“The worst part about buying a boat is that the search is over!” Isbjørn’s skipper and one of my business partners, August Sandberg, had that to say when he and I recently recorded a Quarterdeck podcast on boat shopping. This is where August and I differ; of the five boats I’ve been involved in buying, either for myself or for the business, I never actually shopped. I found a boat I fell in love with immediately and I bought it. Ready, fire, aim, as my friends tease me. August, conversely, has literally spent years combing through listings and looking at boats before pulling the trigger.
Mia and I are in the market again for a new-to-us family boat here in Sweden. I know, I know, I just wrote a gushing column about our beloved Norlin 34 and how cool it is to have a real racer-cruiser as our family boat. I love that little boat and am going to miss it dearly. “Everything has its time,” as Mia says.
But in looking at our plans over the next few years as Axel gets older and more interested in sailing, we decided we ought to at least look around at what’s out there before spending more money on the Norlin to make living aboard a little less like camping. We plan to live aboard our own boat in the summers for four to six weeks and cruise the archipelago in our back yard.
Well, once we broke that seal the floodgates opened. August is right—there is nothing quite like boat shopping when you’re actually on a mission and not just browsing. And I’ve never been boat shopping in Europe before. My dad and I pride ourselves on being able to identify the make and model of any boat on the Chesapeake, but over here I’m totally lost. There are so many cool boats that I’ve just flat out never heard of.
In Sweden, most of the smaller boats in our budget aren’t listed with brokers but rather listed on something called Blocket.se, basically the Swedish version of Craigslist. You can buy anything on Blocket. I’ve bought and sold golf clubs, stereo equipment, an old Jeep CJ-7…and the boats! The listings are endless.
Logged into Blocket, I let the algorithm go to work. I’d search for a few boats I knew about—our Norlin 34’s big sister the Norlin 37; a Swedish-built Arcona 355; another Peter Norlin-designed Albin Stratus—and then I’d be served dozens of similarly-sized and priced boats I’d never heard of. Evenings got later and later as I lay on the couch after Axel fell asleep and researched all these wondrous boats I’d discovered, comparing sail area/displacement numbers on sailboatdata.com, reading owner’s forums and magazine articles (in Swedish to boot), and searching sold boat listings to come up with an idea on value.
Our search was limited by size and budget. We were aiming for that 34- to 36-foot range, a boat that would fit in the shed we own at the local sailing club for winter storage, would be super easy to singlehand, would sail sweet if not fast, and that we could afford without a loan. And the next boat would have to have cool factor—it would have to be unique. My saved ads included an Arcona 355, an OE32, an old fiberglass Colin Archer cutter, a few Albin Stratuses, a Finngulf 36, a Norlin designed Omega 36, a couple Gambler 35s, a Comfortina 35, and a handful more, all between $20,000-$50,000 and many of which I’d never heard of before.
Practicality aside, what I really had my radar tuned for was a value deal. An old, unique, cool boat that had been renovated from the inside out by a previous owner and lovingly maintained but was being undervalued on the market because of its age, its anonymity, or due to some reason where the seller needed it to go quickly.
And I think we found it. Late one Saturday night, while Mia was out at a friend’s house, I texted her: “I think I found our next boat.” I’d come across a 1971 Olle Enderlein 36, an all-time classic in Sweden with gorgeous lines drawn by a pedigreed designer, a fin keel, and that looked immaculate in the listing, having been completely rebuilt in the mid-2000s inside and out. And she already had all the things on our list—a dinghy and outboard; autopilot; propane stove in the galley; new chartplotter at the helm for navigating among the myriad islands and rocks in the Swedish archipelagos; even lithium batteries. This might be it, I thought, an old boat oozing with cool factor that’s undervalued because of its age but that clearly has been properly taken care of.
Stay tuned for next month’s column, when Mia and I go and visit the boat and take her for a quick spin under sail…
November/December 2024
