Tally Ho - the hunt is on!

We completed on the house at last on Friday morning and by mid-afternoon the first big financial outlay was in the bag. Not the new boat (yet) but trading in the car, which is now six years old, on a pre-registered van.

The van will be far more useful for the business and perfectly usable for our domestic transport needs

With that commitment signed, sealed and soon to be delivered and knowing exactly where we stand, we've been able to fix the budget for Bigger Boat at £30,000 which must include any required short term spending.

That's, as expected, £10k less than we originally hoped and it pretty much rules out the slightly bigger boats we had half an eye on such as a Westerly Solway and an Oyster Mariner.

So a lot of searching of the various brokerage and boat sales websites has generated a short list of four boats. They are all Westerly 33 ketches!

A W33 ketch - not one of the four currently for sale!

We liked the main cabin and forward of that layout of the Westerly Discus, which has the same hull and deck moulding, but we decided the aft cabin on the Discus was simply too cramped to be of much use. The earlier 33, with the access to the aft cabin from the cockpit rather than via a very cramped walk-through, looks more functionally usable

The only minor niggle is that the W33 generally only comes with the smaller 'L' shaped galley. The Discus had the optional 'U' shaped galley with a shorter starboard settee. We need to get on board one and decide whether that's going to be a problem or not. We think it will be OK. Indeed, it might be a case of it will have to be OK!

The best of the four is unfortunately in Swansea which is a bit of a pain. Not only is it a fair old drag to go and look at it, it will take at least a week of hard sailing to fetch her back to Fambridge from South Wales. However, we're hoping to arrange for our good friend Roger, who's in the vicinity this morning, to give her a quick once over today

The next best, and in some respects in fact better, has just been listed on Apolloduck and is in Ipswich which is very convenient. However, despite only having appeared on Apolloduck on Thursday, on the brokers own website it's showing as "Sale Pending" so I need to give them a ring this morning and find out whether it is available or not

Failing those two, there are two examples on the South Coast either of which we'd be happy with. Both would need new saloon upholstery though for aesthetic reasons - colourful stripy cushions ugh!

The favourite two boats are both fin keel which I've decided I'm happy to go with. Somewhat more restricted for getting in and out of our mud berth (although there may be developments on that front this year but more of that anon) and of course you can't casually dry out a fin keeler but on the other hand they suffer from far fewer keel bolt problems and sail better

So now the time is nigh to get on the phone and start calling the brokers ...