Buying a sailboat for the Dummies we are.
In June last year, Ryan texted me about this article he read, telling the story of Matt and Jessica, a couple who had quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a sailboat and left a conventional lifestyle to start sailing the World together with their cat.I wished it was Ryan's way of telling me that he finally liked cats and wanted us to get one. As it turned, still no cat in the picture. But in what will be a year after he sent this now legendary SMS, we will be welcoming our own sailboat to Stockholm, and in time, leave with her on a sailing adventure.Here's the story. Sailing... what?Ryan and had never sailed before we started to consider getting into sailing, buying a sailboat and dream of a voyage. Really, nothing predisposed us to.But when caught ourselves talking about it in a practical way and started to make plans, we realized there was a lot more to it than just a whim.In July 2015, we made this a real project. Friends and family did not take us very seriously when we first told them how we wanted to buy a boat together and eventually embark on sailing journey. At that time Ryan and I had been dating for a little three-four months, we had close to zero experience of boats, and to be very honest, you would not think of me as the kind of girl that would do well living on a boat.But few things in life ever felt as right as the perspective to break free from work and mortgages to live the adventure for a while. I believe that in life, you only regret the opportunities you did not take, and seriously: would you not buy a sailboat and live your own adventure instead of sitting at your desk and read articles about other people doing it?Besides, this was going to be a long term project with plenty of opportunities to back-off in case things didn't turn the way we wanted. We made a list of worst case scenarios, and no one scared us so much that we thought this wouldn't be a good idea. So we went on. 
Read, learn and (try to) be realistic.At the early stage of our project, we mostly did TONS of reading (and we still do).The most common way for cruisers on a voyage to keep in touch with their family and friends is to keep a blog, and it looks like every sailor out there has one. We avidly read Matt and Jessica, The Cynical Sailor, 0 to cruising, Sail far Live free, Couch sailors, Windtraveler and many, many others.We follow Youtube channels and watch the videos of Sailing la Vagabonde, SV Delos, Two Skippers, White Spot Pirates, Monday Never, Sailing Uma....We bought and read TONS of books about all kind of sailing related subjects. We wanted to get a real picture of what the cruising lifestyle is and learn as much as we could before getting onto the practical aspect of our project.Ryan bought a Ukulele, a sextant, and a hammock. Apart from that, we tried to keep it as realistic as possible ;) 
So... Where to start? With absolutely 0 experience of sailing or sailboats, we started looking at what kind of boat we would like to cruise with. We went to a boat show and started off our project by considering buying a brand new sailboat.Now, to every aspiring cruiser with no experience of boats or sailing out there, DO NOT JUMP ONTO BUYING NEW SAILBOAT! We thought it was the way to go at first, and Ryan was really keen on placing an order to get a brand new Jeanneau this summer. But a little patience, experience and a lot more knowledge are gonna get us a bigger and better boat for over half the money we thought we'd have to put. We'll get back to that :)We decided that before committing 100% to the project and buy a sailboat, we would take a two weeks sailing crash course. We wanted it intensive, and as bad as sailing can get. In our idea, we already loved sailing, and thought it'd be the most fun thing to do.So we wanted to experience of everything that could potentially make us hate it: Damp, seasickness, fears, frustration, foul weather, tiredness, exploding toilets... you name it.We were also really curious how we would work together on the boat. I know from experience that when you put someone on a boat and in a stressful situation, you TRULY get to know who they are as a person, and I was really curious about that part of the experience. Were we gonna come back from our sailing together? (Ok, there wasn't much suspense in this question, I realize :)If we were still liking sailing and each other's after these two weeks, we were gonna buy the boat. 
