Why this boat?

When the idea for this adventure first sparked, one of the first questions we started in on, was
“what kind of boat?”. We quickly decided that we would need three cabins and that the boat needed to be less than fifty feet. Then we became Yacht World addicts. There are a lot of boats out there and its really fun to window shop. As we sifted through boat after boat, what we were actually looking for started to take shape. Type of galley, tankage, cockpit arrangement, hull shape, draft, sail arrangement, engine, systems – we started a spreadsheet cause that’s what we do.

Our next step was to find some help, and this came from our good friend, training buddy, and triathlon coach, Scott Layton. Oh - Scott’s a yacht broker with Lyman Morse too. He sat us down, talked things through, then showed us every boat in our area that loosely fit our criteria. None of them grabbed us, though each one excited us. I think I can get excited about any boat I see!

But Sargo is very different from most boats on Yacht World, so how did we end up with her?
There are not that many boat types with three cabins under fifty feet that are not set up in a charter configuration. The boats that kept coming up in our searches were European and many were aluminum. OVNI’s, Allures, Garcia’s, Boreal’s – we started to learn a lot about these boats, and one in particular named EXIT. She’s a Garcia, an older sistership to Sargo (and we learned they’ve met up in the past). We really liked what we learned about her, but we were too early in our search and someone else grabbed her quickly.

Which brings me back to aluminum. Not your typical cruising boat hull material in the US.
And one that brought gasps of horror from a few of our knowledgeable friends. But Jayme and I seem drawn to the rugged, tough material, and to the unconventional (We have a very unique aluminum power boat named Hard Tack) so we began to focus on aluminum boats. We made trips to Florida, to Maryland, and continued to scour the internet. Aluminum, three cabin, shoal draft, centerboard (another gasp from our friends), became our focus.

We were at the Annapolis boat show looking starry eyed and sticker shocked at a new Allure and a new Boreal, when Pete, the broker there for Swiftsure Yachts (they specialize in these aluminum boats) told us he knew of a Garcia that might be coming on the market in
Massachusetts soon. We asked him to stay in touch. And he did.

Not too soon afterwards, he let Scott know that a kind of special Garcia Passoa 46
was going to be listed in Mass. Scott shared the listing with us (Pete knows how to use a camera – there were 270 photos of Sargo, more than we’d seen for any other Yacht World listing). We poured over every one of them and really likely what we saw. Sargo fit almost every criteria we had, and she is really awesome looking – at least we think so.  We even found photos of Sargo at Man-o-War Cay (read the Trifecta blog if you're wondering why this is significant).  This looked like it might be The One!

We knew at this point that boats like this were a niche market with very few people looking at them, but that the people looking knew what they were doing and would snap up a good boat quickly. At this point, we liked to think we were one of these people. So, we went and looked at her – it was December. Her prior owner John had heaters rigged up inside. He was, and has continued to be super helpful and encouraging, completely enthusiastic about the adventure we are embarking on with our family.

In January we had Sargo under contract, in February we had had her surveyed, and in March we bought her. We are completely under her spell and believe we have the perfect boat. And the gasps from our friends are subsiding as they’ve had a chance now to see her and come sailing (even our close friend and skeptic who has nicknamed her ALCOA). So the adventure begins for us with Sargo, and for Sargo with us!

Check out photos and learn more about Sargo by clicking here.


Tid Bit: Sargo – Diplodus sargus is a type of fish native to the eastern Atlantic from Spain to
South Africa and to the Mediterranean. Sargo was also the name of the first submarine
captained by the prior owner’s father. We like the history, the fish, and the sound of the name, so have kept the name Sargo with John’s blessing.