The desire to purchase a sailing cat was very strong, especially after I made an Atlantic crossing from the Canary Islands to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in November/December 2014 with 5 others on a new Lagoon 450 (45′ sailing cat). So in 2015, June and I were checking the internet for sailing cat “deals”. In checking into it further we found that Moorings (the largest charter company in the world) was selling sailing cats that were about 5 years old. We wanted to check this out further so we found out Moorings would be at the Miami Boat Show in February 2016. Road Trip!
The Miami Boat Show is Eye Candy heaven if you are looking for a Sailing Catamaran. There are Lagoons, Leopards, Balis, and many more. $500K to $2M+. Moorings exclusively uses Leopards and has them custom built to their specs by Robertson Caine in South Africa. As State Workers, we couldn’t afford any of these new yachts. We were looking for a good used sailing cat “deal”. We spoke with the folks from Moorings and found they had sailing cats that were in fine shape and could be purchased and put into their secondary fleet called Footloose. This would allow us to finish up our careers and set the date for our retirement to align with the yacht coming out of charter. In the Footloose fleet, Moorings covers all expenses (maintenance, charter management, insurance, etc.) and provides a guaranteed income. With 15% down, the income would cover our mortgage payment on the yacht plus $80/month in the black. It also included a “Phase-Out” where the yacht would go though a final full maintenance and renewal of worn out equipment before “Hand-Off”. This sounded great. Now we just need to select our yacht from the ones available.
Working with their broker, we identified one that we would investigate further, Eternally Entwined IV (EEIV). EEIV was located at their base in Road Town, Tortola, BVI, so in April 2016 I made a trip down to the BVI to inspect the yacht and witness the Condition Survey I commissioned with Geoff Williams of West Indies Marine Surveyors. Geoff is a South African in his mid 60’s with a life time of experience as a Merchant Marine Officer and 20 years experience as a Surveyor. He went right to work checking the electronics and mechanical systems in a very methodical way taking pictures as he went. We then took EEIV for a sea trial over to Nanny Cay, a 30 minute sail/motor. We checked out the sails and he checked out the operation of the engines and transmissions. He was thorough. Once at Nanny Cay we hauled her out for a check of the hulls and a climb up the mast to check the head and all the equipment atop the mast. Geoff’s Condition Survey report identified some issues, which Moorings said they would address right away or as part of their on going maintenance.
We purchased EEIV, a 2012 Leopard 39 sailing cat in May, 2016 from Moorings. Everything was falling into place. Our plan was to keep EEIV in charter for 2 more years.
We went down to the BVI in December 2016 and in April 2017 for a couple weeks each to really get to know our new yacht and hone our sailing skills as a captain and first mate. Then Mother Nature threw us a curve and a sucker punch (Irma and Maria) in September, 2017. Irma was a direct hit on the BVI with winds over 220 mph which also spawned tornadoes near the eye with unbelievable destruction. Maria, an equally powerful hurricane, came very close. Over 60% of the Moorings fleet in the BVI was totaled. We waited for news about EEIV.
We had scheduled a charter on EEIV for December 2017 long before the hurricanes and they were able to get us on another boat, a new Leopard 40, for 10 days. It was the first charter group to go out since the hurricanes.
All of the USVI and the BVI had extensive damage, with trees stripped of leaves or downed, roofs ripped off a large number of houses and buildings, burned out homes and buildings, and lots of debris pushed to the sides of the roads. Three of the four docks at Moorings had been ripped away. While there in the BVI we found EEIV. She was rafted up with some other Moorings boats in the back bay. The mast was off, some of the life lines and stanchions were missing, the gelcoat was chipped on the bows and stern, and the starboard stern compartment was compromised. This is a sacrificial compartment meant to protect the engine compartment. It would be many months before Moorings would get to EEIV for repairs.
Shoe & Fin Travelers 