Help I feel out of my depth

[PaulinVictoria]

Regardless of the warm welcome (lol), good luck with whatever you end up getting. I will never be in the position to drop half a mill on a toy, can barely afford my $4k one. Jealous? Yes, of course. Have fun, and if you're up this way, invite someone in a little orange sailboat over for a margarita
P.S. the missus might well enjoy a multihull, and I'd rather live with that than a big ole stinkpot.

[MarkSF]

Originally Posted by rwilson37643

I love to sail. I have loved sailing for almost twenty years. I have lived to this point with an extremely limited budget, the most expensive boat I've ever owned is a 21 ft Catalina bought used for 10k. I have finally finished law school and got a real job at the age of forty, and can afford the yacht I've always dreamed of. I've long dreamed of sailing with my wife and kids from Miami to Bimini in my very own 40-50 ft yacht, but now that I can afford it, the combination of limited time to play and my wife's love of speed is leading me to consider a power yacht. The decision of power vs sail is one my wife and I have never seen eye to eye on, but cost has allowed me to win in the past. I am loosing now, and I've got to admit she has a point. we will be buying a new boat late this summer in the 300-600k price range and plan to use it for weekend trips and 2 2 week long trips per year. how do I convince my wife to stick to sailing?

A few random thoughts in no particular order :

From a 21ft Catalina to a $600,000 power yacht is quite a step. Have you thought about a more intermediate step (or several?)

Has your wife ever sailed on a nice classic 40-50 ft sailing cruiser? Like a Bristol 45.5? One that is built for comfort? Maybe this is why she wants a power yacht, she doesn't know any better. Yet.

If your income is $300K you should ask yourself if you are happy spending half of it on a toy to use for a few weeks and weekends a year that you don't even like very much. That is what a $600K new boat will cost you per year when depreciation and maintenance are taken into account.

With so many nice used boats on the market is doesn't make much sense to me to buy new. Certainly not, if (and I strongly suspect this will happen) you end up selling it in a few years. Also not when you can get something like this for this much (depreciation : very little) :

1980 Bristol 45.5 Center Cockpit Sail Boat For Sale - www.yachtworld.com

You're going to be getting a lot of big bills over the years, and a lot of grief. Maybe some scary moments. In times like those it's love that'll keep you fixing it and sailing it.

If the wife still won't come around, get a new one.

[ChristinaM]

When you say your wife has a love of speed, do you mean like an adrenaline junkie or that a sailboat just seems so slow that she'll find it dull? My time on powerboats always left me most bored while traveling than on sailboats. Maybe you need to speed to get to the destinations you want to get to but I'd think about other ways to make the traveling/sailing more interesting if it's likely to bore her. Either getting her interested in sailing (maybe some club races) or choosing a catamaran that can go faster (they don't all) while making it easier to sunbathe, cook, whatever could work. Maybe consider what kind of vacations she likes and how close you can get to her ideal on a boat. There's a lot of variety possible in sailing, you don't just have to slowly cruise to a bay, drop anchor, and swim for the afternoon. That's just what a lot of people enjoy.

If she has a real deep love of speed, buy a fast dinghy to learn, do some keelboat charters & courses, then buy something faster. Something like a J-boat, performance catamaran, or a trimaran. I fall in this category and while we are buying a 38' cruising sailboat, we're keeping our Hobie Tiger (2-man 18' cat): Hobie Tiger - YouTube There's speed then there's perception of speed. Took us 2 years on a slower small cat to feel we could handle the Tiger.

If you do charter a cat, remember why they have those ones in charter: they sleep 4 couples and are easy to sail.

[DRFerron]

The OP seems to have gotten beyond this thread and has started anew here.

And, I think as I said on the other thread, the wife wants what she wants. Perhaps the OP could be helped with his new request for ideas on a small sailboat.

[rugosa]

James - boy, did you step in it? Grow some grapefruits and apologize
Wilson - after all your hard work, you've both arrived. Congratulations (really!).
Thought shift - what about chartering some R E A L N I C E Y A C H T S over time to figure out what you both really want/need in the way of getting on the water. It's like renting a big house on the beach - pay for the week, go home with some great experience & memories, no upkeep, insurance, depreciation to deal with, and you can go to so many more R E A L L Y C O O L P L A C E S