This originally appeared in a thread about marine heads...

"Bruce" wrote in message
...
Skip
What kind of boat did you buy?

We haven't yet. We had an accepted offer on a Mason 43 which Lydia rejected
based on the teak and stern cabin redo needed. We expect the deposit back
this week.

We've (well, I've) been on an additional nearly-60 boats this past couple of
weeks, however, and the E43 is one of our candidates. There's several other
candidates, but they're either bigger than we want, more expensive than we
want, or more teak, and in some cases all three.

So, in any event, we've now got options, at least, whereas before we had
only one boat which we'd been aboard which 'fit' us. I'm finishing this
round of search in a couple of weeks. Likely I'll not go to Texas, as it's
a huge distance for only a couple of unique (not duplicated somewhere else
in our list) boats, and the story about the Morgan (in another thread) which
was misrepresented makes me very reluctant to go somewhere remote for
something I'm not sure I'll want to see.

In this trip, I was exposed to additional boats which had not been on our
list when I set out; two of them are on our target list, but one's been
removed (the Mason). It's coming along... The next trip will have us on
another 10 or so boats (make, model) under 40' which we've not yet been
aboard, and I've dumped the ones over 45 that I'd added in frustration in
our prior failures.

However, with the exception of Delaware to Maine, we'll have effectively
covered the East and Gulf coast. That ought to do it for us, and then it
will be a matter of our doing some triangulation to figure out what we want
vs what we'll have to give up among the boats we've found which *can* work.
At this time, there's about 5 types which we've found that work for us.
We're hopeful of adding at least a few more in the under-40 class and will
likely have several more over 40 as well.

By the time I'm finished, I will have been aboard over 250 boats, out of
about 350 initially selected from about 2500 possibilities (length,
location, price), in three trips (searches, really, as this search will take
two or three trips and the last search was two trips). Just as in buying
houses, the hundred-item rule is in effect. After having been aboard that
many, I can tell in about a minute if a boat will be interesting to me, and
in about 5, determine whether I want to pursue it beyond a swift walk
through, and in about 10 if I want to do a full workup on it. Before I even
attempt to see one, I've done research on the type, and have good reason to
believe that it will work for us.

Of course, as you've seen in other threads, the number of times that reality
meets presentation is pretty small - but I regard that as all just part of
the exercise. However, once *this* part of the exercise is finished, we'll
be able to attack the surviving types and make reasonable evaluations
between apples and oranges, so to speak.

I'm in the process of developing an appraisal equivalent format. That is,
each feature and spec of significance to us, whether positive or negative,
will be given a value. Just as in a real estate appraisal, where more in a
property being compared represents a deduction against the candidate, and
vice versa, we expect we should be able to quantify what really winds our
clock, and evaluate how best to pursue any given boat. After that, it's gut
feeling (which one do we really *love*?) :{))

L8R

Skip (and Lydia)