Our home being almost as far from salt water as it is possible to get on the UK mainland was, and is, obviously a drawback. We knew from long experience with our canal boats that out of sight tends to be out of mind when it comes to boat maintenance and we rapidly set a key criteria that the boat must be small enough to be trailable behind a 4x4 so that it could be brought home for the winter and/or for major maintenance work.
Our long experience of life aboard small boats, our first canal cruiser being only 21' and our second a mere 25', coupled with the week aboard a chartered Moody 28 led us to conclude that a 2+2 setup as far as berths were concerned would be the best we could hope for. By that I mean that whilst 4 usable berths would be good for a weekend trip with company, our longer cruises of a week or two would be as a couple on our own. Even the Moody, which was substantially larger than any boat we could afford or bring home for the winter, was cramped with five aboard for a week.
Our nearest potential cruising grounds were either the Thames Estuary or The Wash. The Bristol Channel was also feasible from a travel point of view. Of the three, the Thames Estuary and Essex and Suffolk coasts offered by far the greatest variety of destinations and options for moorings. So that was decided upon although the debate would be reopened later briefly.
An option we considered was to keep the boat at one of the two fairly local large reservoirs that cater for cabin boats as well as dinghys. Grafham Water is only a few miles down the A14 from us and the more attractive Rutland Water is not much further away.
It boiled down to a choice between two types of boat. A true trailer sailer or a trailable yacht.
A true trailer sailer can be defined as a boat small enough to be towed behind a family car and readily launched, rigged and recovered from most slipways.
A trailable yacht, by my definition, is a boat which, whilst small enough and light enough to be towed behind a 4x4, is too large and complex to launch and recover on a regular basis.
Many boats for sale were studied on the internet. Much poring over plans and articles ensued. Boats that caught our eye were ...
The Winkle Brig
Trident 24
At the other end of the scale, the Trident 24 is about as big as I reckoned we could go within the criteria of being able to move the boat by road without specialist assistance. Various examples came up for sale during our search but none appealed enough to go and look at. Long term, I wouldn't discount the possibility of owning one of these at some point in the future if we decide to stay within the trailable yacht category but want a little more space and comfort than our current boat.
Vivacity 20
There were, of course, dozens if not hundreds of other boat designs which could have been just what we were looking for but as it happened Andy Seedhouse Boat Sales in Suffolk had not one but two Vivacity 20's for sale at prices we could just about afford.
A disappointing day out ...
My brother and I headed off to Woodbridge in Suffolk on a dull day in January 2011 to peruse the two boats of interest. The first and cheaper of the two was rejected out of hand before we got within a couple of feet of her. That distinctive and depressing smell of a terminally damp boat was all too obvious to our all too experienced noses.
The second boat was of rather more interest. Clearly tired but easily tidied up, she looked good on deck and in the cockpit. I hardly needed to glance into the cabin however to know that she would not pass muster as far as Jane was concerned. To be honest, even in my wildest dreams I could not envisage us spending more than a night or two on board and we really wanted something that was suitable for cruising for up to two weeks.
Added to that, I noticed that there was a rather suspicious lump of carpet glued onto the mast compression beam whilst the rest of the deckhead was bare GRP. Back on the ground, a close look aloft led me to speculate whether the mast should really be distinctly bent. Concluding that there might possibly be an expensive problem lurking there to catch out the unwary purchaser I had no hesitation in deciding to walk away.
By chance and good fortune, we walked away down the line of boats further down the yard rather than just heading straight back to the car. We barely glanced at a smart looking boat with a blue hull as we walked down the yard and as we ambled back almost passed her by again. On the spur of the moment I decided to take a closer look at 'Anne of Arne', a Russell Marine Islander 23 from the same stable as the Vivacitys we;d been lookiing at.
This was a boat I had merely glanced at on the web site before passing her over as being nearly double what we could afford. A look around the exterior suggested she showed promise. Would the interior stack up? Off to the little office by the entrance I trailed to beg the keys for a look below decks.
Better and better! Here was a boat that ticked virtually every box. I could easily see Jane and I spending extended periods of time on board, she had all the essential facilities and even the desirable but non-essential features I was looking for. To my amateur eye, based on extensive study of the subject of yacht design, she looked to have good lines, at least for a 1960's twin keel design. Below decks, although a little tired in places, she exuded quality of design and construction. Such things as an internal textured GRP deckhead moulding beat hands down the usual exposed glass mat and resin or a mouldy old foam backed headling.
There was one significant problem. At £2995 she was roughly double what I felt we could realistically afford making allowance for the cost of moorings, insurance and all the miscellaneous expenditure that is inevitable when starting out from scratch with a new boat.
Oh well, I could only shrug my shoulders and conclude that we would have to wait a while and save up some more pennies and then hope we could find something as suitable later on.
All is not lost ...
That evening, I happened to by chatting on Skype to my friend and fellow sound engineer Rik. We'd chatted about sailing previously, Rik having a similar youthful dinghy sailing background to myself and having spent a week on a charter yacht with friends on the Irish waterways some years previously. I'd mentioned we were going to look at the Vivacitys and he was interested in the outcome of our trip.
I related the story of the day and bemoaned the fact that I'd found what I felt was the ideal boat but coudln't afford her when Rik knocked me sideways with the suggestion that he might be interested in getting involved financially. After some discussion on ways and means, and having checked that Jane was in agreement, we agreed that if Jane deemed the boat suitable we would divvy up the shares roughly three ways and that Jane and I would buy Rik out in stages over the next three years which would fit in with his long term plans to obtain his day skipper ticket and charter abroad.
Much searching of the internet elicited scanty information about the design but what little I could find was all positive. Although credited to a different designer to the earlier Alacritys and Vivacitys. she shows a clear family resemblance to these well regarded twin keelers below the waterline which suggested that, whilst she would never be a rocket ship, she wouldn't be a total slug either.
On a dull and wet Monday morning a few days later, Jane and I headed off down the A14 for a second look at the boat. It was a definite yes from Jane and shortly thereafter the deal was done and she was ours!
As we had some time in hand, we then headed down to Essex to have a look at the swinging moorings at North Fambridge. Of all the possible places to keep the boat, this had appealled to me on the grounds of cost, facilities and location. This too was a winner and so that was decided upon.
It is effectively from this point onwards that the main blog begins. Following the purchase of the boat, we arranged to move her by road to North Fambridge at the beginning of April. We were tempted by the idea of sailing her down but I put my sensible head on and decided that a long day involving crossing the Deben bar and the Harwich/Felixstowe shipping lanes in an untested boat with a novice crew was a recipe for appearing on the evening news as yet another example of a bunch of idiots getting into trouble and needing the services of the RNLI etc.
The working weekend which preceded the move and the move and launch itself are documented in the blog which draws this article to a conclusion I guess!
