Planning the Plan of the Plan
Now that we had an idea. We formulated the plan. We calculated the earliest retirement date, started watching the housing market, looking at yacht prices and making the first of many lists and spreadsheets.
We started looking at yachts and taking notes of the details and used boats.com to find captains reports on fuel burn, weight and estimates. We did not need to go anywhere fast, but we also wanted to be able to get out the way of any storm that may start brewing on radar. We also did not want to have to overnight a Gulf Stream crossing when going to the Bahamas. Trawlers, at least good ones, had and still have a high resale value so they were out of the question. Fast moving, low profile, day cruisers were not an option because we wanted just a little more room and mainly visibility. We settled on a fly bridge yacht and started looking.
At the time we were finding that yachts at the 10-year-old mark were around 10% of the original price. A $2million yacht was around $200k. Most of these yachts had less than 1000 hours on the engines and we were excited and hopeful. We started planning to limit vacations and set a date for downsizing, sell the house and educating ourselves on the process. A few years of planning, research, boat shows and unfortunate seminars later, we were ready, then, COVID-19 hit.