The Boat

    As I started this blog after I had purchased the boat, and sailed it form the UK to Portugal; I have left out some important details on the "boat shopping" experience.  Mainly to include where to buy second hand boats, what to look for, and what guides are there available to the second hand boat buyer with blue water in mind.

    I found most my information via forums, Google, and online mass searching.  The information that follows is a credited list of information rather then having to go through the same pain staking search.

Guides on Which (Small) Boats are available with blue water capability.

Good Old Boats List
Mahina Boat List
Twenty Small Boats Book
Twenty Affordable Boats Book
Blue Water Boats List
Latitude 38 Circumnavigation List

Using these list you can be confident that if your boat you are prospecting is on there, you are safe it has blue water experience under its belt.

Second Hand Boat Shopping Markets

Yacht World
Apollo Duck
Boat Trader

While I spent most of my time cruising Yacht World, and then once narrowing my boat selection on the list with the price range I was able to spend, I would also cross reference the other sites, as well as Google additional sites.  This way insuring you are getting the best selection, and price availability.

We are going to skip the entire talk about how long your boat is going to be, where your boat is located, and the registration for your boat, as well as licenses and documentation.  We are going to just understand the process of finding and understand the blue water boat purchase.

Now that you have found a boat on the lists provided, and have found it within your price range.  You need to understand what the boat has on board in order to ensure you are going to get an outfitted boat, otherwise you can be looking at paying 50% of the boat's worth on additional items(this is a statistical approximation, experiences may vary).  Does it have a wind vane, a life raft, a VHF, etc....

Here is a list of Bare Bones Equipment that you should check that you have for budget blue water.

Now you can put all this information to use, and join the fun! We'll see you out there. I'm glad we could share how the boat buying experience was for us.  Any details we left out please contact us!