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Quiet Woman departed Newport Beach in December 2000. We traveled over 30,000 miles on a seven year adventure. Travel my journal and visit the photo album on the PHOTOS page (which will be up soon...)
THE BOAT
sailing vessel Quiet Woman
1983 Mason 53 27 tons ketch rig
How did we come to buy Quiet Woman the boat?
Maybe it was fate, The CPA for both of our businesses, was also the CPA for The Quiet Woman Restaurant. He told us he thought the owners were ready to sell. It was not on the market but they were done and I was looking for the next thing to do. The three of us, the CPA, Sean and I, expressed interest and over the next few months we dove into the restaurant's guts to decide if we really wanted it and if we did how much to offer. During that same time Sean and I were rolling around the idea of buying a boat and sailing around the world. Sean is a world class sailor and it had always been a dream. I had been on a sailboat exactly one time but thought it sounded like an amazing adventure. I was in.
Every Sunday we had brunch with the same friends and the question was always " Is it Plan A - buy the restaurant or Plan B - buy a sailboat"? We went back and forth almost weekly. Eventually we decided to make an offer on the QW as 3 way partners and it was accepted, so that was that - Plan A it was. A few days later all parties met at the CPA's office to write checks for deposit to officially open escrow. When we took out our checkbooks the CPA announced that he was out of the deal. Shocked silence in the room. After a moment Sean and I arranged to have a final meeting with the sellers at the QW the next day and left. With one third of the money gone the whole deal was basically gone. The two of us couldn't offer what the three of us had offered. We agreed on what the two of us could offer but it was considerably less than the accepted offer had been and we assumed it would be refused.
Okay. Fate spoke. Guess it's Plan B. After the shock wore off we spent the rest of that day making lists of everything we could sell, how much money we'd have and what kinds of boats we could look at. By the next morning we had wrapped our heads around Plan B and were getting excited. We expected the QW meeting to be perfunctory. We would offer "X", they would say "No", we would shake hands and we would be on our way to Plan B. At the QW later that morning we told the owners that we obviously could no longer honor the original offer since there were only two of us but we were prepared to offer "X". They looked at each other for about five seconds, looked at us and said "Okay". We were once again speechless. We left and didn't say a single word in the car on the way home. We walked into a house full of lists and prices and boat possibilities, looked at each other and said "Okay?!?" Is that what we are doing ? We're buying a restaurant ?!? Wow. And that is what we did - we bought The Quiet Woman Restaurant. Eight years later we bought a boat, named her Quiet Woman and set off on our delayed adventure - in a much nicer boat than was on our original list !
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I'm posting as fast as I can rewrite my scribbled journal and sort through decades of photos !!
lynne
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