Buying Cap des Isles
06 November 2013
Greg
Having made the offer in January, once again I made some naive assumptions about Med weather, and scheduled the closing for mid-March. I planned to go for three weeks, one to do the survey and finalise the ownership transfer and two weeks staying on board to get to know the boat.
What I did not take into account was the Tramontane, gale force winds that blow for days on end, particularly in the winter. These winds are found all around the Med, their names change by location, Mistral, Bora, Levanter, Sirocco etc. Without knowing it, I had encountered the Tramontane after the snowfall in January. I thought it was just windy then, I didn't realize that it was a regular fixture and had a name.
I arrived in Gruissan ready to have the boat lifted for its pre-sale survey on a Monday morning. "Too windy" I was told "maybe Wednesday, the Tramontane is blowing." Fortunately, things had quietened down by Wednesday and the boat was hauled and surveyed on a windless and relatively warm winters day. That night I moved aboard.
It was cold in the mornings but there was an elderly space heater on board so, with shore power, I could warm up the cabin somewhat. Then the Tramontane started again. It was blowing 30-40 knots on the stern quarter which meant the boat was trying to turn sideways in the gusts. The springlines would pull her up short with a jerk, sometimes violently enough to knock you off balance. The motion was somewhat nauseating. Seasick at the dock!!!! The gusts were strong enough that, from time to time, fenders would be blown up above the deck and they would fly past the cabin windows. The noise was horrendous with the singing of the rigging of the 400 boats in the marina overlaying the wind itself. Additionally, the creaking of the mooring lines as they stretched back and forth through their fairleads made the aft cabin a sleeping challenge. On a couple of nights I actually put on my noise cancelling headphones and moved out of the aft cabin, just to try to get some peace and quiet.
The Tramonatne came and went two or three times while I was on board. The proportions were probably 75/25 Tramontane/non-Tramontane. I felt like those stories of polar explorers where the wind shrieked around their tents and they couldn't go outside for days on end. Not quite that bad but I was ecstatic when the wind dropped, the noise dissipated and I could work on deck.
Learning a new boat is always a lengthy business and there was a lot to learn about Cap des Isles. There was so much "stuff" that it took me five days just to explore all of the storage lockers.
There was one thing I found disconcerting in this process of taking ownership in the European milieu and that was the survey. You have to have one for insurance coverage but the processes on either side of the Atlantic are very different. A surveyor in the US is very knowledgeable about the "nuts and bolts" of individual boats and their systems. A US survey is a critical appraisal of the boat and its systems and is typically very detailed. Sellers know this and will often correct defects so that there are as few criticisms as possible. The European survey is not at all critical. It is just a series of check lists that are cursory, at best. I thought I was going to get a critique that would be the framework for an upgrade plan. What I got was pretty well useless, long on form short on function, and I felt I received very little value for the 1,000 euro cost. But, when in Rome.....
At the end of three weeks I headed back home, with a plan to come back mid May, with Jane, for the next steps and a shakedown cruise