Struana

It was not so easy choosing a name. Starting point was the brand X-Yachts which has led many an owner incorporating an X somewhere in the name, ideally kicking off with the X. So the immediate issue was that there are not that many words/names starting with an X. Previously names such as X-calibur or Exuberance have been rather good choices or my favourite, Xi Nix, the name of a Dutch yacht for which you have to understand Dutch and probably be Dutch to appreciate the humour... (Xi Nix comes from 'k zie niks or more correctly ik zie niks which translates into English as I don't see anything with an undertone of "I don't see j**k sh*t"). Xenophobia sprang to mind but that would have been a bit of a contradiction.

Then there is the Roxana, Roxette, Roxy, etc, collection. Problem here was that Part 1 registration in the UK required a unique name, or in any case a name which did not appear as yet in the registry. We did like Roxy a lot but it was not long after Maria came up with this name that an X-442 appeared for sale elsewhere, also named Roxy. So it was already taken effectively, regardless of Part 1 registration. Can't have two X-442s of the same colour with the same name. It would be a bit like matter and anti-matter, everything's fine until you meet and then....? Really unexpected things could happen after a night out.

I did consider Disco Inferno as a follow up on Disco 2000 which is the name of our 420, bought in 1996 in Scotland and borrowing from the song with the same name by Pulp. But, while Disco Inferno is cool under most circumstances, should things ever go wrong and you find yourself radioing for assistance, Disco Inferno comes across as silly at best.

So it was back in time, to the 90's, for the final burst of inspiration. Maria and I met halfway through the 1990's when we were both working in Aberdeen, Scotland. We led somewhat tough lives spending most of our time on oil rigs as our employer Schlumberger ensured it got maximum service out of its employees. So we met and did happily manage to spend a lot of happy moments together marching across the Scottish Highlands, notwithstanding the dreadful telephone calls on Sunday mornings with instructions to be at the heliport within 90 minutes to fly offshore and help get a drill pipe unstuck, etc. Such trips could mean anything between five days and three weeks offshore, and it was usually the latter (my particular role would be to lower some explosives down the drill pipe, sever the pipe just above the place where it was stuck, and then the drilling co could take some other actions to get the stuck bit free. Usually it meant an endless amount of effort to be able to resume drilling, with my contribution being to get the pipe loose every time it got stuck again...).

To return to the Highlands, our moments there allowed us to endlessly talk about, discuss, argue over and debate our future since the oil services life style, though tremendously exciting, did not really appeal that much to us for the longer term. Well, Singapore did play a central role in what happened next but really, our plans were born on those damp and grey days wearing down our hiking boots along the top of ridges and along the endless streams of the Highlands. "From the stream" as it were, for which there is a rather elegant word in Gaelic: "Struana". So Struana ends our search and her port of registry will be Aberdeen.

X-442 it is

There are some options which need to be considered, though most of these yachts I believe are dark blue (which I think looks amazing), some have teak decks, some don't and most have three cabins, one in the front and two towards the stern. Further, there are two main cabin lay-outs: traditional, which has the galley in the back opposite the chart table and a rectangular table which needs to be folded down to pass, and modern, which has the galley along one side of the ship with an oval table opposite. Maria and I wanted the modern version, looked more cosy (especially if we're going to spend a lot of time on board) and I in addition wanted the four-cabin version. This option reduces the size of the front cabin and adds two bunks as you make your way aft.

I thought those bunks would be good to have really for three reasons. Firstly, when I sailed with my parents back in the 70s, all of us kids slept in the front of the ship, in bunks. Super cosy and exciting. It's something I hoped Frederik and Sofia would also be able to experience (let's hope they like sailing....). Secondly, this is the charter version of the yacht, having 8 bunks, so just in case I want to rent out the yacht (with myself on it) in the future..... Finally, hopefully I'll do plenty of trips with many people so just more reason to have enough space.

Armed with these specs I emailed a large collection of brokers in Europe and voila! there was the reply (albeit after a few weeks) from X-Yachts Deutschland, they had one for sale. Location: Haderslev, Denmark, place of birth for all X-Yachts. The one I would be looking at was not new but refitted by the shipyard having been traded in by the previous owner. So I went, first to Hamburg and then onward in the Broker's car (his name was Sven, http://www.contact-yachts.de/). In his Range Rover we drove at high speed through Germany (well for Germany maybe it was not so bad) and not so high speed through Denmark to eventually reach the X-Yachts shipyard. It was deserted, it being a Saturday, and the X-442 was parked in isolation in a marquee where she was undergoing her refit.

