It was so easy when we were back in the uk and looking at boats on the internet, when we didn't have the money to actually buy, we gathered lists of all sorts of boats in our boats bookmark.
Now we're here in the Dominican Republic, now known as the Republica Dominicana, and we have the funds ready to go and buy, it's a completely different story, now its got serious.
We had this idea that we would most probably buy a boat in the States as they are almost a third cheaper than back in Europe, that was the plan. We rest up here for a couple of months and then go shopping.

Well it seems that shifting your life half way across the world requires a lot of shopping to be done, but not for boats. First we need a new kitchen for our little condo. This will be custom built by a master carpenter who can't speak English, and our espanol is still in the embryonic stage. Luckily we have a friend who does the interpreting but we still have to communicate with him via email. His emails come to us in Spanish which we put through Google translate, and we reply in google-converted Spanish. Surprisingly this almost works. Anyway needless to say it has taken a chunk of our time going here and there looking for ideas as well as finding new cookers, microwave, fridges, door handles cooker hoods.
Most of this shopping, well all of this shopping is carried out in the heat of the day. It's unusually hot and very humid, and only a few shops seem to have air con so we sweat buckets, but all this has to be done if we're going to be able to attract renters for our apartment whilst we go sailing.
Sailing, that's right we were going to buy a boat, but first we need to buy a car, and a car with air-con, not like the one we saw today that had very feeble air-con and the electric windows didn't close, so we crossed that one off the list and headed off up the main drag, again in the blistering heat, to walk a mile to a second hand car lot we'd spotted from the bus. Found a nice VW car, with good air-con, at the right price. The next car lot up the road, 100 yds and now we're realy hot, turns up a "Terios" a bit old but let's take it for a drive. We are only just out of the drive and onto a busy road when it jerks to a halt. We're out of fuel!!!!
No problemo, says Senor sales person, as he hails a moto concho who pushes us with his outstretched leg to a gas station a mile up the road. We walk off and leave the man with his heap of a car and hail a bus for Cabarete. There we pop into Friendlys' car show room, only joking, really it's another in the full sun car lot, but senor Friendly is very friendly and we talk till we melt, which is all of about five minutes. Maybe he has a car we could buy but for now our brains are frying and we need to go and take the measurements of a microwave we bought for the new kitchen. There's no, well almost no air-con in the Tienda, that's shop in Spanish, and we are now at least a gallon short of the liquid we were made of when we set off at half eight this morning, time to go home, "What is the time?", well what do you know it's 1pm, mad dogs and Englishmen.
Lo and Behold we pick up a Gua Gua, thats a VW mini bus, that holds about ten personas, people, sorry slipped into espanol again, although most of the time there are twenty five of us in there. In this one not only are there only about eight personas inside but it also has air-con!!!!!!!!!! Well we're in Gua Gua heaven all the way to our little piece of paradise that is Orilla del Mar. In fact so stunned were we by this air-con gua gua that we almost missed our stop.

Back in the cool of our apartment and we've got an email from the boat brokerage in The BVI to confirm our meeting next week in Puerto Rico to have a look at a Hardin Sea wolf.
So next week we go shopping for boats.