In our experience, there are three ways to buy a boat.

• Buy brand new with all the mod cons, but its expensive
• Buy it cheap and then do it up
• Look for the middle ground

If you have the money to buy it new, then do expect to buy stuff on top. When you purchase a boat it will come with all the equipment that is needed to sail the boat, but it might come with simple one speed winches, when what you really need is self tailing two speed winches. Buying new comes at a price and for most people, it is too much. For some reason, when you say you have a yacht, it is this expensive kind that comes to mind, it like saying you own a car and them immediatly thinking you own a porshe, rather than the Nissan Micra or whatever, that you really do own.

Another way of buying a boat is to buy it cheap and do it up. For this option you do need to be handy otherwise you are paying somebody to work on your boat. I know of a shipwright in Maldon, Essex who charges £25 per hour and I thought that was reasonable for the workmanship and quality that he produces, but for one eight hour day, thats £200 you have just spent. This is why some people get their boats done up in the far east where £200 can get you a weeks work and sometimes more. The one thing for certain is that if you want to go down the buy it cheap and do it up there are some bargins to have. I was on a yacht that cost £2,000 and it was in good nick. It had a solid hull with no osmosis problems and with a £1,000 spent on top, you could be sailing her. The linnings were shot and there was work to be done, but with a bit of TLC, you could do it.

We however went for the middle ground. We could afford to spend some money, which would allow us to get a yacht that was ready to sail. We also wanted luxury and a nice place to live. Getting the money to carry out our dreams was the first step. So we sold our three bedroom house in Manchester and moved to a two bedroomed flat in Liverpool. This move allowed us to achive several objectives

• Free up money from the house sale in order to be able to buy ourselves a yacht
• Set up my two children to the best of my ability, by letting them have the flat for a few years rent free, they had the best start in life that I could provide. As you can imagine my two children were well up for the deal. So now they have a good two bedroomed flat in Liverpool. This will certainly allow them to save money, so that they can save for a deposit.
• Set up money for the future. Once the children are sorted, then we will be able to rent the flat out to bring in more income
• Let us have some money while we sort ourselves out. We will be trying lots of ideas on how to earn money and I will be detailing them in this blog, but this years plan is set as. Sail for as much of the summer as we can, then in September get a job for six months until Easter, when it will be time to start sailing again.