Setting sail on a sea of "For Sales"

My wife overheard me talking on the phone. When she asked who it was, I had to lie.

"There's a woman I'm seeing," I said.

The truth would have been too painful. My search for a boat had gotten that bad.

Just the day before, my inestimably patient and forbearing bride of two-plus decades calmly told me how long her "rope" was and how far she was getting from "the end" re: the boat hunt. I myself had no end in sight.

Looking for a boat can be like that. There are scores of options — sail, motor, big, small, wood, plastic, steel, even concrete — and that's before you actually look over a boat.

My search involved reading ads for hundreds of boats. I physically examined 13, traveling as far as the Columbia River for a sea trial. I sailed on four and made offers on three, retracting two of them before settling on my final craft. It was an all-consuming, instructive process. Here are a few things I learned:

For starters, there are a lot of boats out there. When boats were made of wood, the pool of boats thinned itself out naturally. They rotted into oblivion. Then came boats of fiberglass, a material that turns out to have an amazing ability to survive the most neglectful owners.

The result: scads of boats on the market, cheap. I once got a boat in sailing condition for a dollar and could have talked the owners down on the price. In truth, no boat will cost a dollar once you start upgrading, and after a sound hull you'll want a good motor, good standing rigging and good sails. But ultimately it is a buyers' market.

That said, there are a lot of pretty gross boats out there. I drove two hours to see a Cape Dory 25, a boat of my dreams that I could only imagine in great shape. I found a boat with algae growing on the lines, a seaweed-encrusted motor that refused to start and a water-soaked copy of Nathaniel Bowditch's "American Practical Navigator" on the dinette. The ad said the boat had been "much loved," apparently years earlier. I found mud inside the hull.

There are a lot of overvalued boats, too. I found a Ranger 23 in a barn near Bellingham and had one of those special moments where you instantly decide the boat is for you and spend the next two hours justifying the purchase. I made an offer, but later realized the price was several thousand dollars more than everything else on the market.

An inspection sure helps. My initial dreamboat was the Folkboat, a classic wooden craft whose hull of overlapping planks harks back to the Viking craft my ancestors took on summer holidays in the British Isles. I hired Rodger Morris, a marine surveyor, and with little more than a small penknife he found enough soft boards to make me realize I really preferred being out on the water to working at the dock, at least most of the time. He cost me a few hundred dollars and saved me thousands more.

After my passing Folkboat phase, I mentioned to Scott Rohrer, head of the local syndicate that rebuilt the 1926 R-boat "Pirate," that I was looking for a boat I wouldn't need to work on. "That boat hasn't been made yet," he said.

That said, you can save a ton of time by getting a boat small enough for you to afford and small enough to require minimal work so you can actually get out on the water. After that, you want it big enough to get you and yours around safely.

And get a pretty boat. Boats stop being practical somewhere around the second moorage payment or the third trip to Fisheries Supply. Buying one is a fundamentally aesthetic decision about one of your life's most rewarding experiences.

My choices were largely limited to fitting in a 26-foot slip I'd secured in Edmonds. Early in my search, I had seen a cute older boat in Everett and left a note for the owner. He called and showed me the boat, saying he would like to get back the sizable sum he had invested in the boat and a new engine. He also told me the line, "Better to buy from a distressed owner than to buy a distressed boat."

Two months later, he called and offered to sell the boat at a massively reduced price. It's a Yankee Dolphin 24, small but fit for travel, with a great four-stroke engine, teak trim and a seaworthy Sparkman & Stephens design. My hunt is over, my honey is happy, and I now have a honey of a boat.

Eric Sorensen is a freelance writer who lives in Kenmore. His boating columns will appear twice monthly in Northwest Weekend through September. Reach him through his Web site: www.ericsorensen.net.