Soldstice!

For those of you in a hurry, let me sum up: after a whirlwind week of work as of 4:30pm EDT today we are no longer the owners of Solstice.

For those of you who are more detail-oriented, let me give a full rundown of the past week's events.

Where did we leave off? Oh, yeah, Thursday and we had just arrived at the marina.

Thursday -- we arrived in the afternoon and managed to check into the marina, go get a rental car, and eat dinner. We halfheartedly started packing up our front berth/junk room. We definitely felt a little overwhelmed while writing out the long list of things to do to get the boat ready for sale.

Friday -- After 30 phone calls, we sold our scuba gear on Craigslist to the first guy who showed up and bought it all. We then found a storage room and began the process of dismantling the boat. At this point, we figured we had until Friday April 30th to get everything situated, since the Catamaran Company boat show did not start until May 1.

Saturday -- After our last night on the boat, we checked into the Sheraton Beach Resort. Our corner room had amazing views of both the Atlantic and the ICW (thanks Teresa!). We spent a full day boxing up items for storage, unloading personal gear, and dropping donations off to St. Vincent de Paul. Late in the afternoon we received word from Michael, our broker, that a potential buyer had put in an offer for us to consider. Their offer was only 6% lower than our asking price. Yippee!

Sunday -- We countered the offer by splitting the difference. By end of day the buyers accepted our counter and we were pretty optimistic. We had a contract! Of course it was subject to their personal inspection, survey, and sea trial, but still -- a contract is a good thing! We knew the buyer would be in town by Tuesday night and would want to have their first look at the boat on Wednesday, so we kicked everything into overdrive and made many trips to West Marine/Home Depot/storage room to get the boat looking good.

Monday -- The buyer (at this point let's give them names -- Don & Diana) let us know that the only available day to do survey/sea trial would be Wednesday morning. Aaack! Don/Diana had never even seen a Manta other than in photos, so not only would they be seeing Solstice for the first time, but they would also be taking her out for a spin and hiring a guy to peer into every nook and cranny looking for defects. For us, panic set in. We had the inside taken care of, but would need at least another person to help wash the decks while we finished the aesthetics.

Tuesday -- Around 8:30 am, the Catamaran Company sent Flo over, who spent several hours detail-cleaning the exterior and making Solstice shine. I headed to Target where I bought a carload of "staging" decor. Kevin painted the scratches on the black steps, touched up the awlgrip, checked off a bunch of other items from our to-do list. Midway through the day, as Flo was hosing off the deck, our broker called to tell us that the buyer may come over sometime in the afternoon. We calmly inform him that "sure, that's okay, but the boat is still in process of being cleaned. We will try to have the boat ready by early evening if they really want to come by that badly." We frantically finish all cleaning and decorating and manage to be ready by 4:30 pm. We call our broker and find out that it was a false alarm, Don & Diana would not have their first glimpse of the boat until Wednesday morning. Whew! At least we were ready! We headed back to the hotel for a quick shower and then met Don & Diana for drinks (we had previously arranged this w/ them). They seemed super nice and actually have about the same level of experience that we had when we bought Solstice. Which is great, since Mantas are an excellent boat for beginners with the self-tacking jib and all lines leading to the helm. We tried to sleep that night but it was futile. We were too nervous to sleep.

Wednesday -- When we bought the boat, the previous seller was elsewhere so he had hired a captain. Since we were in town, Kevin figured it would be better and cheaper to captain the sea trial himself. Since we kind of have our routine down, that meant that I would go along as crew. We arrived at the boat by 7am and soon after that Don, Diana, and their broker George arrived. From the get-go, we could tell that George was a closer a la Glengarry Glen Ross ("coffee's for closers only"). He complimented us on the condition of the boat and while it seemed sincere it was definitely a bit over the top, I mean the boat is fourteen years old so to ask when we had the floors replaced (they have never been) was a little funny. (The floors were already all scratched up by the previous owners two dogs before we even came aboard). Anyway we were soon joined by their surveyor Jonathan and our broker Michael, and the seven of us set out on our day-long sea trial.

We started out around 10:30 am going under two bascule bridges and out the Port Everglades inlet to sail. While we were topside sailing, Jonathan was below running all the systems (including the stereo, washing machine, etc) and writing down whatever was broken. He was very thorough, much more thorough than our surveyor was when we bought the boat. (If anyone needs a good surveyor, we would highly recommend him!) The sailing part went really well and we had a 1pm haulout scheduled. Running up the New River with its 5 bascule bridges was a little stressful, although I did my best to hide how stressed out I was (I did wish we'd ponied up the $400 for a professional captain though!). Once again Solstice was hauled out into the slings and we ate lunch while Jonathan looked at the bottom.

It was at this point where we weren't sure what would happen next. If Don & Diana did not for sure want the boat, Kevin and I definitely wanted to return down through all the bridges to the Catamaran Company docks so that Solstice would be on display for the boat show over the weekend. BUT, if Don & Diana did want the boat, the two brokers wanted it docked somewhere else so it didn't take up valuable selling space at the show for an "already sold" boat. George, Jonathan, Don, and Diana had a pow-wow in the salon while Kevin and I waited outside with our broker. When they came out, we had an unconditional sale! Unconditional means that they agreed to pay the previously agreed price without asking us to fix any deficiencies found by their surveyor or come down in price. Wooo-hooo! We were able to dock nearby without having to run all those bridges at rush hour, and George had a contract ready and signed before everyone went home. Cool! So now all we had to do was wait until May 17 for the official "close" of the contract. Kevin and I went back to the hotel elated!

Thursday -- Kevin had two outstanding items that we wanted to take care of despite the "unconditional sale" -- he wanted to install a new watermaker feed pump, and he wanted to have a mechanic take a look at the injector pump seals on the Volvos. Technically he did not have to do either of these things, but we had already mentioned them to Don that we would do them before close, so Kevin headed to the boat early Thurs. morning. He was able to replace the pump and pickle the watermaker by himself, but had to wait for the mechanic to look at the diesels. The mechanic took a look and recommended rebuilding both injector pumps. It wouldn't be a major expense but it would take the mechanic a couple of days with the engines inoperable. Kevin was about to tell him to do it when he got a call from our broker telling us that Don & Diana wanted to move the close up to April 30th (ie. the next day). That sounded great to us, but it certainly wouldn't be enough time to get the maintenance done before close. We couldn't very well hire someone to do work on a boat that would no longer be ours, so Kevin kept the guy's card to give to Don with an explanation of what he would need to do.

Friday -- we stopped by the boat a couple more times to label all the keys and make sure all was well for the turnover. By 11 am we had signed our paperwork and by 4:30pm the wire transfer went through -- we are no longer the owners of Solstice. We've had a wonderful adventure but it is nice to be able to move on to other modes of travel and other life experiences. We aren't sure of Don & Diana's future plans but we know at some point they would like to bring the boat to the Caribbean, so if any of our cruising friends see "Solstice", stop by and say hello to her new owners, they are very friendly folks!

So that is officially it for "The Adventures of Solstice" blog! We have had a wonderful five-year journey, and we hope all the readers back home enjoyed following along with us. For our cruising friends we hope you all have fair winds and following seas, and everyone keep in touch!