As Cindy posted a couple of weeks ago, we found a Lagoon 380 S2 sailing catamaran at Jekyll Island, Georgia that we really both liked on our first boat shopping trip. At 38 feet, it was a great size for ease of handling, the living space was perfect for two people (as the saying goes, the perfect boat has room for 6 people for happy hour, 4 for dinner and sleeps 2), it had an owner’s layout (meaning one entire hull is dedicated to the owner’s cabin, head and “office” while the other two cabins share a head in the second hull) and the boat had been kept in excellent condition by its previous owners. So the following Monday we put in an offer and started the negotiations.
Well, I’m thrilled to report that after a week of back and forth, we now have a boat!! Well, technically, we still have the haul out, survey, sea trial and closing to complete, but no one expects these to result in any issues. But as far as we’re concerned, we have a boat!! (Disappointed, dejected blog post to follow if it does somehow fall through). Now we’re scrambling to get the financing, insurance, title search and survey set up so we can close as scheduled.
This really happened earlier than we had planned (although there was really never a specific timeline) but this will give us an opportunity to get acquainted with our boat and the live-aboard sailing lifestyle before we head off into the Caribbean. We plan to leave the boat at Jekyll Island for the time being and we know from one of the sailing blogs that we follow that there are a number of wonderful anchorages along the South Georgia/North Florida coast and Gulf Stream crossings to the Bahamas are possible (though we will have to have time to sail far enough south to accommodate the Gulf Stream current). This will enable us to take long weekends and weeklong (or longer) trips along the coast. We may move her to the south coast of Alabama at some point to make her easier to get to…it’s all pretty wide open right now!
We’re both really excited! I’m busy buying supplies with which to stock our galley …no cheapo, second hand pots and pans here. We’ll be eating most of our meals at sea on the boat, so I want as good a culinary setup in my galley as I have in my kitchen at home, or at least as close as I can get with the limited space available. We’re rearranging vacation plans for this year, since we will now have a boat of our own to take out and get acquainted with (so our fall trip to the BVI is probably going away). And we’re both working hard to get things lined up for the closing.
So stay tuned, but hopefully in a couple of weeks we’ll be posting about a successful closing!!
