It’s not how big it is, it’s what you do with it.
Unless what you do with it is live harmoniously with a family of five, a dog, and a cat. On a boat.
Then, it’s all about how big it is.
We debated furiously from our comfortable land locked home in Colorado.
“We chartered a 45 footer last year, that was plenty big….maybe we go 40?”
“But the 50 is so pretty”
“40 is affordable”
what about 46?
hmm. back to where we started. The boat we chartered, a Lagoon 450f. We tried. Went under contract. Went to Florida. Had some nice key lime pie. God struck us down.
Onward and upward. We found a Leopard 46. Well, we found it “again”. We fell in love with this particular boat months ago.
Allow me a brief interlude….
What was a “let’s leave in 2023” had somehow become a “let’s go in 2025” over the years and beers. We were deflecting and becoming another armchair sailor story. Always a reason to wait.
Then….covid…school shootings…mall shootings.. random anywhere shootings.
After shit just continued to hit the fan and splatter us all over and over in the face, we decided to ammend our timeline back to the original 2023.
Mixed results from our parents. It turns out that 25 years of saying “I’m going to buy a boat and sail off” translated to “aww, that’s cute”
Interlude over.
Back to the fact we fell in love with the Leopard 46. I promise that it’s (somewhat) relevant.
so, when we went back to the 2023 plans, we told the kids. HEY! IT’S HAPPENING. get ready.
Get ready they did.
Part of that was telling friends.
Small boy told his bestie.
His bestie’s mom heard. “oh, I have some friends that just did that with a family of 4 and 2 dogs. they’re back now. I think they sold their boat.”
ummm. can you give us their number please?
What ensued was a lovely conversation with somebody who clearly loved the lifestyle, but for extenuating circumstances had to put it on hold.
Oh….and they hadn’t sold the boat. Almost…but it fell through.
We wanted that boat. It was perfect. They were us. We were they. Everything was set up just the way we wanted.
We told our broker. Our broker steered us away. For personal financial reasons.
We fired our brokers.
We bought (almost), the original boat. (closing is the day after tomorrow.)
When I went to Panama for the survey, I took an interesting pic. Of all the talk of 40 vs 50 vs 46, we forgot that they are all HUGE FRIGGIN BOATS. Here’s the pic. That guy is my size (5′ 9”, somewhat sexy build).
whoa. what did we do? We barely know how to sail.
Time to put up or shut up. We bought (almost) a boat.
The adventure commences.