Introducing Sea Spice, the newest addition to our family!
She's been home to a family cruising the world for the past year who are needing to transition back to a land-based lifestyle for a while, check out their blog Ventilly family blog , but unless the surveyor turns up some nasty surprises when we have her hauled out, (see update below but he didn't) Sea Spice is going to be ours.
She's a 2002 Beneteau Oceanis 393 with the three-cabin layout that we're looking for. She's got everything that we need and she doesn't need all that much done, surprising for a 15 year old boat! And when I say not all that much, I mean relative to other sailing vessels we have looked at in our price range.
She sails nicely, has a really sweet setup and we've both got our fingers crossed that nothing bad appears in the survey to foul the waters! Here's a picture of me at the helm of another Beneteau Oceanis the previous weekend on Andrea's father's boat new boat Esprit. They are extremely similar boats, maybe two years apart, although the autopilot on Sea Spice works! They're both great boats but check out the custom-made cushions behind me -- we're going to have to get cracking on making our own for Sea Spice!
Update: The survey turned out great, with the bottom in particular being in very good shape, much better than the last one we looked at. So the paperwork is in and at this point we're both so excited and if we're honest, a lot nervous too.