It's been a stressful weekend, originally today was supposed to be the day we sailed Aukai (soon to be SweetHaven) up to our waiting slip in Oak Harbor Marina but thanks to lack of knowledge on our part and the total incompetence of everyone else involved we have had to push our date to Thursday. You wouldn't think three more days would make too much of a difference but we had already set up time for my mom to come down and babysit the kids for us, Mark had taken time off work and we'd set up with Josh (the caretaker of Aukai) to sail up with us.
But last Friday I got calls from our brokers head office with some discouraging information.
Firstly she wanted copies of our bank draft because they didn't know where our money had gone (always a great sign).
Next she asked if we'd done the lein search on the boat yet. We said "we didn't, our broker said the vendor had one done." With some more research into this supposition we discovered that our broker hadn't actually had the owner do a legal search but just asked the owner if there was any liens on the boat, which of course he said no to. (Duh).
Next we are informed that it isn't the sellers responsibility to do that but ours and today is the last day for that condition to be met. (Awesome. Would have been nice to know that a week ago)
We are put in touch with a marine document service who very rudely says there is no way we can get that done before Monday. So that meant we couldn't take our boat home. (Bummer)
Soon forms were flying all over the world to us, to Thailand and back to British Columbia, signing extensions to the lein amendment and a letter asking the owner to let us take possession of the vessel before the title is cleared.
Later Friday night the caretaker of the boat called us saying that a big wind storm was blowing through Port Townsend harbor where the boat was precariously anchored, he said he moved it into the marina there for the weekend at $40 a night and needed us to pay for that.
Okay, first off, we do not own the boat yet! How has it become our responsibility to pay for the boat safe keeping when it isn't ours?
Safe to say we were not impressed with this turn of events. It's mind numbing the things we have had to do these past two weeks trying to get this deal done. Of course being the good natured snooks we are we paid the $80 to keep the boat safe. Stupid? Probably. But the owner being a flake in Thailand wasn't about to pay to keep it safe and Josh couldn't afford to keep it in the marina and was doing it as a favour to us, because let's face it, if we want to buy the boat, there needs to be a boat to buy. And if its anchor lets go and it drifts off and smashes into a pile a splinters who does that help? No one.
Of course this was the last straw, which generated heated emails and phone messages to the owner, to both brokers we are dealing with now and pretty much anyone who would listen. We gave the ultimatum that if all the papers/extensions/amendments and the letter releasing the vessel into our possession was not signed by Monday (today) then the deal was off, we expected every cent of our money back including this $80 we spent on a marina.
Sadly but true, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and signed papers started rolling on on Sunday. The boat is safely back at her anchor, the broker got the original documents (title/registration) delivered to our lawyer so she can get the lein search done, by Wednesday (I coerced her into promising) and everything is set to go for Thursday, to sail her up. (Lord willing).
It's been one heck of a hassle and alot of wind has been let out of our sails (metaphorically). Something we were so excited about is now a drag, made us wonder if this is actually the right thing to be doing, how many road blocks are too many? But we carry on, pray everything will work out and hope to get back some of our excitement and anticipation we originally had about finally buying our sailboat.
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