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IF YOU ARE BUYING A BOAT, it’s almost inevitable that one smartass friend will tell you that this should be the second happiest day of your life.

The happiest day of course, will come when you sell the boat.

So much for conventional wisdom.

Full disclosure, I am not a rich man. I own a modest little business and up until October 5th the most expensive item I had ever purchased (apart from my house) was a 1969 Islander 26 which I picked up for $3800 in Marina del Rey two years ago. I rarely spend more than $10 on a bottle of wine and I consider indulgences like new cars, expensive hotel rooms and manicures to be a frivolous waste of money.

I’m not going through a midlife crisis, nor am I stricken with self-loathing (apart from the mandatory dollop that comes with being a Tottenham Hotspur supporter). Yet earlier this month I acquired a sailboat for the sort of money that would buy either a very decent new car or more manicures than I could use in twenty lifetimes. And although my mood following this purchase can’t quite match the births of either of my children or my wedding day in the euphoria stakes, let’s just say I’m feeling pretty giddy right now. And pretty smart too.

Which is funny when you consider that I’ve never been on this boat. Nor ever seen it in the flesh. Nor have I ever met the seller. Oh, and did I mention it’s almost fifty years old? And located in Sweden?

Starting with a dream

Sailors love to tell stories, and I am no exception. So, dear reader, please indulge me as I explain.

I am an Englishman, living in Santa Monica, with two adult children who have moved away to college. Standing at the cusp of the third act of my life like many later-life sailors, I’m viewing the prospect not with trepidation but rather determination to do something big with the time I have left. I’m not interested in retiring to Palm Springs, playing golf and just fading away. I want to do something challenging, something a little scary which engages both the body and the mind and allows me to indulge in my passion for traveling…. and sailing fits the bill.

Which is what started me on a quest a few years ago and which has now brought me to the ownership of Arcturus, a 1966 Allied Seabreeze 35. Classic plastic. A true good old boat.

For the last three years or so I’ve spent far more time than is healthy devouring websites, books and magazine articles on what kind of boat to buy and where I should be sailing. And of course like any new field of study the more you learn the more you realize how little you know. I started out reading two widely-recommended books: Twenty Small Sailboats To Take You Anywhere, by John Vigor and its companion volume, Twenty Affordable Sailboats To Take You Anywhere by Gregg Nestor. These splendid tomes led me onto John Kretschmer’s invaluable contribution to the genre, Best Used Boat Notebookand Ferenc Maté’s wonderfully wise and witty Best Boats to Build or Buy.

And then were sail magazines, cruising columnists, full time cruisers, exhibition speakers and other authorities on the subject, whose wisdom I would seek out as they churned out ‘indispensable’ lists of The Top Ten Budget Cruisers, The Top Twenty Classic Plastics….you get the idea.

Sometimes older is better

In short order a few key themes emerged – older boats might have a few more miles on the clock, but their narrower beams and deeper keels can often make them more seaworthy – especially in a blow. Compared to modern boats they have less creature comforts but better ‘righting moments’, which is important in the event of a capsize. They may not be spacious condos down below, but nor do they pound like the dickens going to weather like so many of their modern equivalents. They might not boast a swimstep with attached shower, like those much-loved Beneteaus which infest charter bases worldwide, but unlike modern boats, they do boast that thick, bulletproof glass that was only possible in those dreamy days before the 1973 oil crisis. Which can make all the difference in the world in a grounding.

My reading also educated me about the kind of problems you can routinely expect from older boats – water intrusion leading to delamination of the deck or compression of the mast, corrosion of vital deck hardware like chainplates and shrouds that can jeopardize the rig, corrosion of black iron tanks and much more.

But practical advice is not everything. You have to love the look and feel of a boat too. I wanted a pretty boat. And for safety and comfort I wanted nothing less than a 32, but for ease of single handing nothing larger than a 38. With that in mind I began whittling what at first seemed like a daunting array of boats down to just a handful, finally producing a short list that read thus: Hans Christian 38, Tayana 37, Camper Nicholson 35 or Contessa 32.

But it was not enough just to choose a boat. I then had to decide where I wanted to keep her. Living in Southern California there are two excellent cruising grounds within a short plane ride – the Pacific Northwest and the Sea of Cortez. The latter seemed the better choice for a boat hunt – it has warmer weather, a longer cruising season, cheaper marina fees and local labor. And noodling around the web – thank you SanCarlosYachtSales.com – there seemed no shortage of decent old boats, fully equipped for cruising, whose owners had decided for whatever reason – ill health, spousal strife, lack of cash – to abandon their cruising dreams and settle down Stateside again. Just the thing for a frugal but moderately educated shopper like myself.

The only problem was that time was not on my side. My ultimate goal was to have a boat in the Mediterranean, just like my good friend Franz, the man behind the Sailing in the Mediterranean podcast and my host during a fabulous ten days sail in Greece and Turkey this past summer. If I wanted to become an accomplished sailor capable of making a blue water passage I would need a least a couple of seasons in the Sea of Cortez – where I soon learned, the searing heat often renders summer sailing unbearable  – followed by a jaunt through the Panama Canal, followed by a few seasons in the Caribbean (silly not to, since you’re there, right?), followed finally by an Atlantic crossing God-knows-when to achieve my goal. And then, to top it all, I would have to pay VAT on the boat’s value to keep it in any EU-flagged port.

