Father's Day Gift

As I mentioned before, my wife gave me for Father's day the gift of allowing me to buy the boat I always dreamed of. Actually, it's sort of amazing how this came to pass since my wife was always nixing any thought of getting a boat. I didn't have any clue that my dream would come true. It all started with my brother coming down from Labrador on vacation. I mentioned to my wife that it would be nice if we could rent a [pontoon] boat on the Ottawa River. We could spend the day cruising. Now at the time, my wife was part of a support group/course for dealing with anxiety/stress. Apparently, she mentioned my boat idea and it was suggested to her that this would be a excelent way of practicing dealing with anxiety. Then on a boring Saturday, I floated the idea again and my wife said we should investigate.

I stopped by one place that rented pontoon boats. $450 a day, not including insurance, gas, or taxes. I jokingly said "at that price we could buy one", my wife then said "why don't we look?". At that point, I didn't believe that I would be buying a boat but I was happy to visit a dealer to look around; I was bored anyway.

I heard of Pirate Cove Marina on the radio, so we proceeded to head that way. Apparently, Pirate Cove Marina is one of the nicest marinas around. My wife looking at all the people relaxing in there boats at the marina. We went inside and got a pleasant surprise. A 22 foot pontoon boat for only $18,000 all in. My wife said she liked it but only if we had a slip; place to put it since it's not going in the garage. Unfortunately, the marina had no slips available. After talking to the sales guy, I found out that the pontoon boat doesn't come with a trailer and it is not really practical in trailing/towing such a boat other than for winter.

We proceeded to go to another marina, this time Hurst Marina on River Road. There they sell only fiberglass hull boats from 18' to 58' yachts. I was drooling... Finally, me and my wife settled on a Sea Ray 175 Sport with standard floor plan; not the sun pad model. When the sales rep told me that I can buy that boat, all in including trailer, life jackets, etc., for $21,000 or $200 a month in low interest open marine loan I was sold and so was my wife.

A couple of days later I took delivery of:

The only difference between mine and the one depicted is that I have a bimimi top, canvas bow and cockpit covers, snap down carpets, Sony 4 speaker stereo with cockpit remote, a Raymarine electronics package with a A50D chartplotter/fish-finder, P48 transducer, SR50 Sirius [marine weather/audio] satelite receiver, and Ray49 DSC VHF radio. My wife named the boat Bela Vida which means beautiful life in Portuguese.

Posted by Kaoru [Boating] ( September 03, 2009 02:10 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]