Our first day of looking at catamarans was terrible. After looking at a couple boats that we could barely afford, and trying really hard to see the good in them (but really hating everything about them), I was looking at extreme options  – maybe this catamaran thing wouldn’t work out at all and our lives would take a different path.

Yesterday we made plans to meet a broker pretty early to start looking at boats, but he called and pushed back our start time by a couple hours so we took the paddleboards out in the canals around Ft Lauderdale, then cooled off in the pool. It was glorious, the canals had such a tropical vibe and there were iguanas sunning themselves everywhere.

As we were on our way to meet Tom, the broker, he texted that he was running about 20 minutes late. Since the AC wasn’t working in the car we had no cool place to wait, so this made us a little cranky. We stopped at Advance Auto to see if we could find an AC recharger but walked out empty handed and then Tom was already at the boat.

So we were a little grumpy with Tom but, man, from the moment we met him he was so congenial and genuine, it was impossible not to like him. He’s got great sailing experience and he was able to answer the questions that the internet couldn’t tell us – will the boat sail well, will she handle bad weather well? Tom told us what features we needed to look for and which ones weren’t important. We took up a great deal of Tom’s time on a holiday weekend and I never once got the impression that he was anything but happy to be helping us. Needless to say, talking to Tom is probably one of the best moves we’ve made so far.

He told us right off the bat that our first boat was by far the best boat we were going to see all day (2001 Fortuna Island Spirit 37), but it was under contract to be purchased by another group (which we’d already known, but we wanted to see the layout in case we found a similar boat for sale).

I fell in love with the boat the second I stepped into the cockpit. I fell in love again when I walked into the salon. I think Kyle fell in love when he found out the solar panels tilted. No, this boat is perfect. A lot of brand new upgrades, perfectly outfitted for cruising, spacious and clean. But again, it’s already under contract so chances of it becoming available are very, very slim.

The other boats we looked at that day were, as Tom said, unremarkable. We saw a 1995 FP Tobago 35 and a 1992 FP Antigua 37. At that point we ruled out anything made in the 90s. As Tom explained, there are roughly 3 generations of catamarans. The first gen are all designed exactly like monohulls, but wider. The 2^nd gen is when designers realized that the space on a catamaran is open to much different design and they started playing around. The 3^rd gen is what is currently being sold, a much more comfortable style that utilizes the space much better – like a floating condo, but still lightweight and sailable. So first gen cats are going to have a terrible layout, and for the most part they’re old enough that owners have made so many “upgrades” that they’ve become ugly bastardizations of the original designs.

Most of the boats we’d looked at were all closed up for hurricane season, so if we thought the ambient temp of 95° was bad, down in the hulls it was much hotter, stagnant, and usually smelly. Combine that with no AC in the car, by the end of the day we were exhausted! We stopped at Aldi for some guac and a pint of ice cream then headed back to the airBNB for some charcuterie and dessert. At that point we were both pretty sure we wanted to put in a backup offer on the Island Spirit, but didn’t entirely know the mechanics of it. The people who put in the initial offer are going to look at the boat on Tuesday and have it surveyed on Wednesday, so we don’t have to wait long to find out if anything falls through.

Day 3 we headed down to Miami to see the last two boats. Our first stop was a 2006 FP Mahe 36, which was a pretty decent boat. We liked it okay but we weren’t excited about it. The interior lacked ventilation, which is a big problem because we plan to spend a lot of time at anchor and the only interior breeze will be from opening hatches. The lack of ventilation was apparent in the mildew that was starting to grow all over inside. The cockpit was full of empty beer bottles and coolers, which really added to the appeal.

The last boat we looked at was a 2005 Jaguar 36. It was out of the water, at a boatyard. Overall we liked this boat, but had a few reservations with it. For one thing, the decks sloped quite a bit – enough that you had to be really careful walking in some places because if you lost your footing you’d be falling either off the boat or into the trampoline. The helm was also really high up, it would have been a long fall from the helm into the cockpit. So, not dealbreakers, but both were features we’d have to take into consideration. On the way home we decided this boat was definitely our second choice out of everything we’d looked at, but we didn’t like it so much that we wanted to put in an offer.

I believe we left the boatyard around 10am, which left us plenty of time for the 9 hour trip home. Lots of time to talk about everything we’d seen and what we wanted to do about it. Truthfully, we weren’t excited about anything we’d seen, except for the one boat that we couldn’t have (the Island Spirit). Even the Jaguar, at best, was a “well, I guess this will work.” But I don’t want a boat that will be just okay – I want something I love! I want a home that I’m excited about! Kyle, too, kept trying to think of reasons NOT to like the Island Spirit, but all he could think of were more features that he loved.

Since we’re just beginning our boat search, there isn’t much pressure to choose now, but it would be nice if I felt like we had a lot of options instead of zero options. We decided to put in a backup offer on the Island Spirit and hope for the best. In the meantime we’re going to keep looking. Our boat is out there somewhere!