“Simon! Lara!” shouted Bill the bartender as we entered the town brewery. “You know anyone who wants a free 40-foot boat?”
Simon, my husband, began frantically shaking his head no. The adage in the boating community is that there’s nothing as expensive as a free boat, but I asked Bill to tell me more.
Bill was friends with a couple who had aged out of sailing and needed to get rid of their 1970 40-foot Morgan ketch, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time.
I bought a boat for $1
The boat wasn’t actually free — when I spoke to the sellers, they wanted $1 for it. Turns out, I’m not the first person to buy this boat for a dollar. In fact, I’m at least the third.
One former owner sailed it almost from the North Carolina coast to Bermuda before experiencing issues that caused it to partially sink.
The owner before us bought it with severe damage and restored it. He kept the dollar tradition because the boat was too old to insure and needed too much cosmetic work to list it with a broker.
The dated interiors and worn surfaces were just right for us, though. The boat even had the tiny cast-iron wood stove I’d been coveting.
We love the adventures we’ve had
We set to scrubbing off a few years of dust and grime. We repainted the interior in sunny golds and oranges, leaning into the 1970s vibe.
After changing the oil and replacing some filters, she was ready to sail. All in all, we didn’t have to spend too much fixing her up — our biggest cost was a few cans of paint.
We cast off the lines three months after purchase, setting sail from our home port in Oriental, North Carolina — a lovely small town of about 800 people, known as the sailing capital of the state.
One of our first stops was Georgetown, South Carolina, where we ate perlau fritters. A few weeks later, we were enjoying lionfish sushi in the Keys.
Our wood stove kept us warm through a freak winter snowstorm. We spent entire days watching nurse sharks and parrotfish by the seawalls in Marathon, Florida.
Because we could anchor for free or just a few dollars in most places, we had all the time to ourselves and didn’t need to toil away at jobs for financing.
We sailed over 1,000 miles from North Carolina to the Florida Keys. In all, we spent over four months traveling, spending little to do it.
We made friends in anchorages whom we would never have met otherwise. Buying this boat has truly been a game changer for us.
I got into boating because housing was too expensive
When Simon and I got married, we started looking for a house in Dunedin, Florida. However, the few houses we found in our price range were less than appealing.
One home tour left us scratching flea bites after; another had a plant room built into the garage that had grown very moldy.
With a mortgage preapproval expiring, we were getting discouraged. One day, Simon showed me his laptop screen and said: “Alternate plan?”
It was a Craigslist ad for a 25-foot sailboat. That was the beginning.
10 extra feet doesn’t sound like a lot, but it changes everything
We bought the 25-foot sailboat for $3,000. Since then, I’ve purchased several boats, each one a bit bigger and less expensive than the last.
Before buying the $1 boat, Simon and I were living on a 30-foot boat I’d purchased for $1,000. Anyone who’s done the tiny home thing can tell you about the cluttered surfaces and the utter lack of time alone.
When you live on a boat that small, you don’t get to sail it very much, either. Items on counters need to be stowed, and maintenance goes undone because you don’t have the room to work.
The 10 extra feet that came with the 40-foot Morgan ketch were a welcome relief. We now have room to stow all our gear, so we spend time sailing instead of sitting at the dock. There’s also less tension between us because we have enough space to do our own thing.
Our 1,000-mile shakedown cruise showed us this $1 boat is sturdy enough for any seas and comfortably equipped enough for us to live here without climbing the walls. Next winter, we’ll take her to the Caribbean. After that? Only the wind knows.
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