The Adventure Begins!

After a lot of discussion Steph and I had pretty much reached the conclusion that the boat we wanted was a Westsail 32. It fits what we are looking for, a boat that is heavy, comfortable, spacious and within our price range. We finally found a boat that met all of our criteria, but the first couple of Westsails that we looked at needed more work than we wanted to put into them. Then we found Sphinx listed at Angel Marine in Halifax, NS. We started planning our trip up and quickly realized that my passport had expired and that Stephanie's passport hadn't been updated after we got married! We quickly sent the passports in and eagerly awaited their return. It only took about three weeks, and then we headed up to Halifax!

Here we are on the road. It was a long long trip. Amesbury, MA to Halifax, NS takes almost exactly 12 hours in the car. We left Friday night after work and drove until 4am, slept for 4 hours and then finished the trip to arrive in Halifax at 11am for our meeting with Steve. He took us out to Sphinx and let us look her over, she was/is a little rough around the edges, but all of the important aspects were there. She has a newer (2005) Perkins diesel, and standing rigging ( 2007). It was the first time we've been on a Westsail in the water and she felt very stable and comfortable.
After looking at the boat we decided that we would go to lunch and give Steve a call back afterwards. The discussion at lunch was pretty short, this was the boat we wanted, and it was at the right price. We called Steve and met him at the Cabin Coffee, where we put together the paperwork for an official offer on Sphinx.We then very anxiously went about our day, hoping that our offer would be accepted. We went and walked around the Alexander Keiths brewery and checked out the Halifax waterfront.


After several phone calls going back and forth we agreed on a price and a test sail the following morning!

The test sail went well, although there was NO WIND! We got to put the sails up, and start the engine and go through systems on the boat with the boats owner. Everything went smoothly, and we hit the road heading back to Massachusetts very very excited.