Not all those who wander are lost
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Selecting A Boat
Preparation
After moving from Canada to Asia in 1993, we were boatless for five
years. All we knew at this point was that we wanted a boat, something
much larger and slower than the Bayliner we used to won, probably a
motorsailer or a trawler.
During this period, we read every
boating publication we could find, got our sailing certification,
visited boat yards and marinas, and we attended every boat show and
Trawlerfest that we could afford. We spent a lot of time on the
Internet, especially the Liveaboard List, Trawler World List and a bunch
of boating news groups. Maurice even started taking the Westlawn
correspondence course in naval architecture.
Deciding on the Boat
Armed with all this knowledge and experience we used a scientific
decision-making process to select the makes and models of boats that
would suit us. First, we made a list of "musts". To keep an open mind
we limited ourselves to eight musts and debated for some time as to what
those were. Here is our Must List:
* The helm separate from the accommodation (so that night vision will not be impaired)
* The galley up with the saloon and of a safe design for sea going
* At least two staterooms, with a full size or larger double bed in the owner's
* At least 6.5-foot headroom throughout the accommodation area and at least 3.5-foot headroom in the engine room
* Full displacement and single screw, with at least 2500 miles usable range
* Washer/dryer or space to install one
* Portuguese bridge or similar bridge protection at sea
* The price no more than $500k
Then
we made a very long list of "wants" (e.g., U-shaped galley, good engine
access, lots of storage). The wants we arranged in order of
importance; this is not easy (e.g., is lots of storage more or less
important than a bow thruster?). It took a lot of soul searching and
discussion between the two of us to complete this step. We then
"weighted" each want on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the best
(i.e., just how much more desirable is a big galley to a stand-up engine
room?).
Armed with our two lists, we began looking at boats. No
boat was considered further if it violated any of the musts. We
assigned "fulfilment" numbers between one and ten depending upon how
well the boat being looked at fulfilled each want (e.g., the Nordhavn 46
scored 9 for seaworthiness while the Krogen 42 scored a 6). This
wasn't too difficult to do.
The rest was simple math. For each
boat, the weight of each want was multiplied by its fulfilment number
to get a score (e.g., if the weight for a U-shaped galley was a 5 and
the Krogen Whaleback scored 7 for how well it fulfilled this want, its
score for this want for this boat was 35) . The weighted scores for all
the wants for each boat were added up, giving us an overall score for
the boat. The result was a table comparing dozens of makes and models.
This was easy to do using a spread sheet.
Once we began to have
really clear feelings about what we liked and did not like, and why, the
last step was to boil the list down to the best half dozen boats.
While the overall score of each boat influenced our decision, we made a
conscious effort to let our emotions rule at this final and critical
step.
Up to this point, we intentionally made no offers, no
matter how good the deal sounded or how much in love with a particular
boat we were.
Laying in Wait
Being armed with a list of six boats, with all our desired options
weighted, was a great position to be in. We were now definitely in the
market.
We waited until boats on our "short-list" came onto the
market, went aboard and looked very closely at every inch of each boat,
guided by our want list. If there were significant deviations from the
make and model of boat that had made it onto our short list, we
occasionally punched the one we were looking at into our spread sheet to
see if the overall score kept it in the running. We looked seriously
at a fantail 50, a Sunfjiord, several Nordhavn 46s and a couple of
Krogen 42s. But we either could not get them for a price we were
willing to pay, or they were too far away, or both.
With only a
few years until retirement and no suitable boat located, we decided to
have a boat built. So, we started to draft a design layout and
specifications. Having our two lists made this easy. We had barely
started this process when a Kadey Krogen Whaleback became available;
this boat was very high up on our list. We bought her, moved aboard and
never had any reservations whatsoever about our choice. |
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