Hello from another newbie! Originally from Southern
California and grew up into my teen years in Pittwater,
Australia. Sailed dinghy's and the family's 20 foot wooden sailboat with a
single cylinder
diesel.
Was landlocked for years chasing career and got into airplanes - I am a glider and
power pilot as well as an FAA certified
mechanic. Sea sports have always remained a passion and I
Scuba dive,
water ski etc.
Relocated to
Singapore a couple of years ago and almost made the "mistake" of
buying a
power boat but fortunately lack of decent supply held me off. About 6 months ago I started sailing again with the parallel goal of introducing my 9 y/o son to sailing as well. Completed a keelboat refresher course and have been
renting J24s.
Recently I met my partner and almost overnight we have become
boat owners. We went in with a couple of goals.
1/ Buy half the
boat we can afford - Leave
money for
learning
2/ Buy half the boat we think we can handle - Don't get in over our heads!
3/ Make sure we can sail at night and overnight/weekend in the boat - An inboard
engine and
electrical system is important
4/ Make sure the famlies enjoy it - It must have a
head, and a
galley would be nice
So we bought a
Maxi 77. It's in pretty darn good shape, was remasted (+ new sails) and the 10hp Volve
Penta overhauled a couple of years ago. The
hull is sound so we think the major stuff is covered. The previous owner's
kids grew up and he was at the point where he sailed every 3-4 months. The good news was that he had a
trailer and it was stored on land the whole time.
We have started our list of
maintenance items so welcome to boat
ownership, I guess - LOL. The items so far are indicative of lack of use - dried out
bilge pump seals and so on. We plan to take car of the "safety" items right away - e.g the seacocks for the
head are frozen - but the cosmetic stuff we plan to accumulate for a month or so and
work up a good list of items to
work on all at once.
We plan to use the boat to gain experience in coastal waters and even though she is small do some overnight/weekend trips and get a taste of on-board life. I figure that at this point our luck bag is pretty full and our experience bag is empty. We will go slow and over time
trade our luck for experience.
I have browsed several of the topics and you all seem like a pretty nice, and more importantly experienced, group of people. I look forward to asking lot's of
newbie questions and
learning from your experience.
Thanks for listening!