The Decision to Buy: how long did it take?

[Otter-BelleHavenMarina]

This is a great thread! For us, it was about 3 years.

In 1998 when we returned from overseas, we needed a vehicle. My wife and I were at a car dealer getting a price on a truck. I was explaining that I wanted the heavy duty tow package, manual transmission, and four wheel drive with a low gear. The salesman said, "Do you have a big boat or something?" I said, "Not yet." Kathy kind of laughed and looked at me funny.

Well, we didn't get that truck, but a few years later (May 2001) we bought our 22 ft. C-Dory. Kathy really made the call. I had been looking at center consoles and RIBs, and she pointed out that, unless I was looking to escape from the family, these boats were not terribly accommodating to little baby girls for long days on the water. C-Dory made a lot of sense, and we have made great family use of it. (And, by the way, it works just fine on those occasions when I do just want to escape!)

Cheers,

[Socrateur]

I'm not a C-Dory owner (yet) so I'll approach this topic from a different angle and make a prediction as to how long I think the process will take for me from initial search to writing the check: 5 years is my estimate.

Here's a little background to put this in perspective. I've been involved with boats all of my life beginning with being raised on the shore of Lake Michigan north of Chicago. When I moved to Berkeley, CA in 1977, I joined the Berkeley Water Ski Club and became a certified tournament boat driver (and slalom competitor) for the next 20 years. In 1998 I got married (for the first time at the ripe age of 47), moved to Danville, CA and fell out of the water skiing scene and boating in general. We still do some sailing, kayaking and power boating during our visits to my mother who still lives in the family house on L. Michigan, but I have lamented not being actively involved in boating for the past 8 years. I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever be involved in boating in a meaningful way ever again.

Then a big thing happened this past December; I purchased a property on Lopez Island at Mud Bay. Suddenly I realize that a whole new world of boating is open to me and I'll need a boat! The C-Dory looks like a good fit. First, though, I have to build a house on the property and then retire so that I can spend enough time up there to justify a boat. I figure this will happen within 3 to 5 years and the boat will follow shortly thereafter. In the meantime, if you're at Lopez and see a 6'8" guy on the dock at Fisherman Bay looking for a ride on a C-Dory, you'll know it is me.

[flagold]

14 years. In 1989 I balked at the idea of paying $18,700 for one, even though it fit the needs perfectly. So I showed them fortitude and waited until I could pay through the nose . . . Not all bad though, I had some fabulous big Whalers in between.

[Pat Anderson]

OK, this is a bit of an epistle, so bear with...if you read it on C-Dogs or here before, you can just skip it. Plus it has a new ending, sort of.

September or maybe October 2001, Birch Bay. We have a 13' Feathercraft, Crabby Lou (yes, folks, it was a play on the words Crab Louie), had it for years. Patty has to go crabbing "one more time." It is rough as all get out, I say "It is too rough out there..." She says "But we have to get one last crabbing trip in." Back down, instantly get swamped (there is more, but I will just leave it out because this is already a long story). End of Feathercraft, crap all over the beach, Pat is not up to repairing this sad little craft (David eventually did, but that is another story too).

So we go off to the Tacoma Boat Show in the Tacoma Dome, got a sweet little 16' Smoker Craft, Crabby Lou II - we LOVED that boat, 2002 was our "Summer of Boating Fun." We almost always launched in Blaine, I always gazed out our Birch Bay window at Patos, aching to get over there and see what it was like. I was always suggesting that we could go to the islands, we could sleep on the boat or camp, what did it matter if it was cold, rainy, or whatever.

All summer long, I BEGGED Patty to go out to Patos, lots of excuses, it is too far, it is too rough, the boat is too small, blah blah blah. Finally on the last good day of September 2002, we are out crabbing and Patty says "OK, lets go over to Patos." So off we go.

We beached Crabby Lou II on Patos, had a wonderful picnic lunch, Austin LOVES Patos, it was his "happy place." Time to go, we pull out. Then we both saw it. Right there in Active Cove, Patos Island - this boat with a CABIN, and it was way cool looking to boot. Patty says "I could go out overnight in one of THOSE..." It was of course a CD22, anchored there, nobody on board or in sight, so we couldn't ask any questions. We probably circled it half a dozen times, looked at it from every angle. Perfect! I just made a mental note of that name, C-Dory. After that, we never gave a second thought to any other boat.

