Kitra and Ben Gray and Cousin John Harrington
Part 1
Choosing and Buying a Boat
Once we settled on buying a catamaran, Ben narrowed down the search even more. Since catamarans typically do not sail up wind well, he was adamant that we needed a catamaran with dagger boards. There were some great boats with daggers, but many of them were not in our pauper budget. The joke became, if we buy that (expensive) boat we would not be able to afford even the dock lines. To assist with the budget issue, we approached Ben’s cousin John to see if he wanted to join us in a partnership on the boat. He jumped at the chance. So now things were getting real!
Finding a boat that met Ben’s criteria in our price range narrowed our search down to looking at Catanas. The three of us decided to attend the Annapolis boat show in October 2019. There we could meet the boat brokers face to face and eyeball different boats with dagger boards. Ben chose to work with Alexis from The Multihull Company as he seemed to understand Ben’s boat criteria. With his help and Ben’s internet searching skills, it was determined that in the fall of 2019, in our part of the world, there were basically 4 Catanas from which to choose.
During the Thanksgiving holidays, we went to Fort Lauderdale and met up with Alexis to tour two of the boats. One was a Catana 52 which I determined was a monster and too big for just two of us to handle as John would only be sailing with us sporadically. It also cost substantially more and needed some work. Next, we went to look at an older Catana 47. This boat while less expensive was a wreck and needed a major overhaul. However, it did allow me to see how big a 47 ft Catana would be and it seemed more suitable for us than a 52 foot boat.
This narrowed our options down to two. One boat was in Martinique and one was in Guatemala. Both were amazingly hard to get to view. We could fly to New Zealand faster than we could fly from Dallas to Martinique and to get to Guatemala we either had to fly to Guatemala City and drive through the jungle to the coast or fly to Belize and rent a boat. Thus, the logistics stymied us for a bit.
Then, Alexis called and said if we were interested in the Catana 47 in Martinique we needed to make a move or it might be gone. As luck would have it, because of the holiday season, American Airlines opened up daily flights to Martinique from Miami. These flights booked up rapidly, but after calling American, we got the last two tickets available for the week before Christmas. Alexis jumped through hoops to find us a surveyor from St. Lucia that spoke English and to set up a yard where we could haul out the boat for inspection. So off we went!!
What we were to learn during this process was that nothing is ever easy when buying a boat (at least not for us). We arrived in Martinique to find that the French were having strikes in Paris, St. Martin and Martinique. So, we were ever so thankful that Alexis met us at the airport and navigated us through the rental car process and out of the airport. The roadways were literally littered with cars on all sides from where the strikers had been blocking the roads all day.
Once out of Fort-de-France, the roads opened up and we made our way to Marin Marina where the boat was housed. By the time we arrived and put eyes on her, it was dark. So, we met up with the surveyor, Chris, who had come over on the ferry and we all went to dinner. Then Alexis took us to a cute hotel on the hillside where we would be staying for the next few days.
Survey begins in Marin
We arrived at the boat bright and early so that Chris could start the survey process and we could see the boat in the daytime. Dream Yacht Charters also was doing some last-minute preparations, such as putting the jib on the boat. From first glance, the boat seemed to be very nice considering it had been a charter boat for a little more than 5 years. Cosmetically, there were some things that we needed to get past, but really the survey report would tell the story.
Chris spent all day going over every inch of the boat. We motored over to the yard where the boat was hoisted on a lift. Alexis and Ben scraped the bottom of the boat while Chris examined through hulls and tapped on each section of the boat. There were a few things that gave us pause, but Chris felt that overall, it looked good.
Then we took the boat out for a sea trial and boy was that a blast. The boat easily sailed at 9-11 knots and we even hit 12 knots at one point. We loved the feel of the boat and her responsiveness to the wheel. If we weren’t sold before, we were now. After Chris finished up his survey, Alexis took us all out to dinner.
