My dad and I bought a new boat. Or at least, we put down a deposit pending an upcoming survey. She’s an 1972 Islander 30 Mark II, currently berthed in Vallejo Harbor.
We’ve been looking for a shippy little 30′ cruiser at a reasonable price for a while. We checked out a lot of boats in the last couple months. It’s really amazing what kind of crap is out there, and how much money people want for boats that are really just (barely) floating projects. A couple of the boats we checked out (in terms of decreasing shippy-ness):
- Southern Cross 31
- Farrallon 30
- Rawson 30
- Newport 30
- Triton 27
- Santana 27
Having been a partner in Kevin’s super well-kept ’71 Ericson 29, I had high expectations for the baseline condition of the boat. Eagle was ready to do some pretty heavy-duty boat project work, but I was hoping to find a boat that needed a thorough cleaning, but was otherwise sound.
We saw this Islander back in December, and kept our eye on it as the price dropped during this cold, rainy, economically anxious winter. When we thought the price reached the right ratio of good-bargain to not-screwing the previous owner, we called up and made an offer.
The same surveyor (Brendan Schmidt) who did the pre-sale assessment on both Shanti and Charisma will be coming over to do an in-the-water survey on Tuesday, after which we can finalize the paperwork, assuming there’s nothing catastrophically wrong with her. I have no idea if people actually buy boats without surveys, but it seems insane to do so to me, even if the survey is 10% of the overall cost. At the best, you save yourself the heartache of buying a boat that needs a new keel or cabin-top or something. At the worst, you’ve paid half a boat dollar for the most professional and thorough to-do list you’ll ever see.
More posts on the new boat over the next few days. Welcome to the fleet, Silver Eagle.
