Missing out....
Retrospective look at our first attempted boat purchase on December 12, 2025
After convincing Nataliya that having a huge mortgage and a boat is a good idea, I set about finding a vessel that we could sail across the world. This CE A rated boat was up for auction at the De Valk auction website: https://brightauctions.com
With no survey, and only a walk through video posted by Yachtbuoy on youtube as well as the De Valk write up, we had a decision to make. Aluminium hull, a 2500nm range, only 15 years old, modern electronics and a pretty funky tender garage. The boat itself seemed perfect for what we needed, albeit a little bit flawed with very small saloon space. However, with just the two of us, and IF it was a bargain price we decided to go for it.
Being in Australia the auction was at 5am in the morning, so we set our alarms, made a pact not to go above $280,000 EUR (it had been listed for more than twice that). Bidding at auction on something with inherent risks was very nerve wracking. We were excited about the possibilities, but of course without a technical survey and spending that much money (that we had to borrow), it came with real danger of us quite plainly being impulsive and pretty stupid.
Making life changing decisions at 5am in the morning when you’ve been awake for about 10 minutes is not recommended. 17 others bidders came and went, and it came down to us and one other bidder. With just a few minutes before the auction times out after each bid, and our limit exhausted we had decisions to make. Each bid was costing us over $10k Australian.
At one point we were all smiles and high fiving when the other bidder placed their bid with 1 second remaining.
In the end we maxed out at $320,000EUR, the winner taking it home for if you investigate what is available, is a pretty decent bargain providing it is in the condition it appears.
So we’d missed out. We were immediately disappointed. Could we have gone higher? Should we have gone higher? What would the loan repayments look like? What else is out there comparable? Will we ever find something else we like as much as this?
All these questions and our disappointment however cemented the fact that this had gone from, if we manage to pick up a stunning boat at a ridiculously low price lets do this, to we are doing this, lets get all our ducks in a row and figure it out!!
I will say that even though we were the second highest bidder for the vessel we felt little underwhelmed by De Valk. We had sent a couple of emails to them prior asking for basic information and they responded with extremely brief answers. After the auction I sent an email just to say that we were the second highest bidder and if there are any issues with settlement on the vessel let us know. We got a one sentence response that the vessel had been awarded to the highest bidder and buyer had initiated payment. Given we had committed through the auction to spending $320k EUR which we obviously didn’t win, we were exceptionally surprised that nobody reached out to us to discuss other options or vessels available. Given De Valk is probably the leading boat broker in Europe, it was quite surprising. However, this may be more of a cultural thing and normal way of doing business in the Netherlands, which isn’t so bad as it means you aren’t being pressured by sales people.
For now however, we had our sights set firmly on finding another vessel.