Geez.... how time flies. A month ago, we were still job hunting, still catamaran hunting, and still freezing our butts off in one of the latest UK winters for a long time.
Skip forward to early May - Lauren and I are both back at work, we've pretty much settled on a catamaran, and the weather is *finally* warming up. There's even talk of 26C this weekend. Crazy, I know.
I won't go into the work side of things too much, but needless to say we're back on track for setting off again in the not-too-distant future.
As for the catamaran, we decided to give that utterly annoying broker one last chance. We made a very low offer on that Lerouge at HIYC (where I built Calypso) too which the broker never got back to us... two weeks later, he pops up again advising the seller will take slightly more than we'd offered. I tell you, the man has zero business skills. We passed on that as we'd since been down to Plymouth and made an offer on a 42ft custom cat. That first offer was knocked back, as was our second, but we've been advised our third offer (yet to be made) will be accepted..... The big difference for the Plymouth boat is the broker is amazing - very helpful, always gets back to us, and is willing to work with us to make the deal happen.
We've also decided to keep the catamaran at HIYC again; it's not my first (or second. Or third) choice but at 7.4m beam, we're quite limited on where we can get into. Price-wise we're up for a 50% premium courtesy of the increased beam (even though we'll likely be residing in the same spot we were with Calypso) but hey ho, it'll be great to have a boat back on the south coast and start prepping for another trip.
On that note, where to next? Well, we've got a lot of sailing to do this year on friends' boats, plus the Plymouth cat will require a bit of work before we can really start using her (windows resealed and a re-rig). Calypso is also due back in mid-June / early-July and I have a couple of week's work planned before we sell her, where I need to move all the cruiser bits (watermaker, SSB, etc) across to the cat. Once all that's done though, we'll get a few test weekends in to get the rig and ourselves dialled in, then maybe a round the Isle of Wight trip before we attempt a cross channel as the year closes out. That timeline's all up for debate though and we'll see how 2016 progresses....
Anyway, all for now. Updates to follow....
n
Skip forward to early May - Lauren and I are both back at work, we've pretty much settled on a catamaran, and the weather is *finally* warming up. There's even talk of 26C this weekend. Crazy, I know.
I won't go into the work side of things too much, but needless to say we're back on track for setting off again in the not-too-distant future.
As for the catamaran, we decided to give that utterly annoying broker one last chance. We made a very low offer on that Lerouge at HIYC (where I built Calypso) too which the broker never got back to us... two weeks later, he pops up again advising the seller will take slightly more than we'd offered. I tell you, the man has zero business skills. We passed on that as we'd since been down to Plymouth and made an offer on a 42ft custom cat. That first offer was knocked back, as was our second, but we've been advised our third offer (yet to be made) will be accepted..... The big difference for the Plymouth boat is the broker is amazing - very helpful, always gets back to us, and is willing to work with us to make the deal happen.
We've also decided to keep the catamaran at HIYC again; it's not my first (or second. Or third) choice but at 7.4m beam, we're quite limited on where we can get into. Price-wise we're up for a 50% premium courtesy of the increased beam (even though we'll likely be residing in the same spot we were with Calypso) but hey ho, it'll be great to have a boat back on the south coast and start prepping for another trip.
On that note, where to next? Well, we've got a lot of sailing to do this year on friends' boats, plus the Plymouth cat will require a bit of work before we can really start using her (windows resealed and a re-rig). Calypso is also due back in mid-June / early-July and I have a couple of week's work planned before we sell her, where I need to move all the cruiser bits (watermaker, SSB, etc) across to the cat. Once all that's done though, we'll get a few test weekends in to get the rig and ourselves dialled in, then maybe a round the Isle of Wight trip before we attempt a cross channel as the year closes out. That timeline's all up for debate though and we'll see how 2016 progresses....
Anyway, all for now. Updates to follow....
n