A short while later, I found the C-Dog site, and posted a bit there, as Catman may remember, that I didn't know how, I didn't know when, but I was going to have one! In a very short time the C-Dog site inexplicably disappears, and I find my new best friends, the C-Brats!

Fast forward to Seattle Boat Show, January 2003 - as David said, we went "just to look." The Boat Show display boat was Jim and Laurie's CD22 Laurna Jo - Patty sat at the dinette, lay down in the veeberth, stood at the galley. And she says the fateful words "Well, lets just go over and see what the deal is..." Stick a fork in her, she is DONE! So what if the loan is 15 years instead of three, what the heck, the payment is the SAME! Fits in the household budget! Within an hour, we had bought our CD22 and so had David and Kate - a "two-fer"!

A dealer order cancelled for two CD22s in our trim color and we had our boats in February, fittingly we picked Daydream up on Valentine's Day 2003. SO much fun in Birch Bay, the San Juans, Lake Washington, Lake Roosevelt, C-Brat trips up the Snohomish, down to Cathlamet, out to Lopez and Blakely, over to Sequim...

This awesome little boat opened up so many new places, introduced us to so many great people. What more could we want?

Well...along comes the 2005 SBS. Patty sits at the dinette, lays down in the veebirth, stood at the galley - and well, we won't go graphically into exploration of the head. Honestly, I had no IDEA we needed a CD25 - she says, once again, the fateful words "Lets just go over and see what the deal is..." This time maybe a little longer, a three-fer - Pat and Patty, David and Kate and Jim and Laurie.

The CD25 Daydream has everything we wanted in a boat - and having learned on the CD22, we knew exactly how we wanted to outfit and cutomize it right from the start...Raymarine C-80, Canvas Riggers camperback, the undergalley floor and pull out baskets, plus some David custom interior items like the electronics shelf, the under helm seat slide out food prep board, the chart rack...Patty does the curtains, the carpet, the decorating - I put in the stereo. Last touch is the Airhead Composting Toilet, thanks to Kas for the suggestion (Kas is the buyer of our CD22). This boat is PERFECT.



C-Brat get-togethers through 2005, and especially the unforgettable September Desolation Sound adventure. Plus we discovered Eddie Vine Ramp at Shilshole and boating close to home in Puget Sound. Poulsbo, Mazanita Bay, Quartermaster Harbor, Blakely Harbor, Blake Island, Illahee. It REALLY doesn't get any better than this!

OK, well, maybe we shouldn't have gone to the 2006 Seattle Boat Show...


But basically, we owe it all to Patty's insistence that we go crabbing "one more time," against my better judgment - and boy am I glad we did!
OUT

[Luna C]

We checked them out with Jeff at the January 04 seattle boat show. We had one in the Driveway on that April 1st.

[Ron Bennie]

Phase 1: we buy our first boat, a 1987 Catalina 22 in 2000. We spend 2 glorious seasons learning to sail, some fabulous 3-4 day cruises on some small but beautiful lakes in the Calgary area (one with fabulous mountains, the other herds of cattle). I spend whatever time not cruising tinkering and polishing to my heart's content. After the second season moored on the Glenmore Reservoir, the entire bottom is rife with blisters which require a $6500 repair job. Around this time we begin to realize that the strenuous and unpredictable aspects of sailing do not mesh with our young children and regret having to use the boat only when the kids are with the grandparents. The following May a gentleman sees our boat in my driveway (looking brand new) and offers to buy it (it wasn't for sale) at any price. I am considering a powerboat and regard the timing as God-given. We sell the boat that day for a third more than we paid for it and begin planning for phase 2. Considering we have 2 children with autism who don't enjoy being around large groups of unfamiliar people, the privacy of boating seems like an exciting activity we all can enjoy together. I discover C-Dorys on the web and see for the first time the boat I have been envisioning in my mind for years. My wife Maureen at this point decides to leave teaching and start her own autism resource and conference business which means no play money for a while.
Phase 3: I religiously read the C-Brats site and keep the dream alive. I'm thinking a serious chance of owning a 22...possibly 3-5 years. In my wildest dreams there's a lovely used 25 waiting for us around then. I know I've got to be one of hundreds enjoying this site without actually owning the boat. If I never own a C-Dory this site still has been the biggest kick I've ever had.

