. This “cheap” price was cheap only by comparison with her sisters. But it was all my money. Literally zero left. That wasn’t my plan. But it’s Bavaria 39.

These boats are quite famous for their very spaceous salon and cabins, lots of storage space and quite good interior design. And this was the one. Default configuration, no addons of any kind. But, I came to see it, crawled everywhere, and after some thinking I have decided to buy it. The owner was quite happy with it, because he was at the stage of moving to a new house and these money were right at a time to help him fill the costly gaps with it. So I got the boat, dinghie, 6hp outboard engine, second anchor along with a very few spare parts – the owner is a lawyer who’s very far from diy repairs. But overall I bought this boat at the bottom-line price compared to the market.
Also, the owner was very kind to me, and helped me a lot with the starting stuff, like initial provisioning, gifted me some dishes and cutlery (brand new) and a few other very warming things. Thanks, Daniel!

And that is how that story ends. Now I am an owner of the 18 years old great cruising vessel that’s gonna become my home for the next many years.

We have arrived.

The next day after I paid for the Bavaria, I had a call from the broker of the boat in France and he told me that the guy is ready to sell the boat for the 40k. Heh. It started from 65k. Had to excuse.