Mike,

While our story isn't as colorful as yours, my fiancé and I bought hull #484 in June of this year not really having any sailing experience...although she did sail a bit as a teen. We went through the same disappointments in failed surveys and the money that went with that. Fortunately, we found a surveyor who worked with us and went well above and beyond what he was paid to do in order to get us a boat we would truly be happy with.


Several of the boats we looked at we liked, some a lot and some less so. "Conundrum" was the last one we looked at and decided if she wasn't the one we would take a break from our six month search. We fell in love with her. The previous owner took us out that night and that was it. He is a meticulous, honest, and friendly fellow who openly showed us what had been issues with her and exactly how those issues were corrected...and the survey confirmed it all.

Since then, he has become a friend and has spent many hours teaching us about the boat as well as sailing. He has even gone to great lengths in getting us plugged into the local sailing community. The price he asked pales in comparison to the value we got.

We've had her out numerous times this summer...more and more as we've gotten more comfortable with her and sailing itself. The learning curve has been exciting and rewarding in ways we couldn't imagine. We also couldn't be more happy with our purchase.

We also have children. She has two (9&11) and I have three (13, 13, & 16) from previous relationships that we have on holidays and over the summer. We also have our son on the way due in March. We plan to be a sailing family as you do.

In spite of being on opposite ends of the country (we're in Michigan), we would like it very much to be some sort of pen pals being as our adventures seem to be on pretty parallel paths.

On a related note, I've found the same thing on hoisting and dropping the mainsail. We've almost got the snagging in the mast gate figured out and have gotten pretty good at flaking the sail as it comes down. We sail double handed normally, but she's rigged for single handling and that is our goal for both safety and convenience. I'd love to compare notes there

Sincerely,

Nate & Marty