Visit of a Dufour 36 Classic

Wow… We stepped on to this boat, and everything just felt right. I think you can fall in love with a boat because that’s what happened.

Let’s put the financial side into perspective here. As you are reading this you can be in one of these 3 categories:

• Financially open for bigger and better, and I totally understand you not being impressed by this boat;
• On a budget but you came by some money and want to put it into your passion of sailing and/or to push further your experience for hopefully a change of career (that’s us);
• Far from being able to buy a boat like that nor sustain the running costs but keen to know more.

So, we do have to consider a lot before even thinking of making an offer. But that boat is by far the only one close enough (located in QLD) that ticks all the boxes.

Stepping on to it, I felt good. Being able to walk around with ease, liking the layout, there is just a good feeling about it in general. I think that is so important. And for what we want to do, the size is perfect.

Our idea of living on a boat and navigating through the Pacific Ocean is not for right now. First things first, get our sailing legs into action and without a boat it’s not easy to train. So we decided to go for a smaller weekend boat but big enough if we want to stay a few nights on it.

Enough room for all 3 of us and take some friends. It’s a 3 cabin interior, 36 foot so roughly 11 metres long. The interior is well designed for maximum space with lovely timber. A good size galley with plenty of work bench and good natural light coming in with good ventilation.

The shallow draft will make it great for closer anchorage to beaches or narrow passages which we do have around this area, so that’s a bonus.

It is a saildrive yes… and we got told by so many experienced sailors to avoid saildrives. But in our price range (under $100.000) we couldn’t find any shaftdrive boats. So I guess we will have to stuck to it. We also got told by saildrive sailors that it is a matter of good and regular maintenance and the leaking problem would not happen.

My parents had a saildrive too with their Dufour when I was a child and wasn’t so much of a problem.

The motor on that Dufour 36 is in near new condition with less then 600 hours logged with a new saildrive and near new folding prop.

The deck has quite a large bimini which is perfect to add some solar panels, hatches have covers and I like the triple lifelines around the boat for child safety, I will add a netting also for extra protection.

Overall, very impressed by the condition. It will have to go through inspection by a surveyor, check for osmosis and probably get some work done when the boat is pulled out if the inspection and sell were to go ahead. Have I mentioned the dinghy?… it comes with a dinghy and outboard.

We liked the boat… now checking our finances and gathering more information on the running cost and logistics from there. But if it all goes ahead, an offer will be made very soon. I keep you posted.

Mel, Fred and little William