Sunshine! Warm Temps! Boats!

Looking at boats in Ft. Lauderdale is not a bad way to spend a day; particularly when it is snowing in St. Louis. (Sorry Pretty Lady!) If you look at catamarans in Ft. Lauderdale keep in mind that The Catamaran Company owns 2-Hulls. I didn't really know that so I called 2-Hulls, got hooked up with Michael, and we agreed to meet at their company dock to look around.

Michael, as it turns out, is a busy man these days. It also turns out that he works for the Catamaran Company and not 2-Hulls. Or maybe he works for both? Anyway, talking to a "fish," (that would be me) who has been talking to a different broker from the same company for a couple of years, (that would be Brent) was not high up on Michail's list of things he needed to be doing this day. He took it well though, and showed me around a 2005 Lagoon 380 they have for sale. I learned a lot from Michael in a short time...

One 2005 Lagoon 380 = around $330,000. I think a stack of $100s just a bit over a foot high (about $297,000 worth) would be enough for them to let you take it home. (Or move aboard as the case may be.) Figure one borrowed about $150,000 of that stack at 6.5% interest and wanted to pay it off in 10 years, one would owe de-bank just a tick over $20,000 per year. (According to Michael don't even think of asking unless your credit score is 730 or better.)

So let's see. A job on the East Coast where I bring home maybe 66K / year. Less de-banks 20K leaves 46K to live on. Food and stuff, (rum) slip fee, odds and ends...35K a year? That's still 11K worth of fudge factor not including any "outside" (as in outside Uncle Sam's knowledge) income.

Other odds and ends. According to Michael (who has sailed them all) the older Leopard 38s are tanks, slow, heavy in the water and no match for the Lagoon 380. (I know, I know!) But the New Leopard 38? Apparently that is a cat of a different color. Lighter, fast on its feet and as good as any other 2 hulled boat of a similar LWL. And here's what I find interesting, the 2005 Lagoon selling price is withing a dock line's throw of that for a new Leopard 38. Things that make you go, "Mmmm."

All of this, of course, is just musing in the sunshine. It isn't like we are in any position to write such a check. (Even assuming my "back of the napkin" math isn't wildly optimistic.) Unless things change a bit (A big bit!) it seems unlikely we will ever be able to write such a check. But just imagine how much fun it would be to do just that.

Broker in tow, thinking he is wasting his time with this scruffy looking, middle aged wanna-be, but being professional about it anyway.

"That's a nice boat. I'll take it."

Now that would be a good day.

Plans are just...plans

The plan was to be posting from Nomad, even if it meant sitting on the hard and wrapped in layers to try and stay warm. Alas, I am warm and dry, sitting in the Central West end, my butt getting sore from sitting in this chair. Right now a "good" morning is defined as one where I don't feel any worse when I wake up than I did when I went to bed. This is proving to be one of the longest winters I can remember.

A good thing is that we have been kind of slow at work. I have been able to dog it a bit, not pushing too hard and maybe making a little ground on this thing. But next week is back at it, starting with a 3 day trip to FL. (Yeah! Sunshine! Warm Temps! Boats!) Come the weekend Deb and I head to Chicago for the boat show. We are going to take a train, stay within walking distance of the exhibition hall, and do our best to have some fun. (I think being around boats will cure us both!)

Feeling good or no it will be good to be back in motion. This enforced rest, (even to the point of being all day in a single room) would seem a non-issue for someone who wants to spend weeks on a single boat. Even the biggest boat we can imagine buying would not fill our back yard, the main cabin area much smaller than the living room I currently occupy.

Of course the living room doesn't move...

Real boats

I would love to write a post about the work being done on Nomad, or about how she is about to splash, or how we fared on our first night at anchor of the new season but... There has been no work completed yet, Nomad isn't about to splash, and the season seems a long, long...long way away.

Not that boats don't dominate our spare time. A common question around here is, "What is the boat of the day?" Meaning a boat one of us spotted on the web that fired up our imaginings of getting gone. Right now Deb is pretty fond of a Tayana 42 called "Wanderlust" that is being sold out of Norwalk, Connecticut (http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/10688). Me? I'm still clinging to my catamaran musings.

Next weekend, hopefully, we will get back to more than musings. With a little help from the weather and some hope of finally shaking the illness that has dogged both of us this winter, we plan to lay hands on Nomad once again. The weekend after that, a train ride to the Chicago Boat Show. It will be good to see real boats again, not just pictures on websites.

A Belated Christmas Present

I know it's totally ridiculous, but I feel like a kid on Christmas morning. After two years of procrastinating, I finally got around to applying for my passport and it arrived yesterday. Wooooo hoooooo! I guess we can leave now :)

Allergic to Landlubbing

I've decided I'm allergic to landlubbing. The day we got home from the boat show in October I got sick with a really bad cold/flu that may have been a version of the piggy flu. It took me all of the way to the middle of December to declare I was over it. That would be my first mistake.

We traveled to Pittsburgh to visit the various branches of our family over the New Year's weekend and I managed to bring home a virulent version of the cold that was pervasive throughout the Pittsburgh area. It's now 5 degrees outside (not including the wind chill which is taking it to -20) and I am spending the weekend on the sofa bed doing absolutely nothing till Monday morning so I can try to beat this thing. I'm well stocked with Constant Comment tea, Puffs lotion tissues, Vicks vapo rub, a large pump dispenser of Germ-X and the best blessing of the century, a husband who knows how to build a terrific fire and folds a mean load of laundry.

For the next 48 hours I'm going to sit here looking at boats and reading Cruising World magazines, and wishing desperately for some fresh air and sunshine to blow this virus away.

New Year

So 2010 finally arrived. When this last trip to visit family ends on Monday we will start settling into the winter routine. "What," one might ask "is the winter routine?" Mostly it consists of waiting for spring and the new sailing season it will bring.

I do hope to start making it out to Nomad starting this next week. A couple of big projects loom before she splashes so there is probably some "working in the cold" lurking in my future. This is the first winter we have owned Nomad that she has been out of the water, so this is the first winter I will be working on the boat on the hard. I can't say I am looking forward to the prospect with a lot of enthusiasm. Still, cold or no I'll be working on a boat, our boat, so how bad can that be?

Of course some might wonder something similar about this next near...how bad can it be? A fair question given the one that just past, and the couple that passed before it. A lot of people have had a pretty rough go. But on the other hand, maybe it can't get much worse? Either way Deb and I will work toward this being a year that gets us 12 months closer to living on a boat.