If you are a sailor, you know exactly what I mean. If you don’t, stay tuned as I tell you a tale. Our last winter with Zoe, we kept her just outside of Rome. Our thinking at the time was that we would head north and then west to eventually cross the Atlantic to the Caribbean. A bucket list adventure for Dan! Well, the more we thought about it the less sense it seemed to make. We wanted to get out of Arizona in the summer heat. Summer in the Caribbean is hurricane season, so that’s not going to work, as the boat needs to be out of the area to get insurance. We really wanted to be in the Pacific Northwest (which also has great summer weather), but after doing some research we discovered that the marinas were just not set up for catamarans. And the passage from Rome to Seattle was 45 days of nonstop sailing, much of it against the prevailing winds. All roads were pointing in the same direction….we were going to need to part ways with our beloved Zoe.
We knew we weren’t ready to say goodbye to boating, so what were we going to do? We could go back to a monohull sailboat. Not our favorite idea after living in comfort on a catamaran. Maybe we could do a powerboat. Could we afford one big enough to spend chunks of time on? So many thoughts and questions were running through our heads.
In February, we were invited to Vancouver, Canada to visit some friends on their powerboat. We were very excited to get a first hand look at life in the PNW winter on a powerboat. Our thinking was it could only get better in summer! They also made arrangements with their broker to show us a bunch of boats in Anacortes, Washington. This would give us the opportunity to see what kind of boats were out there and whether or not we would be able to find something that we even liked in our price range.
We spent several days on their boat and had the most amazing time. We were immediately hooked. We drove down to Anacortes one day and looked at a lot of different boats that were for sale. Not knowing anything about powerboats, this gave us a great opportunity to hone in on which brands were our favorites. We also learned that to be in our price range, the boat would need to be older than Zoe. We discovered that older boats were just fine as long as they had been well taken care of. When it came time for us to say goodbye to our friends, we were beyond excited about what the next phase of boat life could look like for us. There was only one thing standing in our way….we needed to sell Zoe. This created a fair amount of angst for us. What if Zoe took years to sell? What if we couldn’t find a boat we liked when we were ready? What if it took years to find the right boat? We aren’t getting any younger after all.
We returned to Zoe the end of March and quickly began getting her ready to go on the market. As you can imagine, there was sadness at letting our 15 year old dream of sailing distant horizons go, leaving the beauty of the Mediterranean behind, and embarking on an unknown adventure. The rest of that story has already been told in a previous post, so we are going to jump ahead to what we have currently been up to.
Starting in February, Dan and I spent months pouring over boat listings up and down the west coast. We tried to focus mostly in Washington and Canada since moving a boat north along the west coast of the U.S. can be a rough undertaking, especially in Winter. We found one we were super excited about….great boat, great name, and most importantly, great price. We watched online religiously. Wouldn’t you know, right before Zoe sold, she sold. We were heartbroken. We thought for sure that she was the one (mind you, we never actually saw it in person!)
By mid September, we had found a number of boats that piqued our interest, so we reached out to our broker to make arrangements to see them and whatever else he felt was right for us. As it so happened, a Seattle boat show was happening that same weekend. Our broker sent us tickets and told us to come by and check out the show. One of the boats on our list happened to be in the same marina, so the owner gave us a private tour. We were really excited about this boat from the pictures we had seen. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for us to realize that she was kind of old and tired looking. We would quickly learn that pictures do a great job of hiding blemishes.
Later that weekend, we had a number of boats to go visit. Each time, we left the boats feeling disappointed and deflated. How long was it going to be before we found “our” boat? Did we have unrealistic expectations? Based on photos from the listings, Dan and I had already kind of ranked the boats in our head. It was going to come down to how accurate the pictures were to the real thing. It didn’t take too long before boat after boat was falling off my list (Dan was a bit more tolerant to the blemishes than I was…although, personally, I’m pretty sure he didn’t see half of what I saw.) However, the boat I had ranked as my first choice had not been seen yet. She was the last on our list to see and my favorite. We had spent months looking at her pictures and dreaming about how awesome she might be. What if she didn’t live up to our dreams? What if we never found a boat that lived up to our dreams? We were feeling a little down that none of these boats “spoke” to us. It was time to see our last boat….the boat we had ranked as number one. As we walked on board and went through the boat, we knew she was the one. She had spoken….pick me, pick me….and we did.
We made an offer that day, came to an agreement, and made arrangements for a survey and sea trial 3 weeks later. We closed on the boat around mid October and soon began the weekly shuttling of boat stuff from home and the non-stop parade of Amazon deliveries, as we worked feverishly to make this boat our home. I think we single handedly made Amazon’s quotas for the year! Have you figured out what the dark side is yet? If not, those who sail call it going to the dark side when you switch to a powerboat.
So on that note, we would like to introduce you to our beautiful Bella Vita. She is a Meridian 580. She is 59 feet long with 2 queen staterooms and a 3rd room with bunkbeds (great for all those grandkids!) Bella Vita has 2 heads (bathrooms) and 3 levels of living space. We are beyond excited for our next set of adventures. We hope you will continue to join us as we begin phase 2 of adventures with Two Chasing Sunsets from Seattle to Alaska!
For those interested we will have a boat tour page up soon.
Next stop …. Canada and our winter berth! Thanks for following along!