Old, Returning Texas Lake Sailor

[creativepart]

In 1990 my wife surprised me with a Hobie 16' for my 40th birthday. What a surprise, I'd never sailed before. I loved the Hobie but it wasn't 3-months later that I moved up to a Catalina 22.

Living in the San Antonio area the sailing here is done on Canyon Lake - which is a dammed up river canyon about 45mins north of town.

After 2years in the Catalina I bought one of the largest boats on the lake at that time, an Irwin Citation 31. I loved that boat and worked on it plenty. We even built a 2nd home out by the lake (there are not houses "ON" the Army Corp of Eng lake) for weekends together at the lake near the marina.

In 2000 we made the decision to move to Wyoming and that meant selling the boat. Which was fairly easy. After 5-years in Jackson, WY our daughter chose to got to Texas A&M for college. So, we moved back to just north of San Antonio.

Now, I'm 73 and the sailing bug has finally caught up with me again. However, the boating environment has changed here. There are 3-marinas on Canyon Lake. One is a club owned coop that takes years and years to get a slip. Maybe 8 years or more. The other two lakes are privately owned by the same company and they have few sailboat slips. The wait list there is 2 to 3 years. UNLESS... you buy a boat from their brokerage then you can take over the slip.

They used to be about 50/50 Sail/Motor boats when I kept my boat there before. Now it's 10% Sailboats. There are plenty of nice old sailboats around to purchase... but there are no slips to rent for them. I found one great Catalina 27 at a good price at the Club owned marina, but without a slip available for YEARS he wouldn't even show it to me. Unless I had a trailer and was moving it, there was nowhere to house the boat.

The corporate owned marina has 2 sailboats for sale and luckily, I like one of them quite a lot. So, I"m in the process of reviewing the boat and getting ready to put in an offer. However, they know you don't have much choice and don't seem too concerned if you buy the boat or not. They are not super helpful.

Just checking in here to say HI. I"ll report back on the negotiations.

[Adelie]

Welcome to CruisersForum!

I would suggest updating your profile with your general location and your boat make & model or “Looking” in the "Boat" category. This info shows up under your UserName in every post in the web view. Many questions are boat and/or location dependent and having these tidbits under your UserName saves answering those questions repeatedly. If you need help setting up your profile then click on this link: https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3308797

I would happily help more if the link above is not enough.

[JPA Cate]

Welcome aboard CF, creativepart.

Good luck with your boat purchase and future plans. As usual, the devil is in the details.

Ann