Since we are not going to get the new boat tax break for 2009, we are really starting to look toward the used market. Always a smart choice, but I think I was letting the tax tail wag the dog a little and getting excited about being able to do a semi custom, new boat.

So, now our options become even more limited. For the used boat choices we have the St Francis 50, Privilege 495, Lagoon 500 and the Lagoon 570. It is time to do another test sail. Poor us, I know. The boys are still all Gold status on American airlines. It is funny that our 3 year old fly's over 25,000 miles a year. (As a side note, coming home from Hawaii in October only Mandi and I got the upgrade. So the three boys all rode in "second class," as they call it. Pretty funny seeing Luke in his car seat with just his brothers. But the kids did great.)

Ideally, we can test two boats in one trip. We would like to charter the Privilege 495 and a Lagoon 570, both have to be galley up, over the same 10 to 12 day period in the Caribbean. It is really hard to find a galley up in these two models, especially for charter, in the same week, in close proximity. We have our friend Captain Dare, who was the captain on the Lagoon 500 we test sailed a while back, working on this for us. He has moved back to the states and owns and operates Sojourn Sailing, which is a yacht charter company for the Caribbean - great resource.