Hi, Y'all...

I gotta admit that I'm bemused by the tempest in a teapot over our search.
If you don't want to read about it, the delete key is your friend.
Otherwise, exult in how you did yours, and let the rest of us enjoy *your*
process. Tomayto, tomahto, etc...

That said...

"Bruce" wrote in message
...
Look group, Skip has every right to be picky about his boat. I sold my
C&C
and bought an Endeavour 43 for the very same reason...head room. I gave
up
sailing ability for comfort. If I had on thing to be critical of
regarding
Skip, is that he went into the contract phase prematurely. He should have

That's a fair statement. What you've heard about by inference, but not by
living with it, is that Lydia absolutely detests the shopping process, and
wants to buy a boat yesterday. That was how that offer happened - I was on
the phone with her a few times along the way in the course of the (aboard)
tour, ending with my cell phone battery dying, and my doing more
conversation in the office of the broker. Our normal modus for considering
an offer is to have done some very careful analysis after having gathered
the info. That phase was missed here.

gotten this negative worked out with Lydia before the contract was signed.
I think that if the broker wanted to be a real a$$hole, he could
realistically forced Skip to go to survey where he could then reject the
boat.

The contract stated very plainly that it was contingent on personal
inspection by Lydia, which we did in detail over the weekend when I got
home, including my usual detailed video and notes. In addition, as I
continue the trip, I'd set that up a bit by comparing this boat to many we'd
already seen, along with ones I was seeing later in the trip. Unless the
boat really wound her clock when we did the review, it was already a dead
duck. Case in point was a totally bristol, much better equipped, Endeavour
43 that I'd seen with the asshole broker (the one he kept pressuring me to
buy while there was a contract working) which could have been bought at
essentially the same price. Back to the contract, there was no gray area,
other than a potential, I suppose, to interpret "personal inspection" to
mean on-site. And this broker was no asshole...

If this we my deal, I would have put a $dollar value on the cosmetics and
then proceeded to the contract and survey phase and find out what the real
cost would be bring the boat back to Bristol. There is always a reason
why
a boat will not sell after three years and it is generally condition,
condition, condition. All that relates to price. A Mason 43 is a
fantastic
boat and is worth putting some money into but you don't throw away the
deal
until you hear from the surveyor. Skip will end up looking back at this
boat knowing he could have done the cosmetic work for half what he is
spending in the search.

Heh. I think I'm even better at doing bargains than you, Bruce. Our total
search costs - travel expenses, including rental cars during fixing - and
those costs, too, since if we'd done them at home they'd have been parts
only - of our classics which we'd rather drive, instead of some stale
relia-box, to date are under 2 grand. If you think I can get teak decks
removed and redone, other teak refinished and structurally alter a stern
cabin (cosmetically) for anything close to that, I'm all ears, because I
think it could be bought, still. However, there's still the issue of having
no stern cabin when the mods were done (the entry space would now be filled
with berth) - and then there's the issue that I'd rather have your boat than
that one, redone, particularly at the same price, and I know where one is...

We're getting very much closer, and I'm encouraged, whereas I was definitely
discouraged after the first FL segment of our search. We now have choices,
and I fully expect to have others by the time I'm finished this year. As
always, if a boat reaches out and grabs me by the neck and won't let go,
most likely we'll buy it. So far the only instance of that is one which is
half again beyond our (already substantially raised) budget - but we're
thinking about it, even so...

L8R

Skip
PS
See how our Endeavour is progressing at
www.cruisinglife.net/horizonproject.htm

I'm impressed - but as long as it's taking, given the temperament here, I
imagine you've gotten a lot of flak about why you're not out sailing, since
it obviously is taking too long, and you're much too fussy :{))