We loved her. She loved us back. Even Neptune seemed to bless the deal. It was meant to be.

Except that in the end, it wasn’t.

I posted a while back about a Tayana 42 in California that we were considering buying. We liked the boat but weren’t in love with it. Still, it had most of the features we were looking for and we figured could make it work.

A couple of days after that post we got an email from a Tayana 42 owner who had left his boat in Seattle when a new job took him and his wife to Southern California. It turned out the boat was in the same marina as ours, just six docks down. It was too coincidental to be anything but serenditpity.

We went to look at the boat and fell in love. It was a 1981 but looked almost new. The previous owner had spent a small fortune outfitting it for offshore cruising. He’d ripped up the teak decks and refinished them with Awlgrip and nonskid tred. The rigging was new, as were the crisp white offshore sails and dark green canvas.

Down below was a dream, with gorgeous teak everywhere and so much storage it would be a snap to live aboard. The layout was perfect, with no wasted space. The galley had even been redone, with faux granite countertops and a stainless steel backsplash. It was efficiently designed, classic, beautiful.

We jumped up and down on the dock like little kids. This was our boat. It felt so right. It was easy to imagine cruising in this boat, making it our home. 

Our offer was accepted and the owners came up from San Diego recently for the sea trial and survey. They were lovely, people we could become friends with. We took the boat out on Sunday for the sea trial and marveled how well it sailed in light winds. We even saw dolphins. Twice. Surely it was sign from Neptune. After a blissful day of sailing around Elliott Bay, we docked the boat and popped some champagne with the owners. We went home sunkissed and happy, with just one more hurdle to cross before we finalized the deal.

The next day was the survey. The first part went well. We knew there would be problems with the engine, but aside from a few other small things, there were no serious issues. We motored over to the boatyard for the haulout. Stepping off the boat in the bright sunshine, we took off our sunglasses to have a better look at the hull…and our hearts sank. It was covered in blisters—not 15 or 20 or even 100, but hundreds of them. It looked like a boat with a terminal case of chicken pox.

A boatyard worker gave us the grim news: $15,000 to $20,000 for a complete repair. The survey said the blisters were cosmetic, but the surveyor told us that if left unchecked, they could become a more significant problem. Additionally, the rudder post seemed to be corroding and might have needed replacing, which could cost up to $5,000. And there was the possibility of leaking and rot around one critical bulkhead in the cabin. There were just too many issues for our comfort level.  We reluctantly walked away. 

By that time it was too late to back out of the sale of our boat. A week and a half ago, the final papers were signed and we became officially boatless. Camelot is gone. Yesterday I passed by the boatyard where it’s currently undergoing some work and felt a pang. That boat holds so many memories for us. It’s the boat we got engaged on, the boat I learned to sail on. Giving it up was palatable only because we’d planned to buy another boat simultaneously.

That's us, in happier times, aboard our boat, Camelot. Now the search is on for her replacement.

Beyond any attachment to a specific boat, it’s an unsettling, unhappy realization that we currently do not have the option of taking our boat out and dropping a hook overnight in some quiet bay. We have no reason to go to a marina, other than to torture ourselves. It feels like an integral part of our lives is missing. 

So we’re back to boat shopping. We’ve enlisted a boat consultant who has more than three decades of experience in offshore cruising. That might sound extravagant, but the flat fee he charges is far less than the cost of a survey and haulout. He has a tremendous amount of knowledge and has been sending us boat listings, suggestions and plenty of advice. We haven’t found any yet that we like as much as the Tayana, but I know the right boat is out there somewhere

The Tayana, too, will find a good owner. Of that we feel sure. She remains a great boat for an owner who might have different plans than we do. 

In the meantime, we’re thinking about chartering and reminding ourselves how much we’re saving without a boat payment and moorage. But it’s cold comfort. I’d trade a bit of financial cushion for the wind in the sails any day. Who wouldn’t?