2011-05-07 Hello world
This is the first post in our new blog which will chronicle our upcoming adventures. It is designed as a diary/log for ourselves as well as, hopefully, some entertainment for our family and friends.
If you have stumbled upon this site, welcome and join us as we proceed into, for us, the unknown!!
Feel free to leave a comment – we may even reply 
2011-05-12 Found ideal boat – already sold!!
Aarghh!!!
After months of looking (on the internet), I finally found what appeared to be the ideal boat for our trip. Fired off an email to the broker. And, yes, Mary agreed to this but only because I had told her about another Kiwi who had bought a similar kind of boat sight unseen and was shipping it to NZ!! We were entering the realm of making a big purchase without personally seeing the vessel!!
It was a Bayliner 38′ and had essentially everything we would need to step aboard and go. Not that that’s what we would do!! Would need to have a shakedown cruise of some kind first.
Now, for those of you who don’t know, a shakedown cruise is usually a relatively short trip to discover whether there are any issues/problems that may need attending to. Also it is a time when new owners can familiarise themselves with the boat and all the systems on board without straying too far from “safety.”
Unfortunately, the broker informed us that that boat had already been sold!!
So, our search thus continues…..
2011-05-13 Buyer’s broker
So, we’ve decided to engage a buyer’s broker to do research, provide advice and do a pre-purchase survey for us as we search for the ideal boat. This will cost us a bit more but will relieve us of a lot of effort in finding a boat. All things being equal, he may even buy the boat for us (with our agreement!) without us actually seeing it (apart from photos, of course).
This will be quite a departure from normal for us as we are generally ultra conservative but all the evidence points to this being a good plan. Of course, we would never have done this had we not come across a post, on one of the forums that I belong to, from another Kiwi who has just bought a similar boat (sight unseen) in the USA and was having it shipped to NZ.
Scary business though…….
2011-05-23 Boat search continues
So, got a list of possible boats from our broker and am busy wading through all the information, specifications and photos of each one trying to determine which ones would be worth a look.
Seems quite a difficult task trying to compare one with the other. I guess I’ll just have to invoke my old decision making process of applying numbers and ratings to each feature and then calculating a composite score. The question is deciding what’s important in the greater scheme of thing!!
Will keep you posted!!!
2011-05-30 Progress in selling up
Well, the garden’s done and the garage has been cleared. Our decluttering continues with a small skip of rubbish carted away today. It’s amazing how much “stuff” one collects over time. It’s even more amazing how much stuff is actually useless rubbish!
Tomorrow we are having a valuer to value the house and then a few estate agents with their assessments too. Then it’s full steam ahead in putting the house on the market!!! Suddenly there are only a few months left to complete all the arrangements.
