Alameda!

We spent four hours on yacht choice #1 at Sausalito today. A lovely privately owned Beneteau 411 called 'Saudade'. In as new condition....just beautiful, two cabins, two heads and no real work to do. But.......at the very top if not, above our budget. On top of the price we would have to purchase a dinghy, outboard and liferaft. Geoff is also concerned about all the latest electronic gadgetry onboard. The sails are also pretty small for the size of the boat and we would have to buy a spinnaker or a larger genoa. It all adds up to a pretty expensive boat. Heartbreaking because our top offer would be $25000 below the owners asking price. So not much chance we think :((((

So, feeling a bit flat about the possibilities of either spending more than we ever intended or not getting the offer accepted...we drove to Alameda. Or 'the island' located on the east side of the bay opposite San Fran, it is a mix of typical old beautiful Californian bungalows and an immaculate marina village. Everything you need within a walk a large supermarket 'Luckys' heaps of takeaways, chandlery's, apartments etc. All surrounded by the estuary and the bay and hundreds of yachts. Just beautiful. The photo above is at Alameda Marina Village.

Tomorrow we will look at boat choice #2 a Jeanneau 37 built also in 2000 "Sea Otter" but this one is more within our budget. This will be our second more thorough look over and like today on Saudade we will run the engine, pull out the sails and check over the gear.

We will stay in Alameda here at the Marina Village Inn till probably Saturday. It's right on the Marina with a Yacht Club either side and "Sea Otter" just a few minutes walk away. It is also more affordable as accomodation than where we were near Sausalito. Oakland looks a frighteningly large city, so we will stay clear of there. Maybe catch a Ferry across to San Fran over the next couple of days and do some sightseeing.

That's all for today....oh by the way it is still sunny, warm and very Brisbane winter like! We are SO lucky so far!