Another Shopping Trip (Part 2)

Picking up where I left off in the first post on this trip...

After spending some time on the Leopard, we then worked our way back up the Keys to Key Largo to see a Lagoon 37 that has been for sale for a little while.

We had actually put an offer in on this boat, sight unseen, a couple months ago. The owner countered and we decided that we should see it before going any further. We are glad we did as I think it saved us from an offer higher than it should have been. We really like the design of these boats, it is a shame there aren't more around in better condition and I'm increasingly feeling that we don't want too much of a project for our first big boat. I guess what we really want is a brand new Lagoon 37...with the shoal draft option...but I checked with my broker and he doesn't have a time machine so we appear to be out of luck.  So, at the end of day one we have one contender and one scratched off the list.

The next day, we continued our migration north where we looked at a Fountaine Pajot Tobago 35 in Miami.

This was a nice and obviously well cared for boat. Of the Tobagos that are currently available, this is probably the pick of the litter. This was the three berth, one head version. Inside this boat was about as close to immaculate as any we have seen...a far cry from the other Tobago that had a rotting orange left in the sink when we saw it (not that the other boat was bad...just not cleaned up). Since I've covered the model before I won't go through the whole description and will only note the differences between the first one and this one.  As the 3 berth layout, the second head was replaced by a less than queen width third berth that sits down in the aft hull. One nice feature this boat had was a roller furling screecher (light wind sail) on a bowsprit.

Since our broker did not accompany us to see the Tobago in Texas, this was his first time looking at a Tobago in person. One thing he noted that we didn't think of was that the sink appeared a bit small to wash a full sized plate in. Now why hadn't we noticed that. He did admit the boat had more room than he had expected.

While driving to Miami to see the Tobago, my wife and I discussed the difficulties we've been having finding a Lagoon 37 in reasonable shape. I know that there are some nice Lagoon 37s out there, but the ones that have been on the market recently seem to be overpriced or, in many cases, in rough shape for the price. After seeing the Tobago we came to the realization that there are nice boats out there in our price range that we believe we could easily live on and that trying to hold out for a Lagoon 37 that is in decent shape and properly priced is probably not worth the time lost waiting or our perceived minor advantages of that design over some of the others.

So, what do we do?  Find out in part 3.