[Jazzmanic]

Ron Bennie wrote:

Quote:

I know I've got to be one of hundreds enjoying this site without actually owning the boat. If I never own a C-Dory this site still has been the biggest kick I've ever had.

Nice words and very true. Don't give up the dream, make it happen...we did. I met Caryn in 2003, we had a whirlwind romance and married 6 months later. We casually talked about owning a boat "one day", I told her that I'd always dreamed of buying a small aluminum fishing boat or drift boat. We decided to look at used boats one Sunday afternoon in the spring of 2004 but nothing struck our fancy. Caryn mentioned how she always liked her friends "cute" boat. When I asked her what it was called, she couldn't remember. We finally found out the name was C-Dory the summer of 2004. We then talked to Scott Matthews at the old C-Dory factory in Kent, checked out the boats in various stages of completion and fell in love with them. We weren't really in position to buy at that time although it was quite tempting. I still needed to sell my house and clean up my finances a bit.
Fast forward to the Seattle Boat Show, January 2005. I had just sold my house two weeks earlier, I had the day off on the first day of the boat show. Scott was so generous to call us to remind us about the boat show and have tickets waiting for us at will call. So there we are, at the SBS in the first hour of the first day. We were there just to "check it out". Scott, Jeff Mesmer and Scott Reynolds were all there, convincing us of the great boat show discount we would receive, as well as all the little extras they would throw in. Plus they told us that the boat show boat was already sold but we would get the next boat, which had already been started, and was green, our chosen color.

Well you know the rest, we bought it. Signed our name at the dotted line, walked around in an ecstatic daze for the next two hours, bought more goodies at the boat show and took delivery on March 5th. So to answer the question, we bought our C-Dory about six months after discovering the name of the boat. And there has not been one moments regret, especially after discovering the C-Brat site shortly after our purchase. It's opened up a whole new world to me that I never knew existed.

Peter

[lloyds]

Married current spousal unit in July of 2005. Did a two week honeymoon fishing and touring the east coast of vancouver island in a boston whaler, including a couple trips across the straits in bad weather. Looked at the 16' cruiser on a whim in august, spousal unit says buy it. That took all of 5 minutes. Les had the 16 ready september 7 and we love it. Finally, after 45 years of boating, sitting out in wet, cold, cockpits night after night, a real cabin, heat, windshield wipers. Sue apparently didn't have as much fun in the whaler as I thought she did.

[B~C]

As wee lads, the brother and I where always bulding floating objects and floating the mighty Powder river in Baker. The brother never grew out of the drift boat phase and still plays on the river...shameless plug for brother's operation goes here.... http://www.riverstoreefs.com/ I outgrew the drifting phase and picked up an old glass ski boat for $1,500 about 10 years ago, M objected to wasting that kind of money on a boat. We had a blast with that old boat and up graded to a nice aluminum boat, we then purchased a motorhome to tow the boat and extend our boating vacations....nice aluminum boat sat next to the house alltogether to much as we didn't enjoy using it much when the weather was poor. Motorhome sat also.
I started looking at plans for building an aluminum C-Dory type boat and after assesing my abilities, patience and the cost of such a project, I quickley realized that I could buy a C-Dory for what I'd have spent in Duct tape alone. I studied and conjured for about two years before I showed M some pictures from El & Bill's adventures followed a trip to the boat show. Sportcraft had a good deal on a used one and we scooped it up. Sold beercan boat and motorhome and the boaterhome was born.

That $1,500 boat is looking pretty cheap now, maybe it was the cost that the cheap ski boat spawned that worried M

[R-Matey]

Prior to getting the CD, we owned a Dory (double ender) and always had a dinghy in the yard.

We started looking at C-Dorys in the early 1980s. At every Seattle Boat Show we'd find the C-Dory display, get a brouchure and always decide that 'this' wasn't the right time. Every summer we'd make a couple of trips down to the C-Dory factory, visit with Mark Toland and the Dalmation. Sit in a couple of C-Dorys and decide that 'this' wasn't the right time. Too busy working, teenagers graduating, then they were getting married, we were running a business, so on an so forth...........

Finally sometime in 1999, we found a 22 1985 CD over on Whidbey Island. It was on a weekend and no one was around. Went back to look at it a couple of weeks later, the CD had disappeared. Find same CD a few months later in another Oak Harbor boat yard (again on a weekend and no info on the FOR SALE sign).

