In position 28:37.20N, 080:45.495W

 

 

It had to come sooner or later. Selling our beloved Ajaya. We knew it was never going to be easy for us but it seemed the right time to draw a line under our sailing adventures spanning almost 12 years. Selling had been a moot point of many discussions between us over the last 2-3 years. To be quite honest like so many of our cruising friends we just couldn’t really come to terms with the end of our cruising lifestyle.

 

Our departure in 2008 seems like eons ago. Motoring all the way down a flat calm English Channel, skirting the tiny island of Ushant with its strong tidal eddies before heading for the Spanish port of La Coruna 386 miles to the south helped onward by a biting cold Northeasterly gale. Then port hopping down the coast of Portugal, a wet time in Madeira before spending 3 months with dear friends in Lanzarote. There was the toothache shortly after setting sail for Barbados entailing a diversion into Mindelo, Cape Verde for Phil to see a dentist before setting off on our Atlantic crossing. Through the Caribbean to the USA and its famed east coast Intra Coastal Waterway which we traversed numerous times going as far north as Maine before venturing back into the Caribbean – the western end this time to spend time in Cuba, Grand Cayman, Mexico, Guatemala, the Columbian islands, Honduras & Panama before spending the last few years wintering and enjoying the delights of the Bahamas and it’s amazing people. Then there were the fish. Oh! we’ll miss the fish, those that we almost caught and the many we did catch and enjoy on the barbecue. But really when all is said and done it’s really the people that ultimately make cruising such a worthwhile pastime. We hope the new owners of Ajaya will equally enjoy their tenure of a boat that delivered us safely to and from all those wonderful places which many people can only dream of spending more than a few weeks in. It’s hard work of course. Not always, otherwise why do it, but spending extended time onboard your own boat will throw up challenges from time to time to test the patience of saints. Nobody ever told us it would be a breeze. What they did say was that it would be an unforgettable experience and we can honestly say it was.

 

 

Everybody that has ever sold a cruising boat they’ve spent years living aboard will have encountered the same issue – made all the more logistically challenging by being some 4000 miles away from home territory. Emptying the boat of one’s personal possessions and equipment. Having rented our home out in 2008 we shipped onboard far more ‘stuff’ than one would for a weekend cruiser and naturally we acquired more items along the way. It wasn’t until we had filled two brand new clam shell suitcases with precious belongings, excluding clothes, that we realised we had been sailing around on a pretty heavy catamaran over the years. But then it was a Prout and Prouts revel in bearing all of one’s belongings within their commodious hulls. It just took longer to get somewhere, that’s all.

 

Day by day we lightened the load witnessing the waterline beginning to show more of itself to the world above.  And still there were lockers needing to be cleared and clothing needing to be disposed of to get the weight of our baggage down to Norwegian Air’s limitations.  We worked steadily towards our deadline date and on the day we moved off the boat everything we were not leaving onboard for the new owners was either in a case or in the dumpster! We’ve sold many houses in our lifetime but have rarely cast a backward glance as we drove away to the next one, but as we all know boats are different. They have a soul which houses do not – well perhaps they do but we’ve never experienced such emotion as when selling a boat.

 

We’d sold many boats both new & not so new over the years and were curious to see how the system worked in the USA. Well despite listing the boat through one of Florida’s largest brokerage firms it was a disappointment. Maybe we’d trained and operated to higher standards within the businesses we’d been fortunate to be associated within the UK. They certainly do things differently in Florida at least but then the whole boating scene is different.

 

The survey, was a car crash and more, the final report which, unusually, we had full sight of proved to be a work of fact garnished heavily with fiction. This annoyed us immensely especially where facts concerning the boats construction were blatantly incorrect. The registration paperwork was farmed out to a third party company who sent us emails demanding information lacking any form of common courtesy. The broker never returned the two urgent phone messages we left her during the sale period.  Then she promptly left the company just as our sale was closing never again bothering to contact us and thank us for the business. She then set up on her own whilst boasting of her ‘full asking price’ achievement with Ajaya no doubt desperate to carry the kudos over to her new venture.  Not a particularly comfortable experience.

 

 

A number of friends summed up our mood during the final weeks – ‘Bitter Sweet’ - and that’s pretty accurate really. In this particular instance the ‘Sweet’ was not only the coming to an end of the responsibility of keeping the boat in readiness to go to sea season after season.  Also ensuring that from 4000 miles distance we could be confident that we’d played our part in putting her to bed for the hurricane season.  But also, and quite uniquely we suspect, our buyers Tim & Anne announcing shortly after making the commitment to buy Ajaya, that they intended to wed onboard on the 29th February. Now that was a reason for celebration, blowing some of the clouds of sadness away from the selling process. Thoughts of a crowd of 40 – 50 guests crowded on the foredeck for a wedding ceremony with only a church organ missing were quickly dispelled when they told us that we were to be the only guests. So, just the 5 of us in total if you included the minister who would take the short but very poignant service. Fortunately, with the two of us clicking away on smartphones we managed to avoid photo bombing wearing clothes that were destined for the trash in the next few days! It proved to be a wonderful drawing to an end of our time on Ajaya and the beginning of a new life for Tim, Anne & Ajaya. We do hope you will enjoy your new married life together and have as much fun as we have had over the past 11 years. Ajaya is in good hands and that greatly soothes our feelings of loss.

 

The poem below, sourced by Anne especially for their wedding ceremony and read beautifully by the minister also struck a poignant note with the two of us as we move on to pastures new, leaving our cruising life behind us.