Ocean Odyssey: Scarlet Lady Handover

Saying Goodbye to Scarlet Lady

What started off as an almost throw away remark last year, 'perhaps we should consider a bigger yacht' ended up with the unthinkable, we have now sold Scarlet Lady!

OK perhaps that is an over simplification. After 2 seasons we found ourselves discussing ideas for going further afield.
Some if not nearly all of our inspiration must be down to a fellow liveaboard that we first met in Almerimar, and latterly in Licata.

Now in fairness, Frank is not in the first flush of youth, but he is fitter than anyone we know. Frank told us that he only recently got back from a 12 year circumnavigation and had decided to leave the Med until 'last'. He like many others, decided to see other parts of the world before coming to the Med in case he got 'stuck' and never left, which is fair enough as it is an amazing place. We could not help but be in awe of his adventures and started to wonder if we should not do the same.

Christmas day cheers with Frank

We first met the now new owners, Janet and Kelvin, on the rally Portugal in 2012 when they helped Kelvins brother Vaughan on his newly commissioned Southerly 135.
As soon as Kel came on board Scarlet Lady he knew she was the yacht for him, and actually made an offer to buy her on the spot, which was promptly turned down.
A year later we started to think about a bigger yacht perhaps already set up with a long distance specification, and got back in touch with Jan and Kel to see if they might be interested in purchasing Scarlet.
Being Australian citizens they would face some visa restrictions on the amount of time they could spend in the EU, nevertheless they also knew that we had spent a great deal of time and money setting Scarlet up for Med cruising, and our Jeanneau 42 DS was an ideal model.

Once a satisfactory survey was completed and the inventory agreed, all that remained was to await the arrival of Jan and Kel and the small task of finding a suitable replacement to continue our voyages.

The first yacht we briefly considered was a Jeanneau 49DS like the one in the picture below, however, we felt the running costs would be higher than we really wanted.

Despite this we did put an offer in for one but failed to agree on the price.

Perhaps fate played the next card which was to find ourselves agreeing to purchase Aztec Dream, a Jeanneau 45. Aztec had first belonged to Peter, the broker who sold us Scarlet Lady. Peter had just put Aztec on his books and the specification was compelling. Fitted out for long distance cruising, Aztec had all the equipment we wanted and much more. The only 'small' issue was that she was in the Caribbean!
Eventually we agreed a price that would include having her shipped back to the UK on a container ship sometime toward the middle of May. More information on Aztec can be found via the tabs at the top of the page for those interested.

It was a very emotional day when the time came to move off Scarlet, our home for over five years.