I had never seen anything as beautiful before in my life (except maybe my two cute kids and wife). What an amazing, amazing, amazing yacht I was looking at.  S h e   w a s   p e r f e c t . She had everything I was looking for, 4 cabins, modern layout, teak deck, etc. And she was quite new and having had a major service, everything looked so good (I had the same list of things to check as I had had looking over the Sigma 36 6 months earlier, so was quite satisfied that all components were in good working order. To be honest, as good as new).

So that was it. On my way back I typed an email with a bunch of extras I would want to see and if those could be included (in particular I wanted AIS, which is a new system to identify other ships, and be identified) I would be willing to make a serious offer. All went well and the subsequent offer was accepted. Here are some pictures taken by the surveyor a couple of weeks later.

Which boat?

At around the same time when I was trying to obtain financing, I gave the idea of "which boat?" some serious thought. Granted, it was more a fantasy than anything else but you do need something to keep you on your toes as the days and weeks in the office pass by. I looked around at a whole range of sailing yachts, finally stumbling on....
.... X-Yachts. I always thought these were mainly high performance racing yachts so I had not given X-Yachts much thought due to the fact that I wasn't looking for a racing machine. But then, during one weekend in May which we spent in Italy, we met Julie, who together with her husband owned an X-50. It looked very impressive. But I was quickly taken aback by the looks of some of her sister ships, the X-412, 442 and 482 cruiser-racers. I looked no further. I had found the yacht design and constructor of my dreams.

Financing

Buying a boat is not like buying a house. Biggest and rather disturbing difference is that a boat depreciates whereas a house should at least retain its value, over the long term. Having said this though, the Sigma 36 described below had a price tag of around GBP30k in 1983 when new, today she still sells for GBP30k. Says something about inflation... But it is possible to borrow money to buy a boat, turns out it is primarily a matter of finding that friendly banker. The irony is though, financing of yachts usually does not go beyond the 20th year of the boat's life so I realised I would either be buying an old, written off yacht with cash, or a young specimen with borrowed money. The prospect of the latter was rather enticing. Time to take the next step.

Best place to start is the internet. So there I went, during the warm months of the summer of 2010, trawling the net with my 'yacht financing', 'marine finance', etc, searches. Plenty of hits. "Financing up to EUR 25m possible!" were encouraging first results. Although, encouraging? This was UHNW stuff, not man-in-the-street down-to-earth marine mortgage terrain. Luckily all had online application forms, which I filled in carefully (also tried to get an actual price for a boat by designing my own boat on the Dehler website and having pressed "get quote" I waited patiently for .... ever. I clearly would not be buying a Dehler of any size or colour). As far as the online applications went, not one reputable financing house was happy to see me filling out their online application as evidenced by the deafening silence emitted by my inbox.

OK let's talk then. To be honest I don't recall exactly what happened on the phone apart from the fact that not much happened. I phoned around to firms in Holland, Switzerland, France, Germany and the UK and checked whether someone in a far-flung corner of Credit Suisse would be willing to lend me some money. What struck me mainly was the general lack of interest displayed, more or less across the board.

Except by one firm in the UK: CGI Finance. I have rarely experienced service and dedication as good as that displayed by CGI. Having established that this firm would also be able to finance non-super yachts, we had a very good discussion about what was needed to obtain financing but the advice was to turn to their parent SocGen in France who would probably know more about Swiss based clients. "Non!" they came back with "you're based in Switzerland, sorry", so back I went to the UK and there I was adamant I wanted to use their services. The UK answer was solid, yes they could do this but would potentially require a lot of certification of my papers by a notary which would cost money. And if they were to extend financing, the yacht would have to be UK Part 1 Registered which could prove to be an arduous process. And the yacht would be sailing under the flag of the UK.

Having obtained a list of all the documents I would need to send in to apply for the mortgage I did just that, submitted everything I had. Gloriously, two weeks later the deal was done, no certification, once I knew which yacht I wanted to buy, I could draw down a sum of money to finance a yacht beyond my wildest dreams.  Of course with the same stroke of the pen I would also commit myself to a decade of debt but hey, you don't get happy without a little pain on the way.

Sailing License

Without a doubt the internet is great to get any information on almost anything. It seems fortunate that the natural tendency for the human being is to tell other people about themselves and what they did, and, encouragingly, what to watch out for. So googling tips and advice posted on the web about sailing without restraint, ie to go wherever one pleases, quickly reveals that a lot of hassle can be avoided by having the proper documentation and licenses on board. It does vary by country but it would be fair to say that you should be able to demonstrate convincingly with whom ownership of the yacht lies, that it is properly insured (at least third party), the radio is registered and that the skipper is qualified. Briefly, France is particularly keen about the yacht registration, Spain needs to see adequate insurance and Croatia now requires the International Certificate of Competence (ICC), for example.

