Making an offer
We found a boat, and made a very low offer
We found a boat we liked!!
After the disappointment of the Velder 63 we moved on to see what else was out there. Slowly we were upping our price range in our searches, looking for explorer style yachts. What started as “well this is out of our price range but wouldn’t it be cool”, turned into something more tangible.
Meet Sophia
Sophia is a big (19.4m / 63ft) explorer yacht designed by Pieter Beeldsnijder and launched in 1995. Yes, she’s 30 years old. However, she has a 3000nm range, with 6370lt fuel tanks, was fully refitted between 2019 and 2021, this included both interior and electronics. Her hull is aluminium, and she has hydraulic stabilizers and the hullvane system installed.
Hullvane is a Dutch company working on both commercial and recreational vessels with their Hull Vane and Foil Assist systems to greatly improve vessel comfort and fuel economy.
The interior includes the luxury of a modern vessel, big screen TV and plenty of windows providing fantastic light.
The master bedroom even includes a sauna adjacent to the bathroom. Nataliya being of Ukrainian heritage absolutely loves a sauna, and the idea of jumping between the sea and the sauna instantly appealed.
There were a few shortfalls, but nothing we weren’t willing to overcome:
No tender included
No solar
No Starlink
Very small kitchenette
Had been for sale for 2 years so perhaps had not been maintained
So, based solely on a short youtube video:
And the information on the Elburg Yachting website, we enquired. Our initial offer (similar to our max bid on the Velder 63 - see our previous post) was turned away, but at least we got a reply.
We loved the boat, and really were stretching things financially, but put a final offer to forward which they took to the owner.
We realised that in most circumstances these boats are the pride and joy of the owner, so instead of trying to talk up the fact it was 30 years old, or that it had been for sale for quite some time, we decided to be completely honest. We loved the boat, we would give it as much love as we could, but we could only afford a certain amount, and we realised that the vessel was worth more than we were offering.
A call from Floris at Elburg let us know that this was actually a possibility. The owner was putting an offer in for a new boat for himself, and if that offer was accepted he would agree to sell to us. This news had us over the moon, but still with the uncertainty that something would go wrong and it wouldn’t happen.
Although we were informed it might take a couple of weeks, it only took a couple of days. The owner had his offer on a new vessel agreed, and true to his word, a contract of sale was on the way to us.
We don’t know if this is the normal way things happen when buying boats, we knew there was a bit of negotiation to be expected, and some leeway in the advertised price, but we found Floris and Thomas at Elburg to be fantastic and easy to work with. There was no attempt at haggling, we explained our situation, and made a genuine offer.
Unlike buying at auction, our contract of sale is subject to a technical survey and sea test. So after contacting a surveyor in the Netherlands we await the results. Floris sent me a photo of the boat quite literally in a car park awaiting the surveyor.
Photos don’t do it justice just how big a boat this actually is. We’re hoping this bit of luxury doesn’t come at the cost of not being able to find marina spaces in the future.
While we await the survey results, there are some other things to take care of, more on that another day!