5/24/2024
Safe Haven Marina, Skull Creek, Hilton Head SC
Position: 32 14 39.02 N, 80 44 51.52 W
Posted by Bill

Long time…no blog.

To catch up….we had a really bad trip back in our last year of cruising, so we took a year off. Then hurricane Isaias destroyed our home port marina in Southport NC. It took a year to get the boat worked on (minor cosmetic damage thankfully) and we decided we wanted to retire from sailing and pursue the purchase of a power boat. It was a tough decision since we have both been sailing for most of our adult lives, so we sold our beloved Island Bound.

There is an old cruiser adage that describes the stages of cruiser boat ownership and it goes like this: Sailboat to trawler (slow power boat with great live aboard amenities) to hearse. We started looking at trawlers and liked several brands, including Monk, Nordic and North Pacific. We were looking at a trawler near Hampton VA and saw a downeast style boat next to it that we didn’t recognize. We asked the broker showing us the boat what brand/model it was and he said it was a MJM…beautiful boat. He said it was for sale and asked if we wanted to see it. We loved the design and the lines of the boat but it was $900k…yikes!! So that got us looking at downeast style boats. We quickly honed in on Sabre, Back Cove and Grand Banks Eastbay models. It seemed like these models would allow us to continue to cruise and would also be really good for regional use after we were done cruising, or just wanted to cruise on a less than regular basis. Instead of cruising for 7 months out of the year, we could do 3 or 4 for the winter months. We weren’t really sailing much while cruising our Island Packet anymore, and a downeast boat would allow us to travel in a climate controlled helm, which would allow us to travel later in the fall and back in late winter/early spring; plus we would only have to open 3 bridges from Southport to Miami.

So…as a hard core sail boater would say…we went to the dark side. It took 2 plus years of searching and placing several offers that fell through, but we ended up with a 2007 Grand Banks Eastbay 39sx. We did the survey (inspection) and sea trial at Hinkley Boat Works in Thunderbolt GA, had some repair work done, and headed out to bring her home. Today was our first stop…only a couple of hour trip…staging for an offshore run to Georgetown SC. More on the boat itself to come in future blog entries. The trip today was good. Driving this boat is so different than our Island Packet sail boat. We have twin engines and a bow thruster. I got a day of practice with a retired Coast Guard instructor to learn how to maneuver the boat and dock it, and today docked at the fuel dock and backed into a slip for the night without incident…yay! It’s good to be back on the water.