I know, I know.... the boat we were planning on keeping for at least 8 years. The boat we were planning to teach our kids to sail on. The boat were planning to take on many adventures. The boat we LOVED.
When we bought Viking almost 2 years ago, selling her this soon was definitely not in our plans. But plans change. I'll save that story for another post :)
We put her on the market back in January for sale by owner. We didn't get very many "bites" but we did have one person from Canada that was very interested. It fell through, which was heartbreaking.
Then we decided we needed to list it with a broker. The problem with that is they take a 10% cut. TEN percent. That's a lotta money.
We got our first offer March 7th, but it was actually kind of a nightmare. The people didn't even seem to like our boat to begin with--they were just really wishy-washy and I had a bad feeling about them from the start. After you put in an offer, you do a boat inspection (or survey). Landon was at the boat ALL day to help answer questions and even took them out on the river so they could rev the engine up. Landon ended up leaving before the survey was done because it was getting late. And guess what the people did? They got freaked out about some moisture readings in the deck of the boat and completely WALKED AWAY! They didn't even finish the inspection, or negotiate the price based on the findings of the inspection. They just left us hanging high and dry. When our broker called to tell me that they completely backed out, I was sobbing uncontrollably for 30 minutes. It was rough. We shouldn't have been surprised, because we knew they weren't very good people. To this day, Landon and I get all ragey when we talk about the whole thing. I mean, when you put an offer on a boat, you should be pretty serious about it, right? We were SO excited and then basically got crushed.
We didn't have much action until the beginning of June--so we were feeling super anxious and upset and stuck. Remember this post about our little miracle? Well I wrote that because we got an offer on our boat! It was amazing. We were jumping around and screaming and just SO happy. We didn't accept their offer (it was WAY too low) so we went back and forth for a few days trying to negotiate on a price. And then they were silent. So we waited, and waited, and waited. And got super angry. How could this be happening to us again?!?! I was SO tired of getting my hopes up to then be CRUSHED. Again.
But then another miracle happened... we got ANOTHER offer on the boat from an awesome couple in Seattle. They saw our boat and just fell in love! I knew I wanted them to have our boat. We wanted Viking to go to a happy family!
So they did the boat inspection and we took them out on a test sail and they were just so happy. They actually liked our boat (unlike the first jerk faces). It was a real-life miracle. Everything was going great! Until the very end of the test sail when we turned on the motor to head back to the marina...
...And our engine died. In the shallow part of the river. Surrounded by other boats.
It honestly felt like a nightmare. I couldn't believe it was really happening. I felt so sick. The people were actually as calm as can be, and really didn't seem too phased by it. We promised that this had NEVER happened before, and it hadn't! We have used that motor SOOOO much. What are the chances?! We had to call our broker who brought his sailboat out to rescue us. We rafted up alongside his boat while he towed us back to a the marina. It was a nightmare, but really the buyers were so calm and didn't seem concerned at all.
We left the marina that night feeling so low and with so many questions and so much anxiety. It was a pretty bad feeling. We didn't even know if the people would want our boat after that disaster or what the problem was with our engine.
So we woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and headed back to the boat... It was 99 degrees that day and we were there from 8:30-5:30 trying to figure out the problem. We were able to get our boat back to our slip, but the engine died again! So we had to wake up really early on Sunday morning and figure out what the problem was. Talk about ANXIETY!
Turns out there was a clog in the fuel line and Landon of course figured it all out like a champ! Thank goodness!
About 5 days later we heard back from the buyers who said that they wanted our boat, but for 4k less than their original offer. Bummer, but at least they weren't walking away! They also wanted us to get a certified mechanic out to verify the engine was working, which is totally understandable.
I can't believe all the hurdles we had to jump to get this boat sold! Life has just been crazy these past few months. So many ups and downs.
Anyway, here's a few pictures from our adventures on Viking. She really is a beautiful boat and we had so much fun with her the past few years! It's sad to see her go.
For that reason, we do not regret buying Viking... even though we probably wouldn't have even considered buying her if we knew we were only going to own her for less than 2 years!
We are EXTREMELY grateful for the time we had with Viking. We've learned a lot and experienced a lot (including sailing in the ocean!) that we wouldn't have been able to experience unless we OWNED a boat. We are sad to say goodbye to Viking, but excited at the same time.
We love you Viking!
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