If you missed Boat Shopping Part 1, read it here.
If the worst part about buying a boat, as my friend and business partner August Sandberg says, is that the search is over, then surely the best part is the excitement of having found the right boat.
Last issue I teased the fact that I thought Mia and I had found it, a 1971 Olle Enderlein 36 lovingly restored in Sweden.
I didn’t have a specific model, designer, or even era in mind when we started shopping. We were looking for a boat between 34-36 feet that would fit in the winter shed we own at our local sailing club and that would be a “value” deal. We wanted a used boat that had been properly refit, “from the inside out,” as Mia put it, not just cosmetically. An older or lesser-known boat that was undervalued despite its condition, just because the market was smaller. Our would-be new boat needed to have a pedigreed designer; solid construction techniques (absolutely no balsa in the hull or deck, but Divinycell foam was OK); a rebuilt, modern electrical system; and renovated essentials like steering gear, rudder bearings, and all the important stuff.
The OE36 I stumbled upon through the blocket.se search algorithm seemed to fit that bill, almost too perfectly, so Mia and I had to see it. I went first, driving two-and-a-half hours to the southern part of the Stockholm Archipelago to see the boat in the water. This was a private listing, no brokers involved, which made for a peaceful, no-pressure first encounter with the boat.
The seller, Martin, knew us from 59º North, had been a fan of my On the Wind podcast for years, and was excited about the idea of the boat going to knowledgeable people like us. He was selling after 10 years of ownership because of a career change. While he initially had visions of taking the OE36 around the world, his life had evolved in unexpected ways, and he’d taken a job several hours north, so boat ownership wasn’t in the cards.
He’d bought the boat from the folks who’d restored her in the mid-2000s. A nearby boatbuilder, who for decades had built the interiors of the revered Najad line of Swedish sailboats, completed the renovation. They had rebuilt the interior in beautiful satin-varnished mahogany and oak, replaced the teak deck after fixing fiberglass issues in various places, rebuilt and zeroed out the the late 1990s Perkins engine, and finished a host of other projects big and small.
When I first saw the boat, I couldn’t contain my excitement. I think I first video-called Adam Browne, our bosun at 59º North.
“Adam, you won’t believe this!” I exclaimed. “There’s dust in the bilge! The inside of the lockers are lined with cedar! The engine is spotless! And look at that electrical panel!”
I’ve looked at a lot of boats over the past 20 years and I’d never seen an old boat look so new. “This is definitely it,” I said to Mia on the car ride home that day.
A week later we drove down together to meet Martin in person and go for a short trial sail. Mia needed to see the boat for herself. She is absolutely the more tempered member of our family emotionally, but even she was taken aback. This was the deal we were looking for, even if a week prior we’d known little about the OE36. Beyond that initial rebuild, in his 10 years of owning her, Martin had completed a host of improvements himself. An engineer, he’d designed and built his own LifePO4 lithium battery system, going so far as to design and custom build the electrical switch panel. Instead of ubiquitous breaker switches, he’d used elegant stainless toggle switches with fuses at each. The panel looks like the dashboard from an old James Bond Aston Martin, it’s so cool!
The boat had everything we wanted in our next boat, the quality was immaculate, and the rapport with Martin was friendly. After our quick little daysail, we drove to his parents’ house nearby to discuss the sale. His mom brought out some home-baked Swedish fika and coffee, his dad showed us the garage where sails and spare parts were stored, and we sat around the table on the deck and made a deal. We bought the boat for $39,000, and since it was the end of the season and Mia and I were about to catch a plane to the U.S. for the Annapolis Sailboat Show, Martin agreed to handle haul-out and winterization for us at his local sailing club. We could keep all the gear in his dad’s garage, and we’d pick the boat up in the spring.
Like my parents’ series of Sojourners when I was growing up, we decided the keep the name Spica. The next day when we told Axel, now 4 years old, that we’re going to be getting a “new” Spica, he was thrilled. “It has a dinghy!” he exclaimed, when we showed him the photos.
And that was that. Our boat search was over, and now we’ve got the winter to wait it out until we get to properly sail the new Spica and take Axel on those dinghy rides.
January/February 2025
