Lumiel

“We have been looking for a bigger boat for about 12 months, it grew out of a desire of mine and our friend Dave, to cruise the NT coast from Gove to Darwin, exploring all the rivers, bays, islands, reefs etc and developed into a realisation that the 3 of us wanted a bigger boat not just for this trip but to spend more time cruising our coastline over more of the year. This meant a boat big enough to do more thru the windier dry season and initially our thinking was a 12-15m monohull motor boat with an economical motor like a Gardner or John Deere. We slowly developed a set of essential criteria in terms of fuel economy, range, galley location, seperate accomodation spaces, outdoor living spaces, and so on.

We built a process of searching for boats that seemed to suit most of our criteria, and then creating lists of everything we could find wrong with each one and in particular any issues that breeched our initial criteria. This was dont to avoid the likelihood of talking ourselves into buying something because we liked a lot about it, while missing something critical that would have been a problem once we owned it. It also helped prevent FOMO and impulsive purchasing in what is a red hot sellers market.

What we discovered as we looked at boat after boat, is they all had quite a long list of things that we found problematic or in outright contradiction with our criteria. Then one day, only a month or so ago, i somehow came across a sailing catamaran for sale in Darwin, and it got me thinking about how well a sailing cat met our criteria and after a while I built up enough nerve to ask sal to hear me out and after explaining my thinking, asked her if there was anyway she would consider a sailing cat. She was like, sure, “looks great, as long as it doesnt lean over I am fine with it” so then I had the same discussion with Dave and he was “Oh yes, well I have always thought a cat would be great up here”.

So we pivoted and started looking at sailing cats and one thing became really obvious quickly, our list of negatives and things we couldn’t live with became very, very short – for every cat we looked at!

In the end we settled on a Foutaine Pajot Bahia 46, a 46′ or 14m French built cat. She is built in 1997 and has been owned by an Aussie couple who bought her in the Caribbean and lived on her for 8 years before ending up back in Australia. I flew down to Brisbane and did a quick sea trial, and the deal was done. I feel we got her at a reasonable price in a very hot market,  Its a lot of boat for the money and one of the things that influenced our decision was that Lumiel is a production boat which does help with resale – not just value but liquidity.

Also buying in a seller’s market meant we were selling our old boat in the same market, i very much doubt we would get nearly as good a price and in fact may have had great trouble selling it in a soft or buyers market so it evens out to some extent.”