Ok, the big 4th of July celebration was fun, we didn't get to see a single fireworks display except on TV. But... we did have the broker go down to to check out a boat... It was a beautiful Beneteau 3 cabin/2 head 49' that looked awesome from the outside. but...
after a closer look, it was obvious the previous owners (who were not to be found... only the broker was there (and not much help) to show him the boat) were tired of cruising and decided to ride this 'ol girl into the briny deep with minimal work to keep her going. Sad but true...
The autopilot wanted to work but wouldn't control the slave unit... Broker said it "just stopped working last week..." Yea right...
The watermaker appeared to be 10 yrs old and with some of the screws having been replaced with carbon steel ones , not stainless, they appeared to be rusted tight in place. It looked like any attempt to remove them would result in the head being rounded off and totally making the unit impossible to get apart without major out of boat service. Damn, it just got better and better.
I looked at the radion gear which appeared to work fine, at least on receive, but if you took a small light and peered into the cooling slots at the side you could see corrosion so bad it was hard to tell what component you were looking at even when looking at a high res picture! So, the list goes on and on... without even pulling a floor board to see the bilge and after seeing this, it was quite enough and we decided to continue on looking at other boats...
Walk down the docks, and it's apparent there are lots of people who loved their boats and others that just wanted one so they could belong to some elite group of persons who could claim they ... "own a boat down at the marina..." for whatever reason. It was sad to see such once beautiful vessels tied like a junk yard dogs to a stake in the ground to just die a agonizing death at the hands of nature and time.

OK, on to better and bigger things. Coming up in August, I'm taking some time off from work to check out some more offerings. I'll keep you up dated as to the progress. I need to arrange a trip to Point Richmond and take a look at a couple of Beneteau's at a broker down there. The problem seems to be that west coast boats are totally different from the Caribbean boats and the South Pacific/Australia boats are even more different... LoL Maybe later this month...