Let the Cat(amaran) Out of the Bag

In Ben’s communications with Marie, he found out that the broker’s contract would end on February 12th because they had decided to bring Domino back to Florida to try and sell there. So, on February 13th, we sent an email with an offer to the owners. It seemed like we were waiting forever and had not heard from Marie. I was starting to get worried that something had happened on their travels from Mexico to Florida. Ben finally got ahold of her and she told him that Domino was sold on the 11th. Although we were sad, we knew that didn’t mean our dreams wouldn’t become reality, we just knew Domino wasn’t meant for us and we had to keep looking. So, our search continued…

Around February 18th, Ben contacted a broker about a power cat he found that was recently sold, but had questions about the boat and information about the sale. The broker answered and said he works for free as a buyer’s broker, and if we were interested, we should send him what we’re looking for in our purchase. He gets paid commission from the sale (paid by the seller) when a deal closes.

Ben sent specs and the broker sent us this boat that is currently in Mexico with damage to the top outside part (not the part in the water) from banging into a post in a hurricane. The current owners bought it in 2020, are the broker’s friends, bought a house in Mexico, and are thinking of selling their yacht. It isn’t listed. We could potentially put in an offer without them listing it, not competing with other offers in the current seller’s market. One owner wanted to sell it because they haven’t used it in a year. His wife loves the yacht and may not want to part with it quite yet. So, we wait again...

Knowing that we weren’t going to be able to just put an offer in on any boat, sight unseen, we decided that we’d like to see the boats we were interested in, just to get an idea. We created a Boat Tour road trip that would have us stop along the way at 7 different boats- all different makes and/or years, so we could find out what we liked, what we didn’t like, and what we thought we’d need and the things we could do without.

We decided to plan our trip over my Spring Break. To travel close to 5,000 miles in 9 days or less would require leaving our children with their grandparents. We reluctantly told them about our big, financially irresponsible decision. That was of course met with uncountable, “Did you think about…?” and “What about…” and “How will you…?” questions, not to mention the “Well the kids have to wear life jackets the whole time,” comments. The cat had been let out of the bag.

Our journey would take us from Colorado to Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida to see potential boats before returning back home. We assured our families that we would not be purchasing a boat on this trip- it was strictly to find out what we liked.