The next day, we spent time on the boat learning about the systems and investigating its nooks and crannies. Then we put an offer on the boat barring any unforeseen issues in the survey report. At this point the closing date was at the end of December. Negotiations would follow after we received the report.
The next morning, we got our last pastries from the French pastry shop and headed for the airport.
Boat Buying Marathon
It took more than 10 days to receive the survey report, so we had to extend the closing date by two weeks. Once the report finally came, the negotiations began regarding what needed to be fixed prior to accepting the boat. When these details were agreed to, the Bank had to review the survey to assure they would finance the boat. All of this took more time, so we sign another two-week extension.
Meanwhile, Cuz John and I headed off to sailing school on Jan 3, 2020 for two weeks with the understanding that we would be closing on the boat at the end of school. While we were gone Ben completed paperwork after paperwork for the bank, to set up the LiveWire LLC and for the insurance company. Back in October, we had been assured that there would be no problem with financing even a more expensive boat. We were good to go. However, now the bank was asking for one thing after another and seemed to have a hard time understanding that I was retired but still got a teacher retirement check, that was exactly the same EVERY month.
Ben also worked on getting the LLC paperwork processed through the IRS. What should have taken three days to accomplished, turned into three weeks as the IRS kept saying they did not receive the packet of information. So, as John and I flew home from school on January 17, the closing was delayed again.
The insurance company also had to review the survey report and Ben had to complete paperwork concerning where the boat would be going and where it would be during hurricane season. They seemed satisfied with the boat and the logistics.
Finally, about mid-February, the LLC paperwork was processed and Alexis rounded up another broker who would be in Martinique to verify that all the negotiated work on the boat had been finished. With those things done we thought for sure we could close. However, now that it had been over 4 weeks since we sent in our financials, the bank wanted them all over again.
We really got paranoid when Alexis told us that we might be in breach of contract if the bank didn’t hurry up and send us a letter to fund the boat, because when we had signed the acceptance contract we had said we had funding, and of course, we thought we did, since that is what our finance lady had told us. Now Ben began to put pressure on the finance lady. Come to find out, she was actually trying to get another bank to finance us as the first bank had stalled. Oh my, we could lose our deposit at this rate!!
We were finding it very hard to get excited about buying a boat in this limbo state, since we were not sure if it was going to go through or not. Behind the scenes, Alexis had been working with the sellers, because they had to get the flag changed from French to US. However, they did not want to do this unless we had the funding, because our names had to go on the documents. We couldn’t close without the flag change and they didn’t want to change it unless the bank confirmed financing. It was a catch 22.
Finally, around the end of February, we thought everything had been done. We had financing and the flag had been changed. But hold on….now the insurance agency that had given us clearance back at the beginning of Feb. was balking at us moving the boat to St. Martin for planned upgrades. They wanted all survey items addressed in Martinique. This was a huge deal breaker for us because Martinique was very expensive, we didn’t know anyone there and everyone spoke French and very little English. Therefore, at the last-minute Ben had to scramble around and find us new insurance. Now everything was ready to go.
Thus, we made airline reservations to go to Martinique to move the boat. Three times Alexis had it set up for someone else to move the boat, but with each delay we lost that person. So now it was on us to get the boat off of Dream Yacht Charter docks and to St. Martin for the upgrades we needed.
But wait!!! We still couldn’t close because the Bank wanted the flag documents translated from French to English. Oh my, we had already made reservation to fly out on March 16. Ultimately, we signed the closing documents on March 9 and money was transferred on March 13. It took 10 long weeks, but finally the boat was ours. We could get excited at last!!!!
While all the drama of buying the boat was underway, we were all trying to determine what we would name our new sailing vessel. We went through many name scenarios but finally decided on the name of Daggers Down because dagger boards were so important to the buying process and because the boat sailed quickly over the water like a sailing savage. She took the waves and wind with ease. So Kilimandjaro would become Daggers Down.
