Author:  Miranda

Location:  Black Creek, WI

We really thought we had her!

We put in our offer.  We bit off our fingernails to stubs- well, Pete did anyway.  I just drank too much coffee and talked in short, blurting sentences to anyone I knew about “our offer.”

I couldn’t get Pete on the phone fast enough when I read Alexis’s email saying that Dariousz was prepared to accept our offer.  All we needed to do was email a formal contract with a few edits to Alexis right away and be prepared to send our 10% deposit to the brokering company’s escrow account on Monday morning.  Yes, we can do that.  Done.  Contract in and money ready to go.  To me, this was acceptance of our offer.

I guess I’m naive enough to accept people at their word.  To believe that even without seeing a signed contract, getting verbal (well, email) acceptance of our offer was enough.  Brokers are masters of the fine print, so I guess writing that he was “prepared to accept our offer,” must not be the same as “I’m accepting your offer.”  In addition, it would have been much clearer and honest to say, “the owner is continuing to show the boat and will be accepting offers until a contract is signed.”

Turns out that on Sunday afternoon a different prospect took a look at the boat (while our offer was accepted on Saturday), and told both the owner and the broker that he’d like to make a formal offer.  This offer was higher than ours, and we received an email from Alexis stating that Dariousz had accepted this offer instead of ours.

I will be the first person to admit that I am new at this process.  That I’ve never bought a house, much less, a boat before.  Obviously I know that money talks, and I can see a point of view that says it’s stupid to turn down more money from a higher offer until a contract has been officially signed.  But experiencing moments like this, those that make you disappointed in how you were treated by a fellow member of the human race are just kinda sucky.  Not the most eloquent way of stating this, but accurate.  Life will go on.  There are bigger problems in the world.  But still- this was kinda sucky.

We went to Florida as a learning experience in what specifics we are looking for in a cruising catamaran and gain knowledge into the boat buying process.  We’ve accomplished both of these, and we are really quite pleased with how things went.  This last incident just put a momentary hitch in our giddyup.  But, such as with all life’s lessons, those that hit hardest are often the most meaningful and long-lasting.  We are blessed to have this opportunity to take time off and sail, and we’ll continue to jump any hurdles we need to in order to make it happen.

Our boat is still out there, and we are fully confident that we’ll find her yet!