We Bought A Liveaboard Boat. How'd we get here? (Post 3 of 6)

In May 2016, our youngest daughter graduated from high school and moved out on her own shortly after. She knew how much her dad and I wanted to move onto a boat, and she felt like she was holding us back. I wasn't expecting her to move out that quick, but she was ready for her independence. We always told her that if she ever needs a place to come home to, we'll always have a bed for her.  Being a young adult is hard in today's world, and I wanted to give her time to be settled before we pressed forward with our plans.


My busy season at work is in the Fall & Winter, so I didn't do a lot of research during that time. But at our Christmas break at work (between Christmas & New Years), Tom and I decided to go stay at our friend's vacation home in Aransas Pass (close to Corpus Christi TX). During that trip. we went to a local restaurant/small marina to enjoy dinner & cocktails. As we were walking into the restaurant, Tom saw a trawler type boat with a sundeck on the dock close by. He pointed it out to me and said he wanted to go check it out. I don't feel comfortable just walking out on any marina docks, so I told him to go ahead without me and I'll meet him in the restaurant. He checked it out and came back & told me that that was one of the type of boats we were searching for, a Viking Motor Yacht with a sundeck.


A few days later, on New Year's Eve, we went back to the same restaurant.  As we were walking in, Tom could see 2 people sitting on the sundeck of that boat. He said we wanted to go talk to them, ask them how they like their boat and any info they might share. I, again, wasn't comfortable doing that so I told him I'd meet him in the bar. About 20 minutes later, he came back and told me  that they've owned the boat for a year and 4 months, and brought it down to the Texas coast from New York state. They invited him onboard to look around. He asked them if they ever thought about selling it. He said "No", she said "Well yeah, maybe". He didn't want to keep them from their evening, so he thanked them for letting him see the boat and  came in to meet me. As he was telling me about it, he decided to go back and asked them if they would like to join us for a drink. Tom wanted to hear about their cruise from New York to Texas. It was early, around 6pm, so he went back to the boat & invited them to join us. They did! For 3 hours!


It's a 1986 44' Viking Motor Yacht, with a sundeck, 2 state rooms, and 2 heads (bathrooms). It has a salon (living room), galley (kitchen), dinette area, and the outdoor sundeck (my favorite!). They bought it in Aug 2015, hired a captain, and helped cruise it down from New York. It took them 3 weeks, with consistent cruising, and staying at marinas that the captain insisted on. It cost them $400 a day for the captain, plus expenses! The couple are both CPAs who work remotely for companies, so he was able to schedule cruising with the captain the whole trip, but she could not. That cost them airfare back and forth for her a few times along the route. They didn't live on the boat, and didn't even live in the area. They lived in New Braunfels TX, between Austin & San Antonio. This was actually a 2nd  boat for them, because they also bought a boat this past Aug 2016 that they had in Fort Lauderdale FL. It was a 27' Albin trawler. I wasn't quite sure the reasoning behind having 2 boats in 2 different states, but during our talks, we told them our plan. We want to sell our house and live on a boat, and their boat was exactly what we were looking for. Over the 3 hours, we heard more detail about the boat, what they like and disliked about it, more detail about their cruises, along with asking again if they'd be interested in selling it. Again, they BOTH said they might and that they would have to think about it. But before the night was over, they invited us back to the boat so I could see it. We did a quick walk through and ended the evening with us exchanging phone numbers and thanked them again for their time.


Over the next few months, here's what happened:
  • Met New Year's Eve 2016/2017
  • Early Jan 2017 - I text them: that it was nice to meet them, thanked them again for all the boat information, and reminded them that if they ever thought about selling the boat, our plans were to put our house on the market early to mid Summer 2017 and be ready to buy a boat when it sells.
  • Feb 2017 - Tom text and asked if they had any pictures of the Viking.




  • Early Mar 2017 - Tom text and asked if they were willing to share the survey that they had on the boat when they purchased it (Aug 2015), and he asked what price would they ask for the boat if they did decide to sell it. We had discussed the survey when we were together and he mentioned sharing it. And the price they mentioned was WAY under our budget.
  • Late Mar 2017 - We asked them if we could do a conference call. After going over the survey, Tom had some questions, and we wanted to find out for sure if they were selling the boat or not. Up until that point, we were just dancing around the possibility, but they were willing to give us all this information.  We did the conference call a few days later, and the first thing I asked them was "So, are you selling the boat?" And they said "Yes!". I asked if they were willing to wait until we sold our house and they again said "Yes, if you don't buy it, we'll just keep the boat".  I told them we wanted to come down, look at the boat again, go all through it and check out the storage capability, before we decide that we DO want the boat. We planned that for late April.
  • Late April - Went to look at the boat. We were going to take it out for a sea trial but the guy had a conference call he had to do for work. I took a video with my knock-off GoPro, but found out later that the video didn't record. We asked them if they wanted to go to dinner later and they said yes. We went back to the boat to get a video of it again & pictures. We brought our friend from Aransas Pass that owns the vacation home we were staying at. We all went to dinner and had a great evening. They had moved the boat from Aransas Pass to Port Aransas (the island next door), so the boat was now at a marina in Port Aransas.



  • Early June - We went to Port Aransas to do the sea trial.
  • Late July, we put our house on the market to sell.
From March to July 2017, we started downsizing our house. We had a 2300 square foot house that we were downsizing to about an 800 square foot boat. The furniture comes with the boat, and the owners were even leaving a lot of the kitchen ware. The only things we were bringing with us to the boat was our clothes, some kitchen ware of our own, some pictures, and other personal items. It took me 1.5 months alone, just to clean out our office from when I owned my own remote businesses.  We donated almost everything, gave things to our daughters, and sold some things. It was a daunting project, but the more we weeded out, the better we felt. It's amazing how much you accumulate over 30 years of marriage. And how much you really don't need. We were becoming minimalists!


The house went on the market at the end of July, and it sold in 21 days. We close in 30 days, and here comes Hurricane Harvey.......heading right towards Port Aransas!.......



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Living In A Boatyard - Our First Two Weeks On Our Liveaboard

More Info About The Boatyard......And Living In One

I've Been A Bad, Bad Girl