The Adventure Begins
16 January 2011 | Auckland, New Zealand
Steve
Neither of us had done the big "OE" overseas travel thing when we were younger. I had concentrated on establishing a career after finishing my Masters degree and Ade was establishing herself in the working world after completing her degree when we got together. It wasn't that we hadn't travelled internationally ... we'd been to Fiji and Australia together but we'd never done the whole roaming the world thing that so many young Kiwis seem to do. So in 2008 a 7 week trip around the UK and Europe was extremely exciting and was either going to cure us of travel or instil the need to wander more.
As it turns out we loved travelling around Italy and France and wanted to find a way to do more travelling.... but we wanted to travel widely, with no real time constraints, to a variety of locations and cultures, as a long term prospect and relatively cheaply. One quiet day at work Ade was day dreaming about travelling and thinking about how we could do more of it. We'd already thought about selling up our lifestyle block farmlet to downsize and free up some money and Ade was thinking about buying a campervan and travelling around Europe or the USA and then she had an idea. Why not buy a boat and sail off to foreign parts and travel the world .... just like a campervan, but not limited to any particular continent.
Of course with my yachting background I had to think about this idea for all of about 1/10th of a second before I was in full agreement, so Ade started searching around on TradeMe to see what sort of yachts were for sale. She picked out a few and asked me to comment and from the 8 or 9 boats there was one that stood out to me as being absolutely perfect .... albeit a bit pricey. We decided we needed to go look at a few of these boats (and some others suggested by a broker) but we made the mistake of looking at the "perfect" one first. Oh what a mistake to make. I was in love as soon as I saw her ... the more I looked, the more perfect she seemed. We stepped aboard and when Ade went down below she looked around and said "I feel like I've just come home".
We spent the next 3 or 4 weeks looking at other boats trying to find something better ... but everything was compared back to this particular boat and was found wanting. After some serious discussions we took a deep breath and made the vendor an offer. There was some negotiation back and forth but we eventually agreed on a price and we heard that 2 days later a better offer was made by another couple .... sorry, too late. After a very thorough survey, an engine inspection and sea trial (which she passed with flying colours) there wasn't a reason why we shouldn't complete the purchase and take possession of our perfect yacht. On the 7th day of the eighth month of 2009 (07/08/09) we took possession of Seaforth, a Laurie Davidson designed 47 foot (14.6m) centre cockpit blue water cruising yacht.
The adventure begins!