Young Couple Buys 40ft Sailing Yacht (We did it!) No

This story begins over two years ago. We had the dream to buy a boat and travel the world but for a while thought it would stay just that, a dream. We were students who needed time to finish our degrees and even more time to save up money. Then the pandemic hit and during the chaos, uncertainty and fear in the world, the little spark of this future dream kept growing larger and larger. We would lie in bed and flick through websites of second-hand boats for hours. We would read books and watch every YouTube video we could find of people doing the same thing we wanted to. This turned into our escapism throughout the first three-month long lockdown. We so wanted this. It's currently the 29th of December 2020 and I thought I'd sit down and speak to you about something really really exciting and a journey we have been on for a few months now. Me and my boyfriend Zach are in the market to buy a house and more specifically a yacht. We decided that we are going to take the first step to living our dream life and that is one of sailing and adventure and travel and exploring and meeting new people. If we were to travel the world on this boat we had a few requirements for it. Firstly it had to be a blue water cruiser. This meant it was built for long-distance ocean sailing, set up to live aboard and can withstand large seas and strong winds found offshore. We're looking at a size between 35 foot and 40 foot. Over 40 foot becomes a bit harder to moor and a bit more expensive and under 35 foot you know it will be a bit cramped. We are going to try and be quite minimalist on it but do want a little bit room to manoeuvre around so we're going to look for 35 to 40 foot. With these priorities in mind and as Wales was slowly starting to open up we decided to look at a few boats. Today is the day we look at our first boat. We're really really excited it's just in Swansea and we've got a whole list of questions and obviously we've got a lot more to learn over the process but today is the start of that process. Are you excited? Very. The first boat was a 35 foot Wesley Conway catch. Although this was within our budget having to duck throughout. Mildly claustrophobic but not too bad. This is really good. There's so much water. Yeah no this is good it's just having cramps to go into there. And the quite significant teak deck leaks meant we decided to give this one a miss. This has got a lot of water in it. The second boat we're going to view is one that we've been looking at for quite a while. It was originally out of our budget but we kind of figured out a way that we could make it work and it's super exciting. It's actually a really rainy day but we're still going to go view it and hopefully it's as good as it looks online. Next up was a 39 foot Jeanneau Sunfizz. Although it's a lovely boat and would have suited our needs an offer was put in the same afternoon as we were viewing it so we missed out on this one. So today we are in Cardiff we've come down for this viewing. We haven't seen one for quite a while mainly because a computer has been around and we haven't really found one that was quite right to go and view. Quite a few months later we visit our third boat a 36 foot Wesley Corsair. It's really nice it's got that. It's like this is really perfect for us. Although we thought this boat was perfect for us it came with a catch osmosis and a lot of it. For those who don't know osmosis is when a small air bubble in the fiber glass fills with water and expands causing the hull to weaken often costing tens of thousands to Okay we were doing this. We have had the time now to finish our degrees now it was time to earn money and relatively fast. Going from a student budget to a boat budget is hard but we were going to do everything in our power to make it work. Zach got promotion and I got another job alongside the one I was already doing and despite a really really long year of saving we were finally on track to buy our very own boat. It's chucking it down with rain and I have to work outside and I just cannot wait for when we can get the boat and we can just do what we really love. Oh gosh it's been such a long time coming. Two years we've had this dream at the moment we're working really really hard but it will be worth it when we get our beautiful boat. However you can't just buy a boat and go sailing we need to get some experience first. Although we both have dinghy sailed before going from eight foot to 40 foot is a pretty crazy gap. We decided to put a few signs up around Swansea marina and lucky enough after a few days our phones rang. I'm in my car at the marina I'll explain why in a second but basically I want to take you through Monday it's Wednesday today I'll take you through Monday because it was epic. So we got a call from a guy called Ian who keeps his boat in the marina and he gave us a call saying I'm heading to Cardiff on Monday do you want to come? Me and Zach both said absolutely do we want to come and Monday we went on his boat for the day and it was just so much fun. It was so much fun. Over the next two weeks we helped a guy called Ian sail his boat down to Cardiff and also helped another chap in a local race in Swansea. It's the 26th of September and we are heading to the marina today because we got a call from another guy