We've sailed a few times, we want to sail more and we want to find out if we can actually live on a boat.
After speaking with Jim at Bow to Stern Boating, we had learned that they would like to be able to have a 38ish foot monohull to add to their charter options.
This is an interesting size boat. It's plenty large enough to have a comfortable salon and galley, a nice cockpit, two decent size cabins and long enough to be able to reach a respectable speed (see my Tech Article to learn more about boat speeds), but not so long that it is hard to find a dock and not so deep a draft that would make sailing it in the shallow waters of the Pamlico Sound a problem.
The one notable downside is that in that length it is usually not quite long enough to have 2 heads, and at the end of the day, everyone wants their own bathroom!
So, I went onto a few sites to start looking for used boats, surprisingly, quite old used boats (that happen to have been well taken care of). YachtWorld.com seems to be the go-to source for finding a used boat. It allows for very easy filtering on Length, Age, Location, Price, etc and really allows you to quickly find whats out there that matches your wants.
What I found were a good number of Hunters and Catalinas. Both are fine boats, but since Jim knew that we would probably only want to own this particular boat for a few years, he suggested we try to search out a Beneteau or Jeanneau, since they tend to hold their values better and are a little more rare/sought after, making then easier to sell when the time comes.
I focused my search on the southern and mid-atlantic coastal states, hoping to find something that I could, with some help, sail from wherever it lay to Oriental, NC.
So, I went onto a few sites to start looking for used boats, surprisingly, quite old used boats (that happen to have been well taken care of). YachtWorld.com seems to be the go-to source for finding a used boat. It allows for very easy filtering on Length, Age, Location, Price, etc and really allows you to quickly find whats out there that matches your wants.
What I found were a good number of Hunters and Catalinas. Both are fine boats, but since Jim knew that we would probably only want to own this particular boat for a few years, he suggested we try to search out a Beneteau or Jeanneau, since they tend to hold their values better and are a little more rare/sought after, making then easier to sell when the time comes.
I focused my search on the southern and mid-atlantic coastal states, hoping to find something that I could, with some help, sail from wherever it lay to Oriental, NC.