Home / Logs / 2006 / February 28, 2006
No Longer A Research Project
Febuary 28, 2006
If you consider the difference between academic exercises and true commitment, our progress toward becoming cruisers has all just been a research project until now. In January 2006 that changed. We signed the contract that legally binds us to the construction of Makara – a significant financial commitment.
Having been boat owners before we knew the old saying “The happiest days of a boat owner’s life, are the day they buy the boat and the day they sell it”. This time around, that saying didn’t apply. After we signed our lives away, our feelings could best be described as exhaustion mixed with exhilaration. The purchase of Makara was a nine hour marathon session of discussing the nearly two hundred separate line items that are involved in contracting for a semi-custom boat. Mind you, this wasn’t about deciding the color of the Corian® for the countertops but rather about the necessity for insulation between the hull and the interior to provide additional protection from arctic weather, whether or not one or two start batteries would be best, and a lengthy debate on manual bilge pumps.
Upon reflection, the day after we recognized what a major milestone this really was. If you have ever owned a boat you know what a huge responsibility it is. After we sold our beloved Perigail we felt a sense of freedom and could not imagine ourselves once again committing to the responsibility of boat ownership. But when we sold Perigail we were heading for a land locked existence in Dallas Texas and had other life goals to attend to. However, here we are, committing to build a boat some 12 feet longer and nearly five times the cost of Perigail. In retrospect we don’t feel a loss of freedom due to the responsibility of owning another boat, rather quite the opposite – Makara represents the promise of freedom. She will be a self-contained spaceship that will allow us to roam the watery space between lands far and wide.
Our long-standing aspirations to go full time cruising have finally gotten out of the pure planning stages and into hard reality. We are building this boat. Makara is the enabler of our dreams. It is hard to go cruising without a boat, as we are not really “into” swimming our way around. There are still many design sessions and decisions to come, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s so that the boatyard knows exactly what to build. But at least the project schedule has been kicked off! Passport will begin construction of Makara in a brand new facility in Xiamen China in August, and if all goes well she will arrive on the east coast of the United States in April of next year.
Since Passport’s are build in China, there are a number of components that must be purchased and sent over through Chinese customs in a large container (to avoid paying duty). Basically if it isn’t in the container it doesn’t go on the boat, at least economically. So we have our homework to do. The rig itself, which we’ll talk about in the next installment, is actually constructed by Selden and meets the boat in Annapolis once it is shipped over here. Complicated, but Makara is a bit international. This seems only right, however, as she is not intended to be a “dock queen” but is instead being built to ply the oceans of the world.
There is always a bit of trepidation in a transaction such as this. Goodly sums of money are changing, or are committed to change hands, and there is a great deal of responsibility associated with owning and properly caring for a vessel such as Makara. But all that melted away as we realized that in our hearts and souls, the very way we direct our current lives is dedicated to our cruising aspirations. We will make this happen, and the first, rather big step is already past us.