Buying a Boat
Kenny Chesney, in one of his songs, suggests “building a boat” as a means to a more balanced life. Building a boat is beyond my pay grade, but I do recommend buying one, if the circumstances permit and the situation allows.
That said, I vividly recall telling Lydia, probably during the first week of our permanent arrival in Puerto Aventuras, that I’ll never own a boat. The subject arose, then and many times thereafter, because we live on a canal with our back door opening onto a dock. From the day we first opened the front door boats of all shapes and sizes continually smack us in the face. They cruise up the canal full of intrepid fisherman and excited partiers ready to experience the Caribbean Sea, a five-minute cruise up the canal from our condo.
So why would I say with such certainty that boat ownership for us was out of the question? After all, I’d grown up with boats – power, sail, big small and the kind that you paddle. I was in the boat business in California, selling big boats in Marina del Rey, San Francisco Bay and San Diego. I’ve operated boats in the Pacific, cruised to Catalina and helped deliver a sailboat from Long Beach to San Diego. Lydia and I even lived on a sailboat for the first year we were married. I love boats. I love being on the water. I love the whole idea. EXCEPT… I hate taking care of them.
I hate boat maintenance. I hate the cost of maintaining a boat. Marina fees. Marine fuel prices. Boat insurance. I hate being gouged at the boat supply store. And I really hate the lost days of either having to work on the damn thing or the lost time of having to wait for someone else to work on the damn thing. I hate the “hole in the water” more than I love the boat itself.
So to Lydia I said, “we’re never going to own a boat.”
Thankfully, she didn’t take me seriously. We kept talking about it. At one point I admitted that I might consider being a “silent partner” in a boat, someone who provides some cash in return for use of the vessel. But, by God, there’s no way I’ll be responsible for the day-to-day.
Then one day, out of the blue, she came back from kayaking up the canal and said that there was a boat for sale for a very affordable price. “But,” I replied, “we’re not going to own a boat.” A couple of Whatsapp messages later and we discovered who the boat belonged to (someone we knew), the price (which was actually a little less than the reasonable price listed on the sign) and the size – 20 feet – (just right for what “we” had in mind). On the other hand, it was 20-years-old, had an engine that had been made by a manufacturer that stopped producing the brand in 2005… [When you don’t want to own a boat the list of negatives gets long very quickly.]
But Lydia had a “hole card” that I hadn’t really considered. We had new friends who were thinking about buying a boat. “So let’s the four of us go take a look,” she suggested. “We won’t know until we see it.”
Of course, I already knew, “I categorically did not want to own a boat.”
So, after taking the boat our for a brief spin, we decided to buy it with our friends. The price was right, especially split two ways. We agreed that it would take an equal amount of cash to get everything working properly. We even agreed that it would probably need a new engine in the not-too-distant future. Most importantly, we agreed in principle to hire our friend Oscar to “manage” the boat. Now I could justify owning this boat. The price was right. The partners saw eye-to-eye. And day-to-day it would be overseen by Oscar. Perfect. We gave the owner a small deposit and set up a closing time the first of the week. That was late Friday afternoon.
At brunch on Sunday we discovered our friends had changed their mind. Hmmm. We were now excited about owning a boat. Not any boat mind you. We wanted to own this boat, the 20-foot Seafox that was resting up the canal waiting to be brought to it’s new home, just outside our back door. We were emotionally committed to this piece of fiberglass. So, as we’re being told that our partners were pulling out (for perfectly good reasons, by the way), I’m thinking, “OK, we can do this by ourselves. It’s not that much money and we still have Oscar to help with the maintenance.” Lydia and I looked at each other and …
“We’ll do it,” our table mate Deborah announced.
“Do what?”
“Brandi and I will be your partners,” she said, including her daughter. “We’ve had boats and we’ve talked about having a boat here. How much are we talking about? We’ll do it.”
Lydia and I looked at each other and nodded. Then we explained the deal. Told them more about the boat, which they already knew because it had belonged to a longtime friend. All was good, they indicated. We agreed to meet on Monday to make payments, set up the Marina account, sign papers and get the boat.
Soon thereafter, while sitting on our back deck looking at the boat, the three ladies decided on a name for our new purchase. Since the whole experience of buying this boat smacked of Karma, they decided the perfect name was “Karmita” – a little bit of Karma, or a lot of Karma for a little boat.