April 12, 2022
It’s been some time and we are now back living on land. I’m back to work, still mostly from home. Cedric went to France for a few weeks to spend some time with his family. We have a new flat and Happy Days is spending most of the time alone, tied to a buoy.
Rules in NSW prohibit us from living on board, and we can be anchored for a maximum of 90 days a year. We had a reservation at Dulwich Marina for the entire month of January, but it was canceled two days prior. The owner of the boat leaving the berth changed their plan as a relative got COVID and caused us to change ours as well. Luckily, we made some friends while we were in Pittwater, and they rented a buoy for us for 30 days. Which is located very close to other buoys as I think that space is designed for smaller boats. They were nice to find that place for us. But when the wind changes direction, all the boats swing around, and Happy Days ends up being very close to one of its neighbors. On days with light wind, boats would even come to rock up to each other. It is complex and costly to find a permanent place for a boat in Sydney Harbour or close by. There are waiting lists for years.
PHOTO HAPPY DAYS with other boats
After much contemplation and careful consideration, we made the difficult decision to find a new owner for Happy Days. She deserves the opportunity to embark on new adventures and create lasting memories with someone else. While it brings a mixture of emotions, we will cherish the moments we shared together and forever hold her in our hearts, we would have not been here if it wasn’t for Happy Days.
In addition, the weather has also been very stormy some days, and just the thought of Happy Days out there alone makes me uneasy. Plus, the constant thunder and lightning and all stories about problems with storms makes me think it is not fair with Happy Days to be there alone.
It was a very unpredictable market for boats in Australia. COVID had affected everything. With the borders closed, no boats had entered into the country for over two years making them rare but at the same time, the pandemic was not finished, so people were either reluctant to go or eager to change their life and just leave. Remember, we were the first boat clear in Coffs Harbour, by the Australian Border Force, since the pandemic started.
Regulations started to ease at the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022 and still with a bit of summer to be enjoyed, boats that were sitting almost abandoned started to get more active. However, boats would not start coming to Australia from overseas before April when the cyclone season is over.
Therefore, we started talking to a few boat brokers. Surprisingly, the broker who sells Hanse in Sydney never got back to us. We knew a lady that used to work there, but she was gone, and I believe they must be really understaffed. Some other brokers who we talked to honestly had not a clear idea on how to price the boat, and we were still figuring it out. There was nothing really to compare to. With a very slow market, it wasn’t straightforward. We did lots of research on all websites, boat blogs, in Australia and close by. We did our calculations and we agreed on an asking price. Cedric was not fully convinced, as he thought we might be asking too much. My point was that the market for anything used had gone up, like crazy, in the last couple of years. Old cars had recovered value like never before, motorbikes, everything in the used market is up to the roof these days. And if you want to buy new, the waiting times are months and months. I guess it was all based on Australia stopping imports for the two years.
In any case, our price was locked in, and we weren’t in a desperate rush or anything. So, if it took a little while and we didn’t find any buyers, there were no worries! We could always bring the price down a bit and see how things unfolded. We spoke again with three brokers and finally made an agreement with one of them. Their contract locks you in in a way that you can’t have more than one.
Happy Days was listed for one weekend, and one weekend only. We paid for a full detailed work, and they took the pictures. It looked amazing, it had never been that clean. That same week we had one offer straight away very close to the asking price. The broker didn’t even have time to sort all the issues with the second website to publish the ad. We accepted the offer and started the paper process which took several weeks.
Once we accepted the offer, we couldn’t offer the boat anymore. The potential buyer gave a down payment to the broker to secure the offer and sent a surveyor to check the boat. Funny, he came with a full list of specific questions. I think he did a meticulous read of this blog. He knew about the sails, the bow thruster, the windlass, and he was asking very specific questions.
After the inspection was completed, we agreed on fixing some of the things the surveyor found and continue with the sale. Few things were really easy, the VHF, some lights and a few other small details. However, the bow thruster and the saildrive caused us a lot of trouble. We couldn’t find anyone who was willing to dismount the bow thruster and fix it. This is Australia for you, it is easier and most times cheaper to buy new than to fix something. The waiting time in this case, six months. A bow thruster is simply a propulsion device located at the bow that provides lateral (port and starboard) thrust, making the boat more manoeuvrable. So it is nice to have but not critical for sailing. Therefore, we agreed to discount the price of a new one with installation from the total.
