Monday, March 3, 2008

She is ours !


On Saturday the 1st of March 2008 we bought our boat ! Questina III is ours! - except that she is no longer called Questina but more of that in a minute.

And to prove it, here is a photo of us toasting our new purchase in our new saloon.

(I am not sure the “tippy boat” word saloon is the right word for what is a massive spacious apartment!)

Bob and Brenda, the previous owners spent the morning with us and went through many of the systems and completed a mini handover. As she is on the hard at the moment Bob has promised to return in a couple of weeks and help us rig her on the water and go over a few things again. This will be much appreciated by us. There was so much to cover we will need a second bite of the cherry.

We had actually paid over the money the day before but had to meet Bob in person to handover the ships papers. Banks don't work on Saturdays, or at least not properly and although we were taking a slight risk we needed to get the handover complete in order to try and get her in the water for Easter.

We spent the afternoon

(a) in complete shock

(b) starting to sort out the inventory (sails, boom etc) that was currently piled across the saloon. There is still loads to sort out but at least by the end of the day we had organised things into the forward single berth and could sit round the table and even make up a bed.

Which Pippin promptly went to sleep in !

We also tried out our Eberspacher heater - we were originally unsure as to whether this was in working order or not but it seemed to be OK after we charged the batteries. We have booked a service of the heater to make sure as we will need some warmth on our early season delivery trip. I am not sure if the battery is 100% but at least this will be an easy thing to replace if we do have a problem.

We also introduced ourselves to the Harbourmaster Steve, a more pleasant and helpful guy you could not hope to meet. But he did warn us how busy it is before Easter so we have a challenge to try and get launched on time.

And then after a meal at the Titchmarsh Marina restaurant and a bit more champagne we went to be bed on board our new yacht. Quite early in fact and exhausted due to getting up so early to travel round from home and the sheer excitement of the day.
I was glad that we were plugged into mains and had a heater in place as it was quite literally blowing a gale outside and the noise in everyone else's rigging and slapping halyards made quite a racket.

But it was quite safe and snug inside. We definitely need to do some alterations as the fantastic queen sized berth on the bridge deck is currently partially blocked by a shelf. But I wasn't going to get out the jigsaw on day one of ownership !

On Sunday we were up and about and Tamsyn discovered one of the major disadvantages of catamaran ownership - antifouling two hulls !

We had booked a wash and polish of the hulls via the Marina and whilst we were looking at the hulls we realised that the lettering of the name was in quite a state. So although we weren't originally planning to we started to remove it.

At this point we realised there was no longer any reason not to change her name. We never really thought "Questina III" was a cool name but were reluctant to change it due to corrupting the paper trail of ownership and the effort of re-lettering the hulls. But now with them halfway removed there wasn't really anything stopping us so in the car on the way home we picked a new name.

And the name is Talia.

Unique in the UK but several around the world.

And apparently meaning something like "Heaven's dew; lamb" - but we just like the name !

(And at only five letters it will be easy to fill in on forms)

The lettering was a pig to remove and we didn't pack it in until about five with all the names gone (well mostly removed) from the hulls and 2/3rds of the first coat of antifouling completed.

With M25 traffic we arrived home for 8:30 PM, exhausted but so happy.