Joe and youngest son (certified mechanic) drive over to Oak Harbor (on a weekday) with the intentions of checking out this CD, but it wasn't there. It'd been moved again and now it's sitting in a different boat yard on Hwy 20. This time not only is there a salesman but the CD owner is there, too.
Paperwork is signed and now we own a CD.

We kept the 22CD a couple of years but didn't use it as much as we'd hoped. So the decision was made to sell it and not get another boat until we retired. The summer after we sold the 22CD was the most gorgeous summer we'd had in years and here we are - no boat!!

Seattle Boat Show 2003 we meet Les at the C-Dory display. I think we visited him two or three times that day. He mentions that he has a 19CD at EQ Marine. A few weeks later we drive over and take a look. Paperwork is signed and now we own (another) CD.

So I guess it can be said that we've been messing with these C-Dorys for a good twenty years now. Looked at lots of other boats and walked on a lot of docks (Washington, Oregon, California, British Columbia) but we always kept coming back to the C-Dory.

Ruth and Joe
R-Matey

[Jim T]

My first exposure to C-Dory's was an article in Small Boat Journal magazine sometime in the early 80's and from that moment on I knew I would own one some day. Unfortunately, at the time I could barely afford the magazine let alone the boat. In 98 I drove to Superior Wisconsin to pick up a used 16' Angler and brought it back to Indiana. Probably one of the first C-Dory's in the state. A very good friend of mine saw the boat and decided he had to have one, so he bought a used 22 Angler. Now there were two C-Dory's on an 1800 acre lake in central Indiana. Of course after seeing his 22 I knew I needed to move up to a 22 as well, so in 2003 I bought a new 22 Cruiser. During this period good fortune had smiled upon me with the start of a successful business. Of course there are curve balls along the way too. One of them being the untimely death of my good friend. It was kind of a wake up call for me, a reminder how tenuous life can be. Got me thinking about what I really love, boats. Especially C-Dory's. So I sold my business and now I am a C-Dory dealer along with Craig at Rabidfish and I still have that issue of Small Boat Journal.

Jim

[Valkyrie]

Hi Jim,

I, too, miss SMALL BOAT JOURNAL. I just loved the collection of funky, character boats that they featured every month, along with really practical advice.

A high point of my writing career was when I became Midwest Editor in the late 80's, when I left GREAT LAKES SAILOR magazine. My first assignment was to go to Sarasota to test a bunch of 18 foot pocket cruisers in February! Tough work.

Unfortunately, the magazine was a financial failure, big time. It was owned by the Hemmings family (Hemmings Motor News) and I'm told that they lost millions during the time that they owned it.

It was bought by Billian Publishing in '88 and the changes started. First was to make the "small" in the title very small. Second came a while later when it became BOAT JOURNAL and finally was when it became BOATING WORLD and dropped all of the small character boats. (Most small companies can't afford the advertising it takes to keep a publication afloat.)

It was about '91 when I tested and wrote about the CD 22 when I caught the urge to buy one.

When I last talked with the editorial staff at BW they said that they were still getting hate mail from old SBJ subscribers from long ago.

A touch of SBJ can be found in the great book OUTBOARD BOATER'S HANDBOOK by David Getchel, the first editor of SBJ. It is a compilation of SBJ articles and I am pleased to be able to say that two of my articles are included.

I look forward to meeting you and Craig when I pass through your area on March 31.

Best regards,

Nick
"Valkyrie"

[journey on]

Nick, "Valkyrie";

Thanks for explaining what happened to Small Boat Journal. I loved that magazine, loved the boats it talked about, even subscribed. Then my subscription changed over to whatever it became. All go fast boats, and here I was into sailboats. Really pi___ed. When we started looking for power boats, really missed that mag.


Always wondered what happened, but now I (rarely) read Wooden Boat, which is good but not the same.

Boris

[SEA3PO]

I think my only regret is that Susan and I did not see the C-Dory earlier...once I met with Mike (Sealife) and went through his boat I called the dealer and ordered my boat within days....
At first the price of a new C-Dory scared me.... but it was one of my better decisions. I would do it agin in a heartbeat.
I bought a 22' and thought I might someday want a 25' but I am really happy with the 22' and made the correct choice (for now)

Joel

[CAVU]

Nick'
Thanks for that info about SBJ. I loved that magazine and subscribed for many years. It is a shame that quality boating magazines can't make a go of it.