On Schedule !

New or Old

Right up to the day before we actually put the deposit down on our boat we hadn't entirely ruled out the possibility of buying a previously owned boat. With the benefit of the web and an actual visit to one broker, we looked at a large number of boats.

We may not have spent several months looking but we must have looked at least one hundred boats, either on the water or on the web. Although we were primarily looking for layout and design ideas for our own boat, I'm sure that if we'd seen a boat that we liked at a price that we'd liked, we may well have seriously considered buying a secondhand boat.

The appeal of buying an existing boat, subject to survey, is that we ought to be able to go cruising more or less straightaway. There was no question about the amount of time taken for fitting out or whether we had the necessary skills to do it. We'd collect the boat and, possibly, head off into the sun for a cruising holiday. But where's the fun in that?

It would be autumn by the time we'd bought the boat and, apart from some minor tasks, there probably wouldn't be too much to do to it over the winter. We'd probably be less likely to want to spend any significant amounts of money on it, at least until after we'd had a chance to do some further cruising in it.

There has to be a certain satisfaction in looking at something and knowing that it is, more or less, all your own work. There's the skills that you learn whilst you're fitting out and the endless things to talk to fellow boaters about. Add to that the thought that, when the time comes to sell, you potentially have a much younger boat to sell.

We're still filled with a degree of fear and trepidation about the route that we've taken. Will it prove too much for us? Will we make a good job of it? Only time will tell.

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