who owns a boat in the marina and he's doing a yacht race today and he's invited us on board great to get experience in time for our Following this it was time to get our qualifications on paper and after 10 days studying both on land and water we were both qualified day skippers and one step closer to our mission of getting a sailboat. We have always thought the universe has funny ways of presenting opportunities at certain times. A hunt for the perfect boat had gone quiet for quite a while until we got sent a link to a 1987 catch for sale by a friend. The same friend who two years ago told us buy an old catch. Although we fell in love with the photos of this boat being out of our budget and a seven hour round trip we pushed the idea aside once again. However a few days later having not stopped thinking about it we decided to contact the seller and book an interviewing. The 24th of January and we haven't looked around a boat in probably a year is it? We decided it's about time to look around one. It's pretty exciting. Do you want to say what it is? Yeah so it's a Colvick Victor 40 foot catch which means it basically just has two masts. It's a bit different than we were looking at. It's about a seven hour round trip for us so it must be something special for us to drive Let's go look at a boat. Oh hi it's Rebecca. Hi we've arrived. Sorry we're a bit early. And wow it was everything we had dreamed of and more. The minute we stepped on board we knew it was the one. We could picture ourselves sailing wide oceans on this boat, sharing moments with friends and family and seeing so much of the world. There's loads of room down here. You're literally in it. So we just finished seeing the boat. It was everything we could have wanted. I feel really really happy and excited and I can't even really talk. We've got a lot of thinking to do and some people to call and chat to and other things have got slot to place as well. Yeah but this is so exciting. Zach has just popped into a shop but I really really really really want that to be our home and it just felt so right. It's always felt right and then someone's hit us with a massive downfall so ah this is a perfect boat. It's got osmosis that costs 15 grand to fix. Oh wow okay that is not the right boat for us and this boat we literally said to her what is wrong with it and she said nothing. Absolutely nothing. We looked through every single receipt they had. They kept everything. I actually could cry. We were never even looking at catch. We were looking at sloops and no teak decks and all of this and we have just fallen in love with it and we and Zach are on the same page. Exactly the same page and we'd be heartbroken if this went and it is out of our budget but we're gonna do everything in our power to make this work and the next 24 hours are gonna be oh gosh don't cry Becca. Oh my gosh we've waited for this moment for three years and if this is the beginning of it I just can't even and I don't want to be getting ahead of myself because my heart runs so fast when I get excited about something and the woman even said to me she said I haven't seen you stop smiling the minute you stepped on board. Zach's gonna hear back to the car and be like why are you crying? I cried. Fueled by the longing for this boat we started working even harder. We did overtime, extra jobs, sold belongings, ran car boot sales. This was our future boat and we were going to work it into our reality. In order to save up for a boat we're going to have to make some sacrifices and we were well aware of this but now it's really happening because I've just sold one of my surf boards which was a bit difficult to do. Actually really difficult to do. The girl's going to come in about five minutes to collect it and yeah it's really sad. It has to happen you know sometimes you have to make sacrifices in life and this lovely board is one of them. Hey it's Zach here. I just want to say a massive thank you for showing us around yesterday. We think the boat is really perfect for us. We've gone away and looked at our finances and basically come up with a figure we'd offer you for the boat. And this leads us directly onto hurdles. Hurdles, hurdles, hurdles. Boy were there hurdles. Our offer wasn't accepted at this stage. Biggest hurdle yet. It's two days since we saw the boat and we actually haven't heard anything back. He said he'd call back today and I've just been waiting all day with this pit in my stomach. I'm trying to remain positive and philosophical and think that if it's meant to be it'll be but it's really really tough. I'm just petrified, petrified. I haven't been able to eat properly and my mind's been whirring for two days now. We have all our fingers crossed and so I just got a reply from him and he basically said hi Becca saw it's late as promised I said I'd get back to you today. We had someone look at the boat a month ago but I haven't heard from him since and today he put in an offer which is higher than ours. Oh don't lose hope yet. I knew something like that would come up. Oh I feel sad. Hey you all right? Yeah did you read the message? Yeah I did. I'm gonna message him this. Do you want to hear it quickly? Yeah go on. Thanks for getting back to me. Okay that's understandable. Our offer is every penny we have unfortunately so cannot go higher. Happy to put a deposit