February 2019

Getting ready for Sea Trials, Survey & Inspection!

Tomorrow (Wednesday, February 20th ) is an exciting day for us! We made an offer on a 2002 Bayliner 4087 CPMY (cockpit motor yacht) with an aft cabin and it was accepted! Tomorrow we go to sea trials, survey & mechanical inspection. But let’s go back to how this all came about.

The boat is currently moored at Elliott Bay Marina, which is where we moored our first boat Kokomo. About a month ago, Scott found this listing and suggested we look it while we were wandering around the marina.

Paul of Elliott Bay Yacht Sales, was nice enough to show us the boat that afternoon. Honestly, we expected that we wouldn’t really like it (sounds terrible I know). But we’ve looked at many boats over the past few months and they all have either stunk or were dirty or were way over-priced. On top of that, big tall boats are a bit intimidating to us.

Scott and I jumped on board and were immediately surprised by the tricked out dinghy! I talked about that in our last blog. As we opened the door to the salon, I was not expecting much. But low and behold I was pleasantly surprised by everything. First and most important, it doesn’t stink!! This is huge for us. The galley is large with lots of storage. It has a large fridge, three burner stove AND an oven! Thinking back on how I was preparing meals for six of us in the San Juan Islands on Kokomo now, is frightening. You can actually mingle in the salon and have someone cooking in the galley. LOL The staterooms are plenty roomy too, along with the heads. Once everything is finalized, we’ll give you a full tour!

We made the plunge

Working the boat show, I just couldn’t stop thinking about that boat and neither could Scott. So we made the plunge and made an offer! Our offer was accepted about a week and half ago and we immediately scheduled the sea trials and survey. We are hauling out at Sea View Boat Yard at 10am tomorrow to have the hull inspected and we’ll be along for the trip. This will be our second boat, second sea trial and second haul out. I have to wonder if it will be totally different or much of the same?

As you know, I’m a weather nut and the forecast during the sea trial is snow with a small craft advisory! So this will certainly be a trip to remember. I feel confident it will be smooth, since we’ll have our broker, Steve Thoreson from Union Marine (where I work) with us. Steve is a certified yacht broker with over 25 years experience with yachts and he’ll also be teaching us how to operate and dock the boat too!

Be sure to stay tuned and we’ll give you a full update on the findings and where we go from here! Until next time! Cheers, Scott and Ally

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A Tour of the 2019 Seattle Boat Show

This year’s boat show was a completely different experience for Scott and I. As you all know, I joined Lake Union Sea Ray in September and my company is the largest boat dealer on the west coast. Our portfolio includes Sea Ray, Bayliner, Heyday, Boston Whaler, Lowe, Monte Carlo Yachts, Nautique and MasterCraft. Our 34,000 square foot exhibit was the largest in boat show history by any single dealer featuring over 90 boats. The setup for this show takes five days and as the Marketing Manager, I was definitely busy! The Seattle Boat Show is a nine day event at the Century Link Field Event Center and at South Lake Union.

What’s really impressive is the amount of work that goes into setting up a boat show!

Walking the show

Each year, Scott and I walk the show with a plan – we’re either looking for a boat, researching a marina or buying supplies. This year we only had a limited time to walk it, since I was working the entire time. I did take my badge off, so I wasn’t a dealer walking through other dealer’s display. Not owning a boat right now, we really don’t have a need for any supplies. But we did look at a boat a week ago and if we buy it, we’ll need a few things.

At Century Link Event Center, they have two floors of exhibits. Whether you are looking for a new toilet, anchor, electronics, charter companies or boats, you’ll find it at the Seattle Boat Show. One of my favorite vendors is NautiGirl Apparel – I buy a couple of shirts every year.

What? We looked at a boat last week?

Yes, you heard that right. We’re going back this week to take a second look with Steve Thoreson, our broker from Lake Union Sea Ray. If we feel good about it, we’ll make an offer! But more about that, next time.

Scott and I did check out a few mattress vendors and dinghys. The boat we are looking at, has a heavy duty davit system and the dinghy is stored horizontally. With a 5’ beam, that extends our LOA and slip size requirements. We thought about getting a new system to store it vertically, allowing us in a smaller slip, but it’s not really feasible. I did learn that inflatable dinghies come in two different types of materials – synthetic rubber (Hypalon or neoprene) or plastic polymers (PVC or urethane). Synthetic rubber will last much longer as it is more UV resistant than plastic polymers, but they are twice the price. One dinghy we liked from Waypoint Marine Group was the Highfield Classic 340 Hypalon, regularly $5490.

Dinghy Shopping

I also priced out dinghy motors at the Seattle Boat Show. Our old dinghy only had a 4 hp motor and you can go up to 9.9hp without having to register the boat. Turns out that a motor with an electric starter isn’t that much more than a manual starter. Either way, we’re still looking at spending at least $2000 on a motor. Why all this dinghy shopping? Because the boat we’re looking at comes with this tricked out dinghy that with the motor weighs over 700lbs! We’re a little worried about the aft weight and we’ll see how it cruises during the sea trial.

The funny thing is that this dinghy not only has a tower, but it comes with GPS, VHF and a stereo with a CD Player! Imagine what our marina neighbors will think as we cruise around! Guess we’ll wait until we cross that bridge.

South Lake Union Boats Afloat Display

After checking out a few boats at Century Link, we headed down to South Lake Union. Of course I’m a bit biased as I think we had the best display on the lake! We had six of our larger Sea Rays on the water, including our L590 Fly, 510 Sundancer, 460 Sundancer, 400 Sundancer and the 330 Sundancer.

Sea Ray L590 Yacht

One yacht that stood out, was a Sea Spirit trawler. This was a beautiful classically built boat. Every detail was thought out. The cruising range on this boat is 3800 miles! If we won the lottery, I would consider buying this beauty.

The coolest thing on this Sea Spirit was the flag feature – they have a flag for all of the major countries! If you aren’t familiar with flag etiquette, here’s a great link from our friends at S/V Totem.

It can be yours for only $17,000 per month

Okay, let’s be real. If you need to know what your monthly payment is with financing on a $3m yacht, you probably shouldn’t be spending that kind of money. We thought it was hilarious that this 75′ yacht had a price sign showing its monthly payment of only $17,000 per month! While it was nice, it was not warm and cozy to us.

Coolest feature on a Trawler!

We also checked out Sea Bear a Swift Trawler. While we are not big fans of trawlers, Sea Bear was nicely designed. In fact, it even had a dumb waiter for drinks up to the bridge!

The weather this year, was fantastic for most of the boat show! Imagine doing an on the water boat display in January in Seattle! We were so lucky to have sunny days for most of the show.

Catamarans

It was seven years ago, when Scott and I first toured a catamaran at the Seattle Boat Show. It was a 35′ Lagoon and we were hooked. Since then, we have checked out other catamarans at the Miami and the Annapolis Boat Shows. There just are not that many cats in the PNW – probably because they require such a wide slip.

This year, they had three cats at the show. The first one we toured was the Lagoon. After being on so many cats over the years, this is not our favorite anymore. The cabin/cockpit seems to shallow and small for us.

The next cat we toured was the Nautitech Open 40 which was set up as an “owner’s version”. An “owner’s version” has a full stateroom and head on one side, versus two staterooms. That’s called a “charter version”. It was fairly roomy, but again, I probably would remove the couch feature. This was our favorite cat in the show.