Welcome Aboard!

It wasn’t supposed to take so long.  It definitely wasn’t supposed to be so difficult.  We looked at finding a boat as something between buying a used car and buying a home. It isn’t like either of those things.  The learning curve is steep, and a screw up is a very expensive screw up. Before we moved here we considered a boat purchase as something we could use not only while living here, but also into our retirement. Once we arrived, it became apparent that for many reasons it made a whole lot of sense. So, we started looking around a bit more seriously. There were and are so many options in terms of type and style and amenities on boats. For us it makes more sense to have a power boat. If we want to spend a long period of time on it, the boat would need things like a decent kitchen, comfortable living and sleeping quarters, and more than one bathroom. Range is also important. The more research we did, the more we came to believe that to meet all of those needs and in terms of bang for the buck, a Power Catamaran was the way for us to go.

So that narrowed the search. More research and more time spent trying to determine the right questions to ask and the right design to look for.  Still more to find an amenable broker to help in our search, and to walk us through the process.  We found somebody we liked to work with and we began the search in earnest.  Finding the right boat is not easy.  We considered and rejected 40-50 boats along the way for one reason or another.  Then we found one we thought we loved.  We asked questions, LOTS of questions.  We hired an expert to look it over for us, and flew to France to be there as he did his inspection.

She was a beauty.  Tons of storage, a cross beam master suite with king bed, only 600 hours on the twin Volvo Penta engines.  Very nice.  Except… that little part the owner was trying to hide.  The fire suppression system had gone off.  Our inspector discovered this and yet found no evidence of fire.  He did however, believe that the powder may have been sucked into the engines and advised us to have that checked.  The owner balked at that but nonetheless we followed the expert’s instructions and found that the port engine was seriously corroded and not likely to last much longer. The local broker claimed to have no idea and apologized for suggesting we come to look.  Yeah OK.  So… Strike One.  We turned our trip into just vacation play time, then came back home to begin the search again.

We added a few questions to our pre-trip list and kept looking.  Nothing suitable was coming up.  We were beginning to come into boating season, and the inventory was drying up. We even looked at a few monohulls, and found one we liked.  Just as we were beginning inquiries into it, the auto search request I had for Power Cats dropped a new listing into my email.  It was a boat we had seen before, and had initially shortlisted.  At the time (many months previous) our broker had inquired to find out that the owner had decided to keep her.  Boat brokers, like car salesman, often do not take down old ads, especially if the boat is nice.  They have been known to run them for years in order to pull in inquiries, and then point buyers at something else.  You probably know that tactic as Bait and Switch. The listing we had originally looked at was over 5 years old. That was early in the search and I had since then learned how to do multiple searches in order to determine – more or less – if a boat was truly available or not.

This listing I had was brand new (same day) and showed a different selling broker.  I reached out to our guy who immediately inquired about it.  After a week of back and forth we made a contingency offer, and arrangements to go to Tunisia for inspection. The inspection was very positive, and after a bit of back and forth on who was to do what etc, we came to an agreement. Fast forward to the past few harrowing weeks trying to close the deal. The broker we had hired and liked so much had left the company. Our deal was handed over to the managing broker who it turns out, is a complete A#* and no help whatsoever in terms of walking us through the final stages of this deal. I was at wits end, and called my dad for help.  At his insistence, we hired an attorney to help us cross the finish line. I haven’t ever before been so happy to speak with a lawyer.  I’d managed to get the paperwork done properly and in order. I just had no clue how to make it all formal and have everybody in the right place at the right time to get it done in a completely unquestionable way. There were people on 3 continents, 5 time zones, 7 locations that were involved in getting this done.  But now, as of last week she is ours.  Whew!

So let me introduce you to the newest member of our family, Tao 1.  Those of you who know my history will laugh at this name. Seems I cannot seem to shake the Tao! She is in great shape. She’s 45′ long with a 22′ beam.  Twin inboard Yanmars have only 800 hours, and the Genset is relatively new with only 86 hours. She has two 16,000 BTU air conditioners (mandatory for here) which are reversible into heaters should we take her anyplace cooler, maybe as part 1 of the overall retirement plan.

    

The layout is completely different from the first boat we looked at and we like it better. There is much more living space. The design offers 3 separate living areas (two outside and one inside) in addition to 4 berths and 4 heads.  The down side is that this boat has less overall storage space. The first one had copious amounts of storage, but that resulted in relatively cramped living space. We can deal with that difference, since the one place storage is greater on this boat is in the Kitchen. We have a full sized refrigerator and freezer, as well as more counter space, and an overall larger, better laid out kitchen (sorry – Galley.)  There’s also a bar area (looking at you SBA)!  We have fishing pole holder (and a few substantial fishing poles that came along with the deal.) The leather captain’s chair swivels and leans back, and comes with a footrest. So it can double as Larry’s easy chair.  Maybe. 

The boat has had only one previous owner, and comes with all original manuals, maintenance documents, and specs on the custom features he had put in.  These include the hood over the stove, an enlarged hard top flybridge bimini, and the fishing pole holders mentioned earlier. 

She is on her way here, sailing out of Tunisia for a port in Italy hopefully tomorrow. In Italy they will load her onto a custom made cradle on a specialty transport ship that will sail for Dubai on the 7th. Depending on conditions and the number of stops en route, she should be the here before the end of June.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now you know why I was taking classes to get my Skipper’s license.  I am officially legal to drive this baby!  Larry is working with the school to try and make classes fit into his work or vacation schedule so he can do so as well.  The school is in Dubai, and the schedule I had was killer, especially when combined with the daily commute back and forth.  He is trying to create a more reasonable scenario, and it sounds as though it will be possible for him to do so by splitting up the classes.

There are a couple of things we have to do when she gets here.  Though she comes with a black “glare cover” that decreases the brightness from sun and reflection while you are at sea.  We need a full cover like this one… (same model but not our boat) in order for our a/c to be able to defeat the sun.  There is a guy here who custom makes them in 2-3 days that we are already in contact with.  No clue what that entails!  We DO have a cover like this one for the cockpit though… (Also same model but not our boat)

Clearly we have guest space.  Friends of ours are invited and in fact encouraged to come visit! The Reservation Books are now open and we already have takers in late October and Late November into early December. Before you say anything about the area, please read about the UAE (3rd safest country in the world) and in particular Abu Dhabi (Safest city in the world) and then decide to come see for yourself.  The best time to come is between October and April when the weather is spectacular, and there is a whole lot to do and see. So think about it. In the meantime, here are a few more photos.  All of these are our boat, even this staged one taken by the seller for his ad…