“So they searched throughout the land of Israel for a beautiful girl, and they found Abishag from Shunem and brought her to the king.” 1 Kings 1:3 (NLT)
Brandy, who is normally quite methodical about making decisions (sometimes looks like indecision to me, but what do I know? Uhh?), decided in that moment that we were buying a sailboat. When she called me at 4:30 am (my time zone) and told me, I immediately thought it was a wrong number. A sailboat was my fantasy, but more on that in another post, not hers. We can’t afford a boat. We can’t live on a boat. Do you know how big a boat we would have to have for our family? You don’t know anything about boats. I can be very encouraging at times. This was not one of those times.
In any case, it gave Brandy a project. She is a researcher (like I said, it looks like indecision, but she is THOROUGH). This was kind of a fun activity together – YachtWorld.com can occupy you for hours as long as you disregard the prices. I found a decent boat for $14 million. Another for $20 million. Very nice. I mean as long as we’re dreaming. . .
But she was serious. Next thing I know, she’s taking our “crew” to visit boats. There were some beautiful boats. I was thinking our budget was somewhere in the $60-80k range. It would require a little work, but no way we could afford any more than that. We didn’t even have that much in the bank, but we could probably finance the rest. It became clear that we couldn’t fit on anything less than a 50 foot boat. That’s a lot of boat to sail, to berth, to maintain, etc. Well, it was fun while it lasted.
One of our friends, who had a go at the sailing life a few years back suggested that Brandy look at catamarans – two hulls, very stable, tons more room. Now she’s got a new mission. She found one for sale on the entire West Coast – a Charter Cats Wildcat 350 in Long Beach. Well, she packed up the kids and drove the hour or two to check it out. She was somewhat disappointed – it was cramped, dark, material condition was so-so. Reality check.
Well, when God is working, little things like “it doesn’t exist” are no big deal. (For an example, see Genesis 1:1.) Brandy went back to researching. She discovered the ill-fated “<a href=”http://www.bumfuzzle.com/”>Bumfuzzle</a>,” also a Charter Cats Wildcat 350. A little more research on Charter Cats revealed that they had gone bankrupt. Dodged a bullet there. But in her research she found the “perfect” boat – a Lagoon 380, charter version. Okay, get specific why don’t you? Most 380’s were owner’s versions – three cabins. The charter version, rarer, had four cabins, two heads, galley up, blue water capable and from a strong company. Well, being the spiritual man that I am, I told her that we would pray for a Lagoon 380, charter version.
She found a few for sale on the East coast and the BVI. That would be quite a trip for her to take to check out a boat. Additionally, it would cost somewhere in the range of $10-$30,000 to pay someone to deliver it to the West coast. Without exaggeration, within a couple of days of beginning to pray, a Lagoon 380, charter version showed up for sale, not only on the West coast, but in San Diego! Brandy called and took the crew to visit the “<a href=”http://youngergirl.org”>Younger Girl</a>” that week. (The photo accompanying this post used to be on both sides of the boat, almost 3 feet tall.)
She was perfect. Open, bright, spacious. No ducking or stooping. It was “cruise-ready” with lots of upgrades like solar, wind, water maker, SSB radio, SailMail, even Sirus satellite radio. When I came home for R&R a couple of weeks later, Brandy picked me up at the airport and took me straight to see the boat. I was so jet-lagged that she could have shown me the “Wanderer” and I wouldn’t have known any better. (That’s a Captain Ron reference if you missed it.)
A week later, the owner was in town and we took her out for a test and professional survey. We were smitten. The owner and his new bride were a really cool couple. He had stage 4 lymphoma and was putting his affairs in order. I think they liked us too. We told them all about our plans for ministry. As much as we were checking out the boat, they were interviewing us, would we be worthy of her?
We hit our first snag – financing. Apparently banks don’t care about how many upgrades boats have. All they care about is how much they can get at auction if the loan gets defaulted on. Using a value derived from the NADA guide (National AUTOMOTIVE Dealers Association) they valued the boat at less than half of the asking price and would only finance about 50% of that. We would have had to come up with about $200k down. That was obviously not going to happen. We approached the owners and told them our dilemma. They agreed to seller finance. A little bit of back and forth brought us to a price and the deal was done! We had secured our “Younger Girl.” Now to do something about that name. Oh yeah, and I had to get on a plane back to Bahrain.