down Saturday if the other guy falls through. Is that okay? Yeah it's just too much above our bar. Yeah but we can't put any more down. Yeah I know. Yeah it'll be all right I think. We've got to stay philosophical. Yeah it's a bit annoying isn't it? Yeah I don't know I'm still hoping for this but if it doesn't happen then it doesn't happen. Aside from that and something that has been ongoing through this whole process was a lack of space in marinas. It'd all be very well buying a boat but then being able to keep it somewhere was an entirely different situation. We've hit a bit of a wall and pretty sad about it so we went on to the Swansea marina site because we wanted to see how we'd moor our boat. Obviously when we bought it we were really intensely looking for boats to buy however we hit a massive hurdle because Swansea marina doesn't take long-term habitants. We knew we'd hit walls and with any big plan there's always going to be small things or big things that you have to overcome and we did know that but the whole reason Zach picked Swansea to work in because his job could have been all over the country, he picked Swansea because I was here and because the boat was going to be here and now we're at a standstill basically. We'll find a way, we'll find a means, where there's a will there's a way. At that point where we're stuck between a rock and hard place we want to buy a boat. All the marinas are full, we can't really leave Swansea either, we've both got jobs here. We don't want to be commuting hours to our boat considering that the boat we get will probably, well yeah, will need maintenance doing to it. We went through all these different plans the other day and we were like okay cool pick that one and now we're literally back to square one because we can't keep it anywhere. Aside from that and something that's been ongoing through this whole process was a lack of space in marinas. It'd all be very well buying a boat but then being able to keep it somewhere was an entirely different situation. Another large hurdle was money and this was a pretty big one too. They say money doesn't buy happiness but if this process has shown us anything it's proven that money can buy quality and when you buy quality you save money in the long term. If we were to buy a boat with a dodgy hull or leaking deck at this point we'd be setting ourselves up for failure. So we needed to save more but then that presented the issue of when is enough enough. We could save our whole lives but miss out on the actual living bit, another dilemma. So now we knew we needed a boat that wasn't falling apart with enough money saved in case it did but not to work too long but to get a space in the marina at exactly the same time we bought the boat whilst not paying rent in our house for a lot longer than needed. Oh my gosh I can't even talk properly the guy just rang me. So he said I'm about to make your day and I said really really how and he said the boat's yours would you like it and I said yes. He hasn't heard anything else from this other person and he thinks the boat will be perfect for us and he said it's ours today if we want it. He said this is going to start your adventure. Oh don't cry. We did it. Guess what? We got the boat dad. You happened to get the boat for what you wanted? Yeah. I was at work about 20 minutes ago and he was ringing me and I was driving and I was like oh my god I've got to pull over. So I ran around about pulled over just missed his call so I gave him a call back and he said I'm going to make your day and I was like how and he was like do you want the boat and I said yeah. He was like do you really want it and I was like yeah and he was like well Hi Paul. Good how are you? Yeah we got the boat. We got the boat. We can't even believe it. We're so happy. You deserve a bit of luck that's really really awesome. Yeah we've worked so hard to be fair. It kind of got to that point where we're like what are we saving for you know it's we've been saving for two years so oh it just happened and we can't believe it and when we walked onto it we were like is this too nice and then we're like you know what we've worked really hard for this. I mean it's two years you've done to get it. Yeah yeah. And you've got it but now now the adventure really begins. Yeah now you've really got to start the whole process. Did you expect that? I had a feeling you were going to get it. Yeah I like really didn't want Guys guess what? We're getting a boat. Oh my god. That was a little bit stressful when we're trying to get the money transfer across. Banks do not like you transferring large sums of money. No. At all. Oh my god does it feel real? No. And I guess that's exactly what we did do because here we are sitting on our much-dreamed-after vessel that we thought would never be possible. This is the next step we were so excited to tell you about. This is the adventure we touched on very briefly at the end of the 2021 recap. The world is out there and we now have our beautiful boat to take us there. We just traveled with that many a mile or so and it wouldn't be a good day if I'd spread that everywhere. Also we have no wine glasses or champagne flutes at the moment so we'll be I think we're going to really like champagne. We're just going to be darling. I know. To new beginnings. Yeah new beginnings and our boat.