Is there really a perfect boat ? Probably not, there are trade-offs for every type of cruising sailboat. After extensive research for several years, and long before we actually started physically looking at boats, we knew that we required several things in our soon-to-be new home.
The boat had to be a catamaran- this was nonnegotiable. Although cats are generally more expensive than their monohulled counterparts, they generally have more open interior space and they do not heel (tilt sideways while sailing)
We were retiring early and paying cash, so the initial cost for the boat had to fit in a budget limit that would enable us to have enough cash on hand to refit the boat for cruising and finance our traveling.
The boat had to be easy to sail, easy enough for one of us to sail her single-handed.
The boat had to have factory installed air conditioning and heat.
The boat had to have at least one good-sized stand-up, isolated shower. For us, a combo toilet/shower was not going to be acceptable.
We discovered that there were no catamarans for sale in Texas that met our requirements. So we started making trips to Florida to look at boats. We quickly discovered that the cats that fit our requirements and were within our budget were all in bad shape, until we ran across a couple of Manta cats. These weren't even on our list to look at. As a matter of fact, at that time, we had not even heard of them. We started researching and looking at these really hard.
We found our boat in Palmetto, FL. We moved fast on getting the survey/ sea trial done and finalizing the sale. The multiple trips to Florida looking at boats at that point was getting very expensive.
So, in March of 2018, we finalized the sale and we had our catamaran ! Woo Hoo !! Now we had to get her to Texas to learn everything about her and to start the refit process.
The haul out to get the survey done.
Freedom is just an anchor away
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