After talking with ‘Steve’ (no, that is not his real name!) today, we have basically signed & sealed a deal for the Contessa. I am so scared right now. I have never been in so much debt. To keep her up on dry land is costing me a considerable sum, and unfortunately it doesn’t look like I can budge him on the price of dry-docking, with a 10% increase if I pay it monthly. Deep breath I hope I can do this.

Shaking.

On a more positive note, he did recommend I not have her gel-coated, which is a costly relief. I am trusting a lot of people already, of whom I have never met. Naive? Maybe.

Err, yes.

n.

So it was time to call up my very lovely, utterly patient & longtime girlfriend (5+ years!) Celeste and tell her, not only did I trot off to Germany on a mad cap adventure without her, I am now sailing home.

Without her.

She puts up with 99% of my crap, and even earnestly listens to most of it. So when I called her up exclaiming “hey babe, yeah, well… errm you know how I’ve crewed on a yacht a bit… and well, I managed to convince this guy to sell me his boat under strenuous terms, and yes, well, I’m going to sail home, uh huh, Britain, Americas, New Zealand, Australia… … Silence.”

The thing is, and I mean, how the heck are you supposed to respond to that? It’s such a bizarre thing to do and say… That you wish to risk life and limb to sail a tiny boat home, and not see the person for… Oh I don’t know, a very long time? I feel stupid and selfish right at the minute, we’ll see how things progress.

n.

I obviously had a bit of a think about the issue of money before embarking on this whole thing, but it is really starting to take shape, now that I almost own a boat. While I am able to generate enough cash to pay this thing off (well, not really…), assuming I live off of cans of tuna and pasta, it is everything else that is going to kill me.

Within my Stuff I Need section I have what looks like a few things, but I have other greater concerns to do with the boat also, such as rigging it properly, having the sails serviced, and I will more than likely need the hull re-gel coated, running at about ?Ǭ£130/foot. Yes, do the math … 26 x ?Ǭ£130 = ?Ǭ£3380. I will try to do the work I can where possible, but obviously professionals need to do the majority of it.

I have contacted and received positive responses from three companies

• Autosystems Pty Ltd, Australia -
• Webkitchen, United Kingdom
• Trafalgar Sailing School, Gibraltar

I managed to beg fairly well for a boat I think, so now it’s time to start showing people I’m serious about this, and ask for further support.

As for individual donations, I am trying to think of a good way I can help out people who can ‘tip’ me. One that has come to mind, is donations over a certain amount have their name or other text as a vinyl sticker along the hull of the boat. I will think more about this and update later.

n.

I didn’t think things would move very quickly on this. My silly proposal in the previous post actually worked!

Dear Nick

Well, the owner hasn’t dismissed your proposal out of hand because he is a romantic and likes the idea of Red Admiral going to NZ. His sticking point is a total price of ?Ǭ£7.5k, even if this takes you a little longer to pay off.

Let us also discuss Yard terms, although I expect you know most of this from the website. Summer storage ashore Aug-Oct is ?Ǭ£15 per foot (?Ǭ£390) and winter storage Nov-April is ?Ǭ£36 per foot (?Ǭ£936). I cannot do a shorter period of winter storage, because I have a small yard and I must maximise the revenue from every space in the winter to survive. If you were on a mooring during the winter, this is much more economical but probably not very practical from a fitting out point of view.

Lift and launch to mooring is ?Ǭ£5 per foot. Lowering and re-stepping the mast is ?Ǭ£3.50 per foot of boat each way or ?Ǭ£5 for both ways if done on the same day. There are no charges for dinghy/outboard storage (although this is not possible when the boat is ashore), car parking, use of facilities, water or electricity (unless you require a permanent electrical connection in order to run a de-humidifier/heater, for instance).

Working on your boat is possible at any time (power points all round yard), provided you are sensitive to other customers and boat owners, and to my family who live on site. Staying on board for extended periods is not possible but for 2 or 3 nights every so often is OK - there are local B&Bs in winter months.

Are you expecting to pursue without a survey? There are local surveyors and the cost might be c?Ǭ£300.

I hope this helps.

Regards
Steve

n.

A letter I wrote to a yacht salesman:

Steve, Can we talk more about the price of this yacht. Is the advertised price ₤7150 as advertised in on Yachtworld and the PDF, or ₤7950 as per the Word document? Obviously if the initial price was ₤7150, the owner was no doubt expecting haggling in the order of ₤500-1000, as that is the way things go. I realise the sale of the yacht affects your commission, but is there anything, you or the owner, no matter how obscure that can be done to help me out with this. I’m with you on thinking I’m a cheeky bastard asking for a long shot, but this boat is the closest Contessa that is even near what I can afford.Thanks again, Nick

His reply was aptly put

Dear Nick

The owner has just spent ₤3,000 to upgrade the boat and we have put the price up by ₤800. The owner is keen to sell but I cannot really see this working out. Before taking on a passage you will need to upgrade some of the standing rigging, which might cost ₤4-500 and there are bound to be other bits and pieces required. If you only have ₤6k at a stretch, are we being realistic? I could talk to the owner about ₤6k now and ₤3k in a year, but we would require guarantees. Where would these come from?

Regards
Steve

My boldest reply so far, with no response as yet… Maybe he will be sane enough never to talk to me again!

Dear Steve,

No, we are probably not being realistic in the slightest - But for what I intend on doing, from what I have, is in no way tied to reality either! I am going to put this to you, and I know you will laugh, but bare with me, and if you have time, please ask the owner. You never know who you are dealing with, so questions are better asked than not. Here is my proposal:

You put the price down to ₤7000 (keep reading!)
I pay ₤2000 in 14 Days
I then pay you a minimum of ₤1000 per month until it is paid for
I pay its current dry dock fees starting from the first 14 days
I list the owner as a sponsor for my trip (to sail from Europe to Australia via America) in 2007 (which I already have one sponsor for, whom you can email and validate with if you wish).

We then write a contract with the above, stating I cannot take the boat off the dry dock until it is paid for, but does allow me to do repairs/maintenance over the next 4-5months. Therefore there is no risk, as if it all goes bottom up, you have at least ₤2000 & the boat. I would need to complete payments by at least January, as that is when I need practice for my RYA certificates.

This is no doubt your most bizarre attempt at yacht purchasing, but please do take me seriously. If it is too much to ask, then I thank you very kindly for listening, and wish you the best of luck with selling her to a less needy customer!

We’ll see… Nick.

The best way you can help, without actually spending anything is by pushing all your Google queries through my Firefox plugin. This costs you nothing, and also lets you keep up to date with my latest posts. So, if you will, follow on:

The Firefox Search Plugin (Firefox Only)
By unzipping this file into your ’searchplugins’ directory of Firefox, a new option will appear in your built-in query box on the top right. On a Windows PC, usually the ’searchplugins’ directory is located in C:\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins. Simply copy the two files contained in the zip file to this directory and restart Firefox.

Dropping the list of search engines down, a new engine titled Google [Bigoceans] will appear. By simply using this plugin, you donate a few cents to me every once and a while, without even noticing! The Bigoceans.com search plugin is simply an interface to Google Search.

Thanks so much for your help!

Nick