Chelena – as we found her

Nearly there…! After weeks and weeks of wrangling, research, a survey, more wrangling and finally some agreement, I’ve nearly bought a boat.

Which is fairly terrifying (my wallet is cringeing away into the shadows), and also pretty exciting. If I was an American I’d have a bucket list: a list of things to do before I die. I’m not American, and don’t have a bucket list (if possible, I’d like to do EVERYTHING), but I have always wanted to own a boat.

At Christmas I started trawling the web for a suitable craft, and pretty soon realised that I had no idea which, of the thousands of designs, would suit my ideas. So Katie and I bounced a few of those ideas around. Re-tracing the route of Miles Clark’s Wild Goose around Russia looked interesting, but the practicalities of corruption look to be a fairly significant hindrance. Ditto Tristan Jones’ route up the Rhine and down the Danube. More accessible are the coasts of Scotland and Norway, the Islands of the Mediterranean. With those ideas floating, it became pretty clear that a flat out racing boat wasn’t right, and I narrowed my search to a boat that could go almost anywhere without needing to sleep on the walls.

Quite early in January we went to look at a big American-designed cruising boat, a Challenger 32, in Levington on the Suffolk coast. It was spitting with rain and Baltic cold, but we spent a good 30 seconds on board nonetheless. She was a total dog and in need of a new deck, not in my gift or budget. Walking back to the broker’s office though Katie pointed out a long blue bow among the rows of white plastic hulls.

Chelena on the hard at Levington

Chelena is a Sadler 32, designed in 1982 in the UK as a successor to the ever-popular Contessa 32 (on which I learnt to sail). They are a well regarded open water cruiser, not fast and certainly strong. Chelena has a shorter keel than most, so won’t do as well upwind as others, but she’ll be able to get in almost anywhere. A small problem though… she was way over budget.

Was.

Since that first look over her in January she was in the back of my mind as an option, and I let the broker know as much. Fortnightly from then on I had a call from the brokerage and a long conversation about inventory, cosmetics, cradles and the like. Eventually, finally, surprisingly, we agreed a price… and I began to worry that I might actually be about to buy a boat, and more than that… a boat with a purple draylon interior!

The camera does NOT do this draylon justice!