Learning how to sail: back to school!With that in mind, we contacted several sailing schools throughout Europe and told them about our project, like "Hello! We're a couple of crazy people who thought it'd be kinda fun to buy a sailboat and go cruise the World. We have absolutely no idea what we're doing and thought it might be a good start to figure out how to deal with the boat so we don't sink the her before reaching the Caribbean... Wanna help us do that?"We got some really personalized feedback from Gibraltar Sailing school, ran by Mandy and Chris, who took our request seriously and came up with a proposition that sounded just spot-on.The deal? Two weeks living on the boat, go through two RYA courses, Competent Crew & Day Skipper, and on the side of it go through everything sailboat and cruising: what sailboat to buy, how to buy it, how to live aboard, how to maintain the boat.... Mandy and Chris have themselves been living on a boat for 18 years, cruised the World on their sailboat, and got some pretty awesome reviews from all the students they've had. The price for the two weeks was also very reasonable, so choosing their school was a no-brainer.We told Mandy and Chris that we wanted our two weeks course to be real, and it turned exactly that. In the two weeks we spent living on the boat, we got to experience exactly what we plan on doing with our own boat.Again, to all aspiring cruisers out there, should you have 0 experience of sailing and consider buying a sailboat to travel the World for a year or two (or more!) with your sweetheart, TAKE A SAILING COURSE. And if you're based in Europe, we can only recommend Chris and Mandy's school in Gibraltar, they're great! 
Sailing for the better, and for the worseSo our sailing course was an absolute blast. At the end of it, we were able to handle the boat, prepare passages, navigate, work as a team, and so much more. We came back confident that our sailing dream was right, and that we could absolutely do it and enjoy cruising.Now that said, this did not come without struggles. We say we wanted to experience the hard sides of sailing? We got served (even though I think it can get much worse than what we experienced).We got up everyday at 7.00 to have the boat ready to sail by 9.00, and we were tired ALL THE TIME. Although we wished we had been a little less tired to enjoy the fantastic places we visited around this part of the Med, we were in bed at 20.30 almost everyday.We got seasick, we got wet, we got frustrated. The boat gave me bruises everywhere, dehydration headaches, and as some of you already know a £@$#%&* BLACK EYE....
I was super-duper scared of big boats. Surprise! The strait of Gibraltar is FULL of them, and we even got to sail right by the biggest container ships in the World. This said, I'm totally over the fear!The first week of sailing together was challenging. Ryan's background as a pilot made him learn everything really fast, and I found myself constantly three steps behind him, which frustrated me a lot. Add to that a few instructions given at inappropriate times, I went BONKERS. At some points, I did question the entire project and if I was ever gonna be able to handle this.But if there is one thing that Ryan and I have in common, it's some pretty strong resilience.The second week went a lot smoother. By that time, we knew what, how and when to do things. Once clear boundaries were established between instructor, sailing partner, boyfriend/girlfriend, I found in Ryan a invaluable teacher. We had tons of fun on the boat together. Coming back from this trip, our relationship was even stronger.We loved exploring the Med and Estepona, Marbella, La Duquesa, Ceuta, Smir and Tétouan. We enjoyed visiting Gibraltar, a little piece of England stuck at the end of Europe. We're definitely coming back with our own boat.For the first time in a while, Ryan and I felt totally relaxed and disconnected from our usually stressful lifestyle.By the end of the second week, we knew this was right. We had a much clearer view on what sailboat to buy, and we had changed our mind on buying a new boat. We were gonna buy a used boat that was gonna be bigger than what we were looking for originally.
Honey, we're buying a boat!!! On the road, something pretty awesome happened, in form of an Instagram comment from the guys of Two Skippers, who thought they had recognized in our sailboat criteria list the boat that they had bought themselves.A few mails exchange and a long Skype conversation later, Christopher and Ruan helped us fine tune our boat research and gave us the last pieces of knowledge we needed to buy our sailboat (cause really... we had no clue what we were doing).The boat of our dreams will end up looking way different than it did last summer... By then, we were gonna buy a brand new Jeanneau 389, which for us was a good compromise between size and price. Bigger sounded nicer, but we couldn't afford it. Think: we were considering spending around 2,1 million swedish kronor on a 37 feet boat, and we were even ignorant of how much material we would need to buy on the side! So now what?If you remember, back in August, I had fallen in love with the Oceanis 40, which I described as perfection on a keel. Turns out, this is the boat we're gonna end up buying, and we're over the moon about it.We've been actively looking for our boat ever since we came back from Gibraltar, but... SPOILER ALERT! It looks like the search could come to a happy ending in a very near future...!To be continued! 