The sales contract is signed! We purchased the wreck of the Dean Catamarans Jag 530 in Alicante!

We came back from our visit to Spain (see the article: Visits of Two Catamarans for Sale in Spain) our heads bubbling with ideas, seeing the potential of this 16-meter catamaran. We had only one thing preventing us from jumping into this project: the lack of visibility of the cost of repairs (mainly structural and mechanical) to restore the wreck to sailing condition.

Two days later, on September 20th, we informed Natalia from the shipyard 360a3, of our interest. We reminded her of the requirement, as agreed during our meeting in Alicante, to have Kostiantyn send us an estimate of cost of the repairs. Natalia’s answer the next day is that we have to sign the purchase contract immediately and pay the advance of 10,000 Euros to initiate the process, because they have another potential buyer who is coming to see her today. This answer is truly irritating, because either they had not understood that we were really interested, or Natalia was playing a car saleswoman game to push us to move faster and all this without the cost estimate from them. I started a spreadsheet where I list the main repair projects, I highlighted what I expect from the shipyard to complete my estimate and I sent it to them on September 23rd.

On the 28th, it’s like a cold shower. Natalia writes to us “Unfortunately Sorry to tell you, catamaran was sold on Saturday.”. What? They sold our Jag 530! It’s hard to understand and to accept. We were expecting at the minimum ballpark figures from them to help us make an informed decision and… no. We are both extremely disappointed because this boat had clearly “spoken” to us, she was the one that suited us and at the same time angry because the customer relationship management was really abrupt.

The following two weeks, I immersed myself again in websites Yachtworld and iNautia, looking for something as good as the Jag 530, but of course, I couldn’t find anything. It became obvious that this Jag 530 was unique, there was no other exactly the same in the world, we only found 2 others built on the same mold and none was sale.

On October 10th, we contacted Azura Marine, a small company that builts the Aquanima 40, an electric and solar catamaran. This builder aims to market it at a price of 500k. They also have plans to build a 45-foot model. It is time to explore the option of buying instead of building the catamaran of our dreams. We had a goal to sail in the summer of 2021, so we needed to decide on something quickly. The Aquanima 45, built in Spain, is attractive but above our budget. Could we extend our budget? The Aquanima 45 in the basic version (but offering interesting options, such as deployable solar wings), with 13.5 kWp of solar panels, two 20 kW motors and 80 kWh of Lithium batteries, costs 620k Euros. It will be built in aluminum and according to Azura Marine, once the construction line starts, it will take 12 months for delivery. We are working on evaluating this option, in our heads and in our financial estimations…

3 days later, a surprise we weren’t expecting… a message from Natalia: “If you are still interested I have some good news for you. The buyer of the catamaran disappeared.”. We were of course still interested, but the trust in the relationship with the shipyard had been damaged and we still had the feeling that the story of the other potential buyer was a bad joke to put pressure on us. We followed up with Natalia to express again the urgent need for the repair cost estimates.

On October 16th, she sent us a contract for the reservation of the catamaran, but still no estimate… We are talking to deaf ears, where our need for information to make such an important decision is frustrated. Finally, on October 19th, the estimate for the structural repair of the hulls finally arrived. It amounts to 80k. We scheduled a video call the next day to review the rest of my list of repairs and estimate their cost.

The meeting was conclusive, I had educated guesses from the shipyard to fill my estimates. The total cost comes to 250k for the purchase and repairs, to which I add my estimate of 85k for the Bell Marine propulsion system at 2x 30 kW with 60 kWh of batteries from aquawatt. To these, we must add the solar panels, solar chargers, the backup diesel generator, etc. It is a huge budget and we must look closely at the real estate market to estimate the future proceeds of the sale of our house because it will be the only way to be able to fund this project.

We hired a law firm to perform due diligence checks on the legal standing of the boat before we finalized the purchase of the Jag 530. On October 30th, we received the preliminary report that everything was fine and we signed the purchase offer and paid the security deposit.

I’ll spare you all the details and the back-and-forth between our lawyer, the legal contact at the 360a3 shipyard and us. One important detail: we had signed in the purchase agreement that we were buying the catamaran without the diesel engines, for tax reasons, knowing that the engines had already been removed from the hulls and were in very poor conditions.

The problems get solved one by one and finally, today, we signed the sale contract. We are now the owners of a… pretty big project boat.