The Decision Is Made

The words ever sailor wants to hear … “honey, I think we need a bigger boat”.

As we drove south from Bayfield, Wisconsin, the memories of the Apostle Islands were still vivid in our minds. Silently we each reflected on our vacation, sailing the islands in our O’day 23, fresh from it’s winter renovation. We had enjoyed the winds and waters of the Caribbean of the North, but things were just a little cramped on board especially when we had guests. I think Mary had bumped her head once too many times, which must have been the root cause for the bigger boat comment. I, of course, took it as an open invitation to start looking.

We talked and planned and looked. With retirement looming we started to think, “is this something we want to do fulltime?” Do we want to cruise? Blue water or coastal, weekends or live aboard? So many questions but as we would learn “too many boats!”

We looked at Ericssons, Pearsons, Hunters, Catalinas and Beneteaus. I wanted traditional with the lines, full keels and lots of teak. Mary knew what she DID NOT want! She didn’t want me to start on another project. We looked at a beautiful Tashiba 36 but we were too slow with the checkbook. We looked at a Gulfstar that looked great until you saw it in person … gross! We had lined up some Tayanas to look at along with some O’days. Mary liked the lines of the O’day 40 and ironically I had saved a website of a 40 that I often admired. Off we went on our next boat trip.

“FINS” sat on stands overlooking the ocean in Marathon, Florida. We could only surmise, as the owner was pretty tight lipped, that the boat had been renovated for cruising, an initial trip or two was taken and the family was not thrilled. A lot had been done to the boat and it appeared to be sound.

A common scenario for O’day 40 owners during that initial visit is for the woman involved to go below and fall in love with the interior. Well it happened again. I’m looking at mechanicals and such and up pops a grinning head from the cabin. “I love it, let’s buy it!” The broker could not suppress the smile.

We made an offer and we received word, over margaritas at the Clevelander on South Beach, that the owner had reluctantly accepted it. After the shock wore off we stared at each other, “Holy $%#@ now what have we done?” We could hardly sleep.