On the other hand, the saildrive seals had to be changed; we couldn’t let the boat leave with water coming into the engine. It is a simple fix, once you have the part. But you need to lift the boat out of the water for the installation. We knew it was about time, so we thought while the out-of-the-water inspection took place, we could easily change the seals. But boat yards here were packed, booked months in advance, and they wouldn’t let you work on your boat. You need to hire people from the marina itself or get people from outside who are certified to work in the marina.
To make the story short, because this process extended over two months and included two instances of lifting the boat out of the water. During the initial haul-out, the mechanic, against Cedric’s advice, instead of replacing the seal as requested, only performed an oil change. As it would end up useless to perform the oil change without changing the seal, Cedric insisted and got expelled from the boat yard. Apparently he did not have the right to be there and notice that they were not doing the right job. Would have they told us that it was done when it wasn’t ? On the second attempt, the date had to be rescheduled when the broker realised, the day prior, that the required seals were unavailable in their stock. What a joke…
Once the seals were in place, Happy Days was ready to go. We had already taken everything out, which was quite a task mainly because we couldn’t get to a marina, so we had to move everything with the dinghy.
In the mid time while Happy Days was still under contract, we could use the boat for a couple of weekends to nearby places and enjoy sunsets reminiscent of all the stories we had created on this adventure.
The final day came on April 10, we were planning to go to say our final goodbye to Happy Days on that Saturday. Everything was aligned as the broker had told us Happy Days was leaving on Monday morning, after the last payment was confirmed. Excitement and a tinge of sadness filled the air as we prepared ourselves for the inevitable farewell. After a coffee and some breakfast we found ourselves in different rooms in the apartment as we were getting ready to go. In a remarkable coincidence, we both opened the bank account online at the same time to discover that the final payment had already been settled.
We went to the bay as we had planned, just enjoyed the day on board, the view, a symbolic thank you for all the miles we did together and Happy Days always kept us safe.
We were finishing packing to leave when 3 guys arrived. The skipper and his two crew, they were arranged by the owner to take the boat from Sydney to Melbourne where he lives. We talked to them a little bit and help them to move to the dock where they were going to fuel up and bring up all their bags and supplies. They had decided to leave on a day earlier as the forecast predicted some strong winds coming form the south and as the payment had already being completed there was no time to waste. I was really happy we had not planned to go on Sunday. Imagine it could have been gone.
We left the dock and I convinced Cedric to waited until we finally saw Happy Days leaving the bay! It reminded me of my mom, that every time one of my sisters or me was leaving, she would convinced my dad to stayed in the airport until the flight was on the air. And, let me tell you a secret. I couldn’t help but kept a close eye on the AIS on the vessel finder page, checking until I spotted Happy Days safely docked in the marina in Melbourne. Which took a few days because there was a storm and the skipper had to hide in Eden for a couple of days. I’m sure his new owner was incredible happy to see her arrived ready to continue sailing and discovering new seas.
For us now on land, life goes on. The two large boxes we had stored away were delivered to our new flat, and we wasted no time in unpacking and setting everything up again. To our delight, everything remained in good condition despite being in storage, so we were able to re-establish our living space easily.
Our car, Blacky, had a difficult time while we were away. A stormed dropped a tree on top, the insurance took forever to get it fix, we forgot to renew the registration, we never got the emails that you normally get to remind you, so we had to pay the biggest fines ever. No registration meant it was without moving for months. It kind of worked in our favour that we didn’t sell it when we left, because finding cars these days was not easy. Old ones are expensive and for the new ones there are long waiting lists.
Elody on the other hand, Cedric’s motorbike was very well look after, and she’s got a new sister now, Noemi my motorbike now. So we will be busy on weekends touring around on land.
The good thing is we are not far from the sea. Cedric is back racing on Saturdays with SV Erica and we got two new paddle boards to go around and discover rivers, coves, beaches. Very often we find ourselves touring close to the buoys, around sail boats and reminiscing of so many experiences with Happy Days.
Happy Days 