The only other way would be to buy a boat sight unseen in Europe, which was fraught with all sorts of other issues, including  lining up half a dozen boats at the same time for test sails, flying across the Atlantic and moving from France to Spain to Portugal to perhaps even Turkey at great expense hoping one of them fit the bill.

Fate intervenes

I was wrestling with this dilemma when two things happened. The first was that I noticed a boat I had long coveted in my local marina was for sale. The boat in question was a gorgeously maintained Weatherly 32, a stout and seaworthy Thomas Gilmer design that has known several incarnations by different finishers over the years, and has been variously badged as an Aries 32, a Roughwater 32 or a Southern Cross 31. The owner is an affable Porsche mechanic who lavished years of TLC on the boat – but his asking price – almost $60k, was a bit rich for my blood. That same evening I came home and logged into the 59-Northwebsite. Which is where Arcturus came to my attention. Again.

59-North is the website run by Andy Schell, he of the podcast of the same name. Andy (and before him, Ben Weems of Weems and Plath, the famed manufacturer of high-end nautical compasses) had been a wonderful steward for this good old boat and had restored and upgraded her in almost every way possible. But last year Andy bought another boat, a Swan 48 in which he hosts bluewater passages for paying customers throughout the year. As such he was keen to sell Arcturus. Andy’s list of improvements was daunting, but so was the initial price. But this particular evening I noted a rather drastic price reduction from $50k to $39k. The price of the Weatherly underlined just what a good deal the blue water proven, fully restored, considerably bigger Arcturus was. I pondered the matters solidly the next day and the next night.

And then I emailed Andy. I followed up with a phone call and quickly made him an offer. Which he quickly accepted.

My reasoning for finally pulling the trigger was this: Arcturus ticked all the boxes apropos of strong, safe, offshore-proven construction. She has a thick fiberglass hull and it’s no surprise that plenty of Allied boats have circumnavigations under their keels – in fact an Allied is credited with the first fiberglass circumnavigation in 1964. Two of the Seabreeze’s sister ships – the Allied Princess and the Seawind were mentioned in despatches in the books I had initially read with high praise for their strength and quality. And she had the added advantage of being owned by someone I knew – sort of. Having listened to Andy’s podcasts for two years I thought I knew him. Even better, he has spoken at length about his love for the boat and his painstaking restoration had been fully documented. When I examined the scope of the recent work done both by Andy and Ben Weems before him, which included a full deck restoration, replacement of the hull-deck joint, replacement of the caprail with a no-maintenance aluminum replacement, installation of new titanium chainplates from Colligo Marine, allied to completely new rigging using Colligo’s acclaimedDyneema Dux – more strength, less weight – I was sold. So it was an added bonus to find Andy had also completed a nifty redesign of the lifting keel system AND redone all primary wiring AND installed low output LED lights AND installed integral solar panels into the dodger that allow the boat to be fully energy independent from the sun WITHOUT running the engine. And talking of the engine, Arcturus boasts a virtually new Beta Marine 16hp diesel with just 75 hours on it.

I’m sure this litany of Arcturus’ merits is getting boring, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention she’s reposing on the hard in a Swedish marina where, thanks the country’s socialized boating culture, it costs just a fraction of what you’d pay in annual fees in Spain, Italy or France. Plus she’s VAT paid. And did I mention that Sweden is a country my whole family knows and loves, and where my children’s godmother has a large country house where she spends every summer?

But let me revisit the issue of the lifting keel again because I think this, as much as any other factor, proved the final trigger for me to press the buy button. The boat’s shoal draft – she draws just three feet with the keel up – means I can take her not just across Sweden’s famed Gota Canal to the west coast, I can also take her south to the English channel and into Calais en route to the famed French canals, for a leisurely two month journey south to the Mediterranean. After that, who knows? I have the enviable task of choosing my summer vacations over the next decade from between Ibiza and Menorca, or the French Riviera, and the Amalfi Coast, or between Croatia, and Greece, or Turkey, come to that.

And the takeaway?

Thank you for your indulgence in allowing me to outline the factors that turned buying this boat from a huge gamble into a no-brainer. After coldly weighing the pros and cons I honestly couldn’t think of a reason why I shouldn’t buy Arcturus. I think it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made and I’m thrilled, with zero second thoughts.

Which brings me finally to the last word, about the philosophical takeaway from this process: The English have a very simple aphorism: fortune favors the brave. It’s certainly always worked for me. The famous novelist Paolo Coelho made this the central theme of his bestseller The Alchemist, memorably writing that when you set your heart on doing something, no matter how hard or unlikely, the universe conspires to help you make it happen. I’d seen that at work in my own life 30 years ago when I moved to the USA on a whim and was rewarded with some remarkable luck to help me, then a penniless immigrant with no friends and no contacts, get set up and make a new life in Los Angeles. I truly believe that by taking a similar leap of faith in buying Arcturus I will be rewarded with many wonderful years sailing and traveling to come. It’s been my dream and I’ve achieved it quicker than I ever thought. And that’s the takeaway not just from this blog but from the most recent Sailing in the Mediterranean podcast featuring yours truly: the most valuable advice Franz can give us comes right from the intro clip from Risky Business. Forget the technical instruction about how to raise a halyard, trim a jib, or when to reduce sail, that’s just detail. The most fundamentally important part is: DON’T JUST DREAM! Try to make that a dream a reality. Figure out where you are, and where you want to get to. Then start making waypoints. That’s what you do when you are passage-making across an ocean. And it’s a perfect method to get you everywhere else in life, too.

Neil Fletcher

October 2015