Simply looking at boats

As long as I can remember I have loved looking at boats.  When I was little I can remember traipsing over docks with father, all the while worrying about falling between the planks but still loving the boats.  When our kids were small we spent many a happy hour wandering the docks in the days before everything was locked up in every harbour.  I’m not sure whether they worried about falling through or not – the little buggers could swim if they did which was a significant improvement on their old man.

So it was no hardship to spend most of today looking at boats in San Diego.  I’ve been holding myself back all down the coast but when we got here I sent some emails off to brokers and one of them got back to me.  I made sure she understood that we weren’t ready to buy and she seemed OK with that so she showed me the boat that she had listed and then found 3 more that met my criteria. 

I put the Hershine first because it is just so damn beautiful.  Dea didn’t actually have the listing for it.  The listing that she had which initially caught my eye was the Grand Banks.  As it turned out it didn’t quite have enough headroom at the helm or in the galley – there was a surprising difference between it and the Hershine.  The Hershine was listed with another broker.  I had spotted it online and sent an email to the listing broker but so far haven’t heard bugger all from him/her.  However we’ve seen the boat and as I told Marilyn, its a good thing we aren’t ready to write a cheque because I sure loved its lines.

The last boat we looked at was in commercial service as a sword fisherman.   That contraption on the bow sticks out about 25 feet in front of the boat when it is lowered & I gather you stand out there to fish – I didn’t inquire about the details because it is butt ugly and would obviously have to come off.  There’s also a vertigo inducing cockpit about 25 feet above the waterline that you can’t see in the picture.  This example was pretty rough but it showed us that we need to expand our target vessel into those in light commercial service because it was obviously more rugged construction than the other two we looked at.  Interestingly enough it also had significantly more headroom throughout. 

Because we were in the working harbour to look at the Skallerud there were fishermen around fixing their nets.  There was also a fresh fish market and these guys obviously knew a good thing.  They were all just hanging out, waiting for lunch and looking at boats, just like us.