Boating
At the ripe old age of 34, I decided to fulfill a life-long dream - to go
cruising around the world. Well, as most "World Cruisers", I
only got part way.
Terry, my "better half" for the past 2 years, and I, sold home and business and took off. We bought a used 27' Streamline trailer and took a little land trip first. We went to Manitoba to visit friends and relatives, then down towards Florida to look for boats. While there, they'd ask where we were from. When we told them Los Angeles, they wondered what the hell we were doing there - all the boats are in Los Angeles.
After 6 months of trailering, we decided to head back to California to find a boat. We started in San Diego with the idea of hitting every broker while heading north. We soon found out that we didn't have enough money to talk to brokers. Our story was, "We have $25,000 cash and we want a boat." It was pretty funny. One old-timer sat there thinking for a while. He said, "I know of one in Oregon and I think there may be one in San Francisco if it hasn't been sold."
Anyway, we finally decided we had to find it ourselves. So, for weeks we would walk the docks looking for older wooden boats that we thought we might get for our $25,000. This was 1975 by the way. The first thing I would do each morning is write up 30 or 40 notes (with my lousy handwriting which my secretary used to say looked like a 4th grader's) saying, "I saw your boat and I wondered if it's for sale. If so, please call......."
We got lots of calls from owners that really didn't have their boats for sale. They responded just in case we were stupid. I soon learned to ask them how long the boat had been for sale. That separated the men from the boys. I remember one guy, after he admitted he had just called to see what I had in mind. I said, "then it's not really for sale." His response was, "Well, my socks are for sale." I guess he was right - at the right price.
We finally found a live one - in Marina Del Rey, of all places. They had been trying to sell for several months. The boat was a 12-year-old PHRF racer that had been outdated by the new rules; so they were going to get something else. It was a Sparkman & Stephens 40; built of Honduras mahogany over oak frames. We met with the owners, went sailing on the boat a few days later, and made our offer. They said they'd talk it over. We told them we were in our trailer up at the end of such and such street and we'd wait there for them. While we were waiting, I got out a couple of pieces of paper, a carbon paper, and a pen. I drew up my fanciest contract I could come up with - just in case. They arrived within an hour or two and accepted our offer. We signed the papers and here was the deal. We give you $100 down, we'll sell the trailer on the weekend and that will be $5500 or so, then we'll get the rest in about 18 days when the note comes due. They looked at each other and said, "What the heck - we're in this far."
We sold the trailer alright; but then we didn't have a place to live. So, I called the guy and explained our predicament and asked if we could move in with $5500. He said okay, but his yacht club might or might not kick us out. We said we'd handle that. So, I proceed to go to his office with the money. He turns out to be an attorney in Century City Towers. His inner office was about the size of the house I had just sold. Go figure!
A fine deal. And a fine person to deal with.
And so the 17-year saga begins. Stay tuned. I'll keep writing about the segments and posting them here.
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