This is the tale of how we put in an offer on our dream boat…and then everything went to shit.

9.11

First, let me remind you that it is actually a backup offer – our dream boat is already under contract, meaning there are people who had beat us to her and decided to buy her. Second, let’s talk about the fact that we put in our backup offer a few days before a hurricane the size of Texas rips through Florida. My mind is running at a thousand miles an hour, going through all the what-ifs and if-thens.

Then, the unthinkable happens: the first deal fell through.

Suddenly our offer is the primary offer, and now time… slows… down.

9.14

It feels like of crazy, but it seems like every few hours the situation changes dramatically, so the hours feel like days. Power is out for about 75% of the population in Florida, cell service is limited, and people are trying to recover. We are trying to be respectful of the situation they are in but at the same time we need quick action or we’re going to miss this opportunity. Tom, our broker, assured us that business must go on! so we don’t feel too terrible about pestering him for news, but it’s a bit of a balancing act.

The sellers countered our offer with a bizarrely high number, so we counter-countered and then…we didn’t hear anything. Cue panic and wild speculation and questioning every decision we’d made up until that point. Kyle decided the sellers were going to sleep on it and get back to us in the morning, and we finally let it go. Then the phone rang.

Just like that, we have a contract, signed by both parties. It’s on now! We’ve got a path forward, we can start planning again. Step one is the sea trial and survey, but since we don’t expect any issues there we’re starting to look at a million logistical problems like moving money around and getting insurance lined up.

9.19

I just went through a solid 24 hour period of panic and dread. I now understand what “cold feet” are. It was anxiety like I’d never experienced before – completely nauseating. I spent yesterday thinking up every alternative and every reason this was the stupidest thing we’ve ever done. I solidly considered scrapping the whole thing and spending the rest of my days working for the man. What is happening to me?

I’m mostly back to normal today. We’ve booked flights for this weekend to go sea trial the boat. We decided to see if the previous buyers would sell us the survey, so I made one of the hardest phone calls ever – can you imagine? “Hey, we know you tried to buy this boat, but you didn’t get it. Now we’re getting it instead, would you mind selling us the survey for it?” Luckily they were pretty chill about it and sent us the survey in no time. Knowing this boat is our dream boat, and to them it’s the one that got away…it was still a stressful phone call.

So far we’ve only run into one big problem – we haven’t been able to find a marina. We’ll just keep looking though, we live on the coast so how hard could it be?