Buying Grace: Doing the deal

Port Grimaud. Home of SMN

Port Grimaud (PG) on the coast is one of these "make believe" faux Venice yacht havens with waterside villa's and boats parked outside. My dad calls this sort of thing "never never land". Actually as far as these things go, this is quite a nice established and weathered version of "the dream" and the South of France sunshine can shed a sharp beautifying light on anything.

The Real Grimaud

Grimaud for real (inland) is a most fantastic medieval town built own a hill. We had a great time and would have loved the area even if we had not scored the boat. St Tropez around the corner, quiet sunshine at the end of the season and French food. Audrey knew this was a trick to go see a boat but it was one of my better tricks.

We met Frank running sales at the local PG broker SMN www.smn-port-grimaud.com 

It turned out that SMN was more than just a broker with a full service boat yard, stores, woodworking and a Hamblesque set of supporting yacht industries surrounding. A little hive of activity that would become a home to us for a while in 2016.

Mark and frank at SMN

I do business and I know people. People are what make business work and it was obvious to me that Frank (sales) and Patrick (tech and service/refit boss) were people that you can trust. From that point forward, it was not nessesarily going to be "easy" (mainly due to a difficult owner!) but we felt in safe hands.

Grace as we found her

We visited the boat with Frank in Hyeres. Audrey and I arrived early and found the boat. We had figured out where it was from pictures. First thing, decks looked great. But the boat was clearly a bit neglected, a bit dirty and pretty much everything topside was cooked by UV. This is the South of France. The other effect is brown sand contamination in everything! This

stuff blows across the med from Africa and then comes down with the rain.


Later down below we found an untidy boat with signs of recent "un-love" but all on the surface. The owner had obviously been very fastidious in the past. I had manuals on everything files, history. I could see through the surface grime. This was a very nice boat. The history made sense. Divorce. Second wife... second wife hated sailing. Sailing children all grown up and left home, moved away. Failing health. No sailing. Neglected boat.

Clean... very clean.

760 engine hours on a 10 year old boat! You could eat a meal off the inside of the engine and generator bay. Good Raymarine electronics, Radar, generator, bow thrusters. Its a buyer.

This boat is not selling here. Its expensive as a second hand boat in the Mediterranean scene. It is not a large white "plastic fantastic". Northern European sailors get off on teak decks, Scandinavian workmanship, heavy keels, oversized rigging. The latin mentality .. white teeth, sunglasses and "mine is bigger than yours"! This Najad 380 is a fish out of water here.









Our owner is pissed off. He remained pissed off at every stage of the deal. He already had a strop on because he felt he was selling too low. One year pervious he had had a chance to sell at a bigger number but pulled out, wanting an even bigger number. Frank at SMN knew all the history. He had sold the boat new in the first place and was really trying to work with his clients best interest in mind, as well as ours.

Tidy Electronics

We had no ability to horse trade the price (we tried). Our owner was snarling at the bottom of his pit. At the time (pre Brexit vote) we had the £ to Euro riding high. Audrey is skilled in currency buying through her experience at work and we had the best possible exchange rate running in our favour. We had the Euros locked in if we needed them.

Audrey is not good at being forgiving of inflexible people. It becomes a red rag to her bull. I ended up in the middle with Frank trying to do a good deal. The right deal. We knew the exchange rate was not going to last. In the end we sucked it up and settled at the asking price with SMN helping with some cost price offers of the boat yard services we would need later.

We left France with a deal in principal subject to survey and trial sail.
Nothing is certain here. The owner has "previous" rep on backing out.

I found a French surveyor. Early November booked in for a two day trip back to Hyeres.....