Pachuca has been on the market since last spring and my, what an adventure it has been.
After the early interest by dreamers who were disappointed to learn that living on a boat is not a viable solution to the problem of sky high house prices and rents in the Perth area, I kept dropping the price until I finally got some serious interest in the boat and eventually accepted an offer by a fine young couple who had done their research well, appreciated what the boat had to offer, and seem to have a good plan for eventually sailing the boat to UK.
But by then I was developing serious misgivings about parting with Pachuca. These misgivings grew with each tour of the boat that I gave to prospective buyers, where I marveled at all of improvements that I had made to the boat over the years from lessons learned during my circumnavigation. The pity was that it would be others rather than myself who would benefit from the many improvements that I had made, particularly during her 18 month refit in 2015/2016. Others would benefit from the small things such as the skylight in the head and great LED lighting particularly at the navigation station, to the big things such as a new anchor windlass where I could raise and lower the anchor from the steering station.
And I could not help myself in that as far as the boat was concerned, for t it always had to be the best. A case in point is the replacement of my AIS transponder last year. The range of the AIS had been steadily decreasing until it could not see ships more than one nautical mile away, rendering it useless for avoiding collisions at sea. We tried moving the AIS antenna to the top of the mast with no improvement. At this point I knew that I would soon be putting the boat up for sale, and the unethical thing to do would have been to show prospective buyers the nearby ships reported by the AIS and leave it at that, but I try never to do unethical.
I was given two options for the AIS replacement: a Navman unit or a genuine Raymarine at twice the price. I asked the marine electrician why I should pay twice the price for a Raymarine unit and he replied simply 'better warranty, better reliability'. Common sense dictated that I install the cheaper Navman but like many boat owners who are loopy and irrational about their boat I selected the Raymarine product which incurred an extra cost of more than $1,000. But unfortunately the market does not seem to care, appreciate or even understand these arcane issues.
There was no question of my reneging on the
sale agreement that I had cosigned with those two prospective buyers who had put so much of themselves into making
Pachuca a reality for themselves, but in the end they made it easy for
me. There arose an issue of contention in the survey report regarding the integrity of the keel because of hairline cracks at the ends of the keel beyond the last bolts, which had always been a characteristic of this boat that had taken me safely around the world and had never been an issue either in survey reports or with insurance companies, and I reluctantly agreed to go to the expense of having the boat lifted out of the water for a "repair" at my expense even though I could not get a description of exactly what was to be repaired. My condition that the boat survey report be provided to me before the lift-out was refused at the last minute and I therefore
cancelled the lift-out,
refused the request to extend the already generous settlement date by another four days,
the deal was dead, and the buyers were informed that their entire deposit would be returned.
Later I realized that the issues of the hard-standing, "repair" and refusal to provide me with a copy of the survey report had distracted us from the the fundamental fact was that the buyers were not satisfied with the survey result, which was one of the two conditions of purchase (the other being a sea trial), and were immediately entitled to withdraw their offer to purchase with a full refund of their deposit. We got there in the end, but only after a couple of difficult days that got us nowhere.
I have a university degree in economics and I respect the market and for me the fundamental situation is that the boat is much more valuable to me than it is to the market. My plan is to do what my boating neighbor in the adjacent pen does: enjoy pottering around in the boat and occasionally take the boat out and either motor or sail to a nearby anchorage for lunch and perhaps a swim. For me there is sheer pleasure in simply being on my well equipped and maintained boat. I can do the outings alone if I have to, but fortunately I have an old friend and sailing companion who presents the likelihood of longer sails further afield. It would be great to once again do a cruise of Geographe Bay without the stresses that I had to endure in organizing and managing the club's annual Bunbury Cruise.
I hope to speak with Jon Sanders regarding any integrity issues with his S&S 39 Perie Banou II on which he has sailed about five of his eleven circumnavigations. In the meantime, keeping in mind that Pachuca's keel stainless steel bolts were tension-ed and declared to be OK by a shipwright in 2016, I have found some relevant information regarding bolted on keels such as the following:
