Since Bunkmate is kind of snoozing at the blogging wheel, I thought I should probably recap the last month as it has been a pretty substantial and extremely busy one. We have sold our Simplicity and have bought (or are the process of buying) a new to us boat. She is a 1976 Fantasia 35 MKII Hull#58 named Reunion that we bought in Alameda California. She is a sturdy full keel 22,000 lb boat with a 1/2" hand laid glass hull. She will not be the first one to the finish line, but she will always get us there for the after party. She does not really fit all of the perimeters that we had initially set for our cruising boat, but it is always a compromise with boats, and we chose a little more comfort and security in place of sailing performance, and I don't think we will ever regret it. We feel she will take extremely good care of us and we intend to repay the favor.
We were not really ready to be in the market yet but just as Simplicity had, she kind of just squeezed her way into our hearts and we had no choice but to make it happen. We went to the Strictly Sail boat show in Oakland to drool over some sailing boats and stuff, plus to get our cruising juices rejuvinated and figured we would look at the listings to see if there were any boats in the area that warranted a look. The only one that materialized was this one and boy did it materialize! We cooberated a meeting with a friend of the owner since he was in Hawaii at his other house(geesh), and arranged to take a look immediately after pulling into town before going to the boat show. I won't get to much into the details but will say the boat show seemed to have a second priority after that. We had a great time and mingled with some fantastic cruising and dreaming folks just like us at the Cruisers Bash that only fueled the fire. It really is cool to be around other people that have the same dreams when the vast majority of people and family just don't understand what it is really about for us.
The very day after returning we had come up with a proposal for purchase that we thought we could pull off and presented it to the owner. To our surprise he accepted it and now we had to put it in place. This involved pooling money from every place we could think including selling everything that had any value. well long boring story short we were off to Alameda 2 weeks later to meet the owner the very day he returned from Hawaii. After some hashing and talking about the boat we went to the Yacht Club for lunch to work out some details. We cancelled our second night reservation in our Hotel and got to spend the first night aboard our new boat Reunion soon to be Cerridwen, and will be referred to as such from this point on. What a fabulous night aboard our boat that would make all of our dreams a reality.
We got out for a sea trial and test sail Sunday afternoon and met up at the owners house in the evening to see all of the goodies (and there are many) that come with her. After getting out of the house with the incredible hostess from Sri Lanka that is his wife (and that was not easy) we were headed home with an eta from Shirley (our GPS) for 12:30 in the morning and both of us have to be to work in mere hours. Exhausted, overwhelmed, excited, drained, spent, ... you name an emotion and we were probably feeling it, we arrived back home with a return trip set for Thursday for the next leg which was only three days away, ...whew, the adventure has begun!
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