Not much of relevance for me as yet, but obtaining the ICC would do no harm. It would also allow chartering in Croatia should we wish and besides, most chartering companies expect some kind of proof of competence regardless of location. In most European countries, the ICC is now tagged on to the existing yacht master qualifications, and it would appear that standards vary dramatically by country. I believe this is a reflection of the varying water sport 'facilities' which are found across Europe. So, in the UK, with the majority of boating trips taking place on the English Channel, the North Sea and the Atlantic, becoming qualified is justifiably challenging. And so therefore is getting one's hands on the ICC. In The Netherlands on the other hand water sport for the majority is constrained to the inland waters of which there are plenty. There, basic knowledge of the rules of the road, navigation and general safety considerations are arguably sufficient. Better to have the majority of water born folk educated to a reasonable minimum level than the occasional captain Haddock making his way through a bunch of ignorants. 

In The Netherlands the exam is theory only and studying for it is obviously fun with materials being widely available on the internet. With a couple of weeks of focus and cramming the different navigation lights of ships underway, stopped, aground, at anchor or otherwise into one's head, not to forget that true north minus variation and deviation equals magnetic north and that the wind will veer when a front passes by kind of sets you up to pass comfortably.

In August, parallel ruler and dividers in hand, I made my way to the neat set up of the examination facility in Hoofddorp, near Schiphol. Luckily I passed, another step in the right direction. With only a slight feeling of guilt having got off so lightly compared to for example our UK yachting counterparts, I headed into Amsterdam for a very nice evening out...

Early days

I guess when you want to do something big which seems somewhat if not utterly out of reach, you just got to start somewhere. Also, the notion of one step at a time is very valid. Thus, to somehow move closer to fulfilling my almost lifelong desire to own a sailing yacht this is what I decided to do. Get going, one step at a time.

Quite a while back in the late 80's, my family (parents, brother, sister and friends) chartered a Sigma 36. It was an absolutely lovely boat. We took her from the Hamble to the Channel Islands and back. It was fun and she was a pleasure to sail. She had nice lines and I do like fractional rigs, which she had. But the yard which constructed the Sigma range of yachts was either taken over or quit the business with no more new Sigma's having been built since the mid 90's. The Sigma which I was so charmed by was discontinued around 1985. So on the one hand nothing too new available, on the other, those which were now on the market for sale were quite cheap being 25 years+ old.

(The actual yacht I sailed on is now located in Asia, or Malaysia to be more precise. I understand it is on its way to Australia for some extensive racing. Goes to show these yachts are tough. Some pictures here)

So I looked around, primarily online, and found a couple of Sigma 36's for sale, most in the UK. I was looking for wheel steering and some other gadgets which I thought were important and found one near Glasgow, Scotland. I toyed with the idea of taking a look. Nothing to lose, and I rather liked its location: the cold Atlantic waters greatly reduce the rate of osmosis (the inevitable process of water molecules making their way into the fibreglass, eventually causing blistering and general deterioration of the hull), fresh water and warm tropical waters being particularly bad.

The asking price was around GBP35k which was an amount I could just about afford. So I went, on my way from Zurich to Glasgow via Amsterdam, staying one night near Edinburgh with an old friend, Matthew Wood, from our days at the Royal Grammar School in Guildford also in the late 80's (Matt and I shared a fair amount of sailing action together, on his father's yacht, a Dolphin moored off Gosport and during school regattas off Hayling Island and other places in a somewhat dodgy GP14. We did win a lot of races though...). Seeing Matt & family already made the whole trip worthwhile, checking out the Sigma 36 became a happy coincidence.

I decided (vowed almost) that weekend that whatever I would do going forward on the yachting scene, it would always be thoroughly stress free. If not I would be on the wrong path.

OK, so following train rides across Scotland (I had to get to Edinburg from Glasgow) which were really impressive and having hitched a lift with the yacht broker, I got to look at 'my' Sigma 36, on the west coast of Scotland. In fact I had the whole Saturday afternoon by myself to look over the yacht. For me, nothing beats the smell of the insides of a yacht with a history: the combination of diesel, salt, mould, ropes, life jackets and more sailing gear brought back many happy memories of excitement, challenge and romance. It was a strong reminder of where I was headed. Here she is:

But, clearly this was an old boat which would need a tremendous amount of work. I should add at this point that long distance blue water cruising is my goal and for that one does feel more comfortable with a thoroughly seaworthy yacht. Design-wise I was looking at such a yacht. But the amount of work I would need to put into her was astounding, with seacocks entirely corroded hence needing replacement, leaks near the shroud attachment points, loose stanchion posts and corroded fore and aft railings, etc. I realised it could be done. But not living near the sea at the time (Zurich, Switzerland) I didn't think it would be fair on the family (and myself for that matter) to spend all my free time - and a lot of money - over a period of years to do the work required.

I kindly declined to make an offer. But the first step had been taken.