Hello everyone!
Travis here. Thank you for taking your time to read our blog. We have had a lot of questions about the boat so we decided to write a post about it. How we came to find it, why we were motivated to buy it and what the process looks like now.
During our first sailing trip in 2018, neither of us knew much at all about sailing. I had learned to sail on the Great Salt Lake in Utah on a Catalina 22'. Once I moved back to Oregon, my buddy Matt and I purchased a Catalina 25' - SV Summer Wind (SV stands for sailing vessel). For three years we sailed up and down the Columbia River and outside of those two experiences, I didn't know a lot about sailing. What I did know is that I've had a desire to sail since I was a child. The thought of moving around the world by no means other than wind was exhilarating to me.
When the concept of sailing became a reality, finding the right boat become overwhelming. I remember looking at boats in my teenage years - a Cape Dory 28 being my dream boat back then. Then as I got older, a Hallberg-Rassy 42 become my main point of focus. After scrolling around broker pages for a year or so I realized I didn't have the bank account to support such an amazing vessel. With Matt being my main sounding board for boats and the idea of living on the water, we shared what we wanted and didn't want in a boat. Matt was set on finding an aluminum boat - to me, that just sounded silly. A sailboat should be made of wood or fiberglass (definitely not wood for me though). As my search continued I threw in a boat that Matt found along the way - an Alubut Ovni. These were French-made aluminum boats, lifting keel and rudder, solid as can be, and Ovni in French means UFO, how cool is that? I vividly remember finding a 1986 Alubat Sonate 37 on a French broker page. I reached out to the broker but never received a response. With the boat being almost double my budget, I didn't sweat it and moved on. For months and months, I continued to look for boats really leaning towards the Pearson 424 and 422 - I loved the center cockpit layout of these boats.
Then one day, I saw that same Sonate show back up but this time it listed what boatyard she was in. Not wasting my time with the broker, I reached out to the manager of the yard, Sandra. Sandra knew the owner well and was extremely responsive. She knew the boat and how much it needed. She worked with the sellers and myself until we came to a price that we could both agree on. But even at that price I started to get cold feet. I was worried about how much work the boat needed, moving to a country I knew nothing about, if I was crazy to follow this dream with such limited experience. If I was truly capable of sailing a vessel and keeping Meagan safe along the way. I was terrified. Clearly Meagan wasn't though, she was what motivated me to move forward with the purchase when she said, "I have been hearing about sailing for years now, you need to make a decision or stop talking about it!". And for any of you that know me, know that I am stubborn enough to have impulsively buy the boat the next day. After that it was a sharp learning curve. You all know the story, we packed up and moved down to Grenada in hopes the boat was real! Turns out she was real and her name was Sommer Wind, similarly enough to the Catalina 25' we owned that was named Summer Wind, both boats carried that name prior to our ownership. It seemed to be fate.
Okay enough about all of that, why did we buy a Moody 425?
While we were out on the water for eight months on Sommer Wind, we learned a lot about what we wanted and didn't want on a boat. We loved the Alubat for specific reasons - lifting keel, light, solid as a rock, overly basic systems to maintain and she was fast! For new sailors that didn't know much, we definitely wanted to be safe. But she had a handful of things we didn't love. Aft cockpit, small coffin style rear staterooms, one head, minimal storage for personal items and desired systems, not a lot of tankage, and a toilet we couldn't really use confidently (plumbing issues).
We knew Sommer Wind wasn't our forever boat so we continually looked at friends boats as we were on them and pulled out bits and pieces of what we really wanted. Then one day in Dominica, I saw a boat that I loved the look of. I couldn't quite tell what it was but I had to know, so we went over to take a look. When we got close enough to the boat there was a man on deck - Dave. I asked Dave what the boat was and he said it was a Moody 47' (SV Roam). He also said they were having some people over in a little bit so feel free to stop by. We went back to our boat and I immediately started researching Moody sailboats. I had heard of them before but I always considered them a production boat and wasn't interested. Roam definitely changed that prospective for me. That night, we took Dave up on his offer and went over to hang out with them (they are lovely people and we are still friends with them). Once onboard, I started to fall in love with the boat. Center cockpit, loads of storage, two heads, queen aft master stateroom, passthrough on both sides of the engine, huge settee, and plenty of tankage. From that moment on, a Moody was high on my list.
Fast forward three and a half years (read the last blog post for that time in our lives) and we found ourselves ready to find another boat. To be completely honest, I was initially looking for another Alubat but couldn't find one that fit our needs at our price point. Remembering how much of an impact Roam had on me, I started looking for a Moody 47'. Knowing that 47' was way more than Meagan and I needed, I looked what other boats they had. I found the Moody 425 in their lineup and it was perfect. It even had a swim step that most 47' didn't. When I first started the search I found an amazing 425 that was in Florida that was in our budget but by the time the seller reached out, it had already gone pending. Continuing the search, I stumbled upon IO. She was a 425 that had some big projects done but she needed A LOT of work. Reaching out to the broker, Chris, we began the LONG process of due diligence. She had a loving single owner who bought her brand new, and had seen a lot of countries and ocean. She was purchased in the UK, sailing the Med, down into Africa, across the Atlantic, throughout the Caribbean, up the east coast of the US and finally finding her semi-permanent home in Rio Dulce, Guatemala. The owner had some pretty big projects accomplished but unfortunately passed away. His sons inherited her and came to check on her semi-annually but sitting on the hard in the humidity for eight years took quite the toll on her. After some prolonged negotiations, we came to a number for her that made us and the previous owners happy.
Now for the fun part. Getting IO - now renamed to, of course: Sommer Wind! What does she need, you ask? A little bit of everything.
To start:
- She didn't have any solar system. We had an arch built for her and put 1000 watts of solar on. We brought down the charge controller with us so we need to completely wire in the solar system.
- The gel coat on deck was cracked and pretty sad looking. We had the entire deck sand blasted, re-gel coated and non-skid applied.
- The batteries were shot and it initially only had two house batteries. We replaced those with six house batteries and an isolated engine battery. These didn't have a good place to be stored so we had a local craftsman build us a fiberglass box to store them all under on bed
- We had a local carpenter build us new teak handrails for the deck of the boat in addition to a new teak collapsible cockpit table with cup holders.
- She had previously had all the blisters grinded out and skim coated. We did a new bottom job on her.
- The headliner is in really sad shape so we are completely redoing the headliner with all new LED lights (before and after).
- We brought down a 3000 watt invertor to have all the power we could ever need!
- The boat currently has a propane stove in it but we have an induction cook top we need to install to try and minimize the systems and gases we need to keep onboard.
- Since we now have a child (Kalla bear - our cat) we have safety netting to go onto the lifelines all the way around the boat. This will keep her from accidently going overboard.
- The electronics on the boat are all pretty old. We have all new Raymarine speed, depth, wind and temperature instruments that need to be installed.
- We need to verify the bilge pumps are working correctly.
- I have reached out to see if we can buy some mast steps to get those installed.
- The v-berth and rear stateroom have solar fans that need to be replaced.
- We brought down four fans to install in the staterooms.
- Our rear master stateroom has carpet in it and Meagan absolutely hates it! I'll probably have to do something about that.
- The boat needs a thorough deep cleaning
- Replace the old CQR with a 25kg Rocna
- Last but not least...install our bidets!
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