It’s with sadness that we have decided to part ways with our 1980 Fast Passage 39, No Regrets. We are in no way ready to end our cruising journey, and because of this, we decided we needed a bit more comfort and room to continue this lifestyle. Since we don’t have a land-based residence anymore, we are carrying way more stuff than we probably would if we had a place to store things that we need, but don’t necessarily need on the boat all the time.
All our past sailing on No Regrets had been a week or two at a time, and in no way did we carry all of our belongings and tools with us. Once we moved aboard full time it became a different story. The passage to San Diego was tolerable, and while in San Diego we had a storage locker at the marina where we offloaded a lot of the things we didn’t need regularly. That made living at the marina in San Diego tolerable for the year we were there. Once we left San Diego and had nowhere to offload our stuff, even temporarily, we found living on a very cramped boat became quite difficult and not enjoyable. Our discussions about leaving sailing life, or continuing to cruise, were prompted by these living conditions.
We decided to sell No Regrets to keep cruising in mid-2022, while we were in Panama. We took a quick trip in August 2022 to Florida and South Carolina to look at some Manta catamarans. We weren’t ready to purchase but did want to see some in person to confirm a Manta catamaran was what we wanted.
Insurance required us to stay in Panama until December, so when we left Shelter Bay Marina in early November, we decided to make a beeline to Florida to put No Regrets on the market and start looking for our next boat.
We put No Regrets on the market when we got to St Petersburg, FL, at the beginning of February 2023 and started fixing and cleaning her up. We moved off the boat for two months into a fully furnished and very small ADU (Accessory Dwelling Unit) over the owner’s garage. The owner also let us store all our stuff from No Regrets in their garage (very nice) so we could have everything off the boat to do the work we needed to do and stage her for showings.
We had our first offer in early April, but it fell through. We then had several more people look at the boat, but no bites. We finally received another offer and we are now under contract. We’re hoping she closes this time and No Regrets moves on to new owners.
Here in Florida, almost all boats have built-in air conditioning, which No Regrets doesn’t have. This was a detractor for selling her here. Also, the age of the boat (1980) made it impossible for a buyer to get a loan, and many insurance companies wouldn’t insure a boat that old. These were strikes against us getting what we wanted for No Regrets, so we settled for a bit less than we would have liked to get. We were also under the gun to move our new boat out of Florida before July 1st (hurricane season for our insurance company) and not be left with No Regrets burning money in a slip at the rate of about $1300/month without us there to take care of her. Not the best of situations, but it’s only money, right?
We have purchased a 2008 Manta 42 Mk IV catamaran, named Cerca Trova (google it to find the meaning). These were US-built catamarans that were produced between 1994 and 2008. We have the last one built, hull # 127. We are currently trying to find the space for all the stuff we had on No Regrets, do a few updates, clean (it wasn’t as clean as we kept No Regrets), and do some minor repairs (both bilge pump switches went out within a couple of weeks of one another).
Florida has a sales tax on boats, new and used. It’s 7% of the selling price up to $18,000 (they cap it at $18,000 to help the rich when they buy mega-yachts). We did find a legal way to not pay sales tax for a boat purchased in Florida. There are two ways. First, leave the state with the boat within 10 days of the closing date, and second, pay $50 for a permit to leave Florida with the boat within 90 days of the closing date. We opted for the second option and paid $50 to save $18,000 in taxes. We also had to show proof we left the state, which is usually a fuel receipt or slip receipt.
Trying to sell one boat at the same time as purchasing another, was very stressful for us. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. If I had it to do over again, I would sell No Regrets first, and then look at what Manta’s were on the market once she sold. That seems like the logical approach, but I was fearing we would miss out on the right Manta if we waited for No Regrets to sell. There aren’t many Mantas for sale so that contributed to our stress.
We are now comfortably living on Cerca Trova preparing her for our first voyage back to the east coast of Florida. The plan is to cruise up the east coast of the US this summer and head to the East Caribbean this coming Winter. Stay tuned for more as we start this new chapter.
Sailing into our next chapter 