Saturday, November 22, 2014

s/v inara is sold

While I haven't posted in a while, here is what has happened. Late December 2013 while motoring down the channel to the marina, I hit one of the plastic channel markers. Which in turn ripped the running o/b off the stern. Good by o/b... Because of the direction of the wind, I wasn't able to sail Inara into the marina. So I sailed her over to Crystal Beach and moored her there. She sat a couple weeks before I had the time and the wind was right to sail her back. During that time, while we had an exceptionally rough windy day, she drifted at anchor. I got a call from the Pinellas county sheriffs office to tell me. Problem was I was over in Tampa. By the time I got back to Pinellas, she was no where in site, and the sun was setting. Around 10P I got a call from the sheriff. They towed Inara to a local marina. The next day, Flannery and I sailed her back to our marina. Good times to sail out of one marina, out a river, then sail back into a marina... with no engine. No problems. Inara, sat in our marina for nearly 6 months, when I cleaned her out, cleaned her up, scrubbed, fixed, worked and reworked. It took me a time to actually plan on selling her, but in the end Brooke said "You can't get a bigger boat till that one is gone!" Well that made up my mind. I posted her for sale on Craigslist on Thursday, and she was sold Friday. That was Nov 7th. So... What to do next? Brooke says that we will be ready to start looking for our next boat in the spring of '15. And plan on a purchase date of June to Aug. Im not sure if we will keep the name of "Inara" for the next boat. I like it. Right now we are thinking about something in the 30 to 36 foot range. A Jeanneau 32i or 36i are on the top of our list. Maybe a Beneteau 323 or 343. I have been looking at buying a boat out of the Moorings charter fleet. There are plusses and minus', but I think that there are exceptional values in purchasing a boat that way. We will see.