This is SV Joie De Vivre in use during Feb/Mar of 2014
S/V Joie De Vivre resides permanently on a private
mooring in a well protected "hurricane hole" at Maya Cove on the Island of Tortola in the
British Virgin Islands. She has been in private hands since new and spent her entire life in the warm, gin-clear waters and steady easterly
trade winds of the Virgin Isles.
The
boat is currently owned by a
partnership of two couples One of these couples is reaching that age (mid-70s) where
health has started to curtail their life's nautical plans.....which is tough for people who've lived on the
water for 25+ years. Hence, we, the youngsters in our 50's, will be taking on full
ownership of the
boat in 2015,
Our usage is 3-4 weeks per year maximum and unlikely to change for the next 5-10 years unless we win a Lotto 6/49 pension. Since we don't buy lotto tickets, that's quite unlikely. So there is room to allow others to enjoy the
BVI without causing schedule gridlock. Since our
partnership has been such a positive experience, we thought we'd take a measure of interest in new members.
So, we are looking to explore / offer up a partnership opportunity in S/V Joie De Vivre to one, or maximum two, other couples who have keelboat sailing experience, are responsible sailors, and have the same
ownership philosophy: safe, inexpensive (relatively!), and cheerful.
So what characteristics make a great potential partner?:
- have trained, owned or crewed sufficiently on a
keel boat 25 ftor longer;
-are comfortable with disassembling and reassembling mechanical systems (with no unexplained
parts left over too!);
- knows that stainless steal is
corrosion resistant not
corrosion proof;
- you are old enough to know the name of both members of Wham
- you are non-smokers;
- you are comfortable having your boat sit unattended 3000 miles away watched in a general sense by others in the harbour knowing that if
Hurricane XXX decides it REALLY wants your boat, there is nothing you can do from your living room;
- have
bareboat or crew chartered before;
- know the correct ratio of bathing suits to long pants for the
Caribbean;
- do not equate sailing with the latest gadgets, toys and
electronics beyond
VHF,
solar power,
autohelm,
gps and depth/speed/wind instrumentation;
- you know owning a boat is an expense, not a business nor an investment;
- you think air conditioners are for wimps; and
- you know that when you put "boat" in front of any other word, it's gets more expensive by default.
What characteristics are less than ideal?:
- you sailed a laser once during a
school camp in 1982;
- you want to invest sweat equity (BTW: that called being a boat owner);
- you are wondering if you could give it a try for 2-3 weeks and then decide (please go
charter a boat then);
- you can't go an hour without checking your
phone for the latest CNN update;
- you dislike fresh air,
salt water, rum-flavoured drinks, fresh seafood and other occupational hazards of
Caribbean sailing.
As to S/V Joie De Vivre herself, she's a 1993 38.5 ft Morgan-Catalina Model 381 centre
cockpit,
shoal keel,
monohull sloop. She's a comfortable, solid, volumous, and easy handling vessel if not the fastest accelerating sailing vessel afloat (but gets to
hull speed of 7.6 kts just fine).
Like all centre
cockpit boats,she is built to live on and sail....not
race on and then sleep just comfortably enough between
race events. She's a nice floating condo that moves amongst beautiful moorings at places like Virgin Gorda, Spanish Town, Norman Island, Jost Van Dyke,Cane Garden Bay, Marina Cay, the US
Virgin Islands, or other islands up and down the Caribbean chain.
She's configured with two independent staterooms with three additional berths in the large common
salon. I say "three" because that's what the brochure specs say. The twin is probably perfect for amorous honeymooners who can't keep their hands off each other whereas couples who have been married 10 years or more will appreciate the two separate births: one larger than the other.
She sports in-mast
roller furling and
genoa furling, has the basic sail suite for island cruising, and comes equipped from
sails to
dinghy to knives & forks to flippers. Her electronic systems are hardly state of the art but all are functional for the type of sailing in the
BVI: blue sky, line of sight, inter-island day
sails from restaurant to dive site to nightlife to
coral reef (you get the drift).
If you have dreams of crossing the Atlantic, fighting the sea, the
sheets grasped firmly in your hands and gritted teeth, face braced into salt-laden spray from gale force winds.....well then....JDV is not your boat. She lives a more urbane existence despite having the mass, stability and strength for jaunts down the Caribbean Sea (she's been from the US to
Grenada and everywhere in between).
Usual
maintenance would be part of the partnership and covered by % ownership share. Any upgrades would be subject to the approval of the partnership group. New standing
rigging and a new
Genoa are planned for late 2014 and would be in place before any partnership were to commence.
We would be willing to share our existing partnership agreement and operating cost
history once we assess desire and fit with potential partners.
This is not a
charter operation in sheep's
clothing nor is it a timeshare or for-profit partnership. Partners would hold title to the boat commensurate with their ownership stake and the agreement covering all contingencies for
purchase and disposal of ownership stakes would be required and would contain reasonable constraints on use (ie. you can't hire it out, you can't lend it to friends, you can't sail it to
Greece, if you have an 'oops" then you fix the result of the "oops"
If this dream sounds like something you'd see yourself doing, then drop us a note.
Price: USD 42,000 for 1/2 share ownership. Pro-rated if 1/3 share only
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