"Wanna go to the Annapolis Boat Show tomorrow?" asked my hubby. Hmm, I'm not terribly interested in boats, but he is. And the cold, wet spring weather had turned a beautiful 72 degrees and sunny. I was longing to get outside. "Sure," I said.
The Spring Boat Show is smaller than the Fall, but it was still packed with people and boats. Everyone was clearly enjoying the warm, slightly breezy day. We only had a couple hours, so I suggested we look at a few catamarans. We had looked a monohulls in the years past and I knew for a fact I could never live on one. Too tippy. Too small. Too below the waterline.
We boarded a couple older catamarans, but weren't impressed. They felt like RVs on the water with lots of white (or yellowing) plastic and "boaty" veneers. Not my bag.
Then we boarded a 2018 Fountaine Pajot "Lucia" 40. Now, this was a nice boat! It felt like an apartment... an apartment you could take with you when you traveled. I wandered around the cabins, the galley, the cockpit... images of living in that space started to take root. The salesman asked if we wanted to join the presentation about owning a boat as a business -- it was starting in 5 mins. I'm normally the first to pass on a sales presentation, but to my hubby's surprise, I said yes. We took two seats in the front row.
The presentation was a boring PowerPoint deck and the salesman droned on in his I've-given-this-presentation-a-hundred-times voice, but there were enough tidbits of information that possibly related to The Amazing Ocean that I made us stick through it. We checked out a couple more yachts, but went back and took a second look at that FP Lucia. I took the salesman's card.
Two weeks later, while in DSW looking for a pair of shoes for my daughter, I picked up a pair of Sperry topsiders. I'd never owned boat shoes... never needed to. But something made me try them on. They fit! So I bought them.
