Selling Soggy Paws

In early April, we signed a contract on Soggy Paws the CSY. The new owner took physical possession of Soggy Paws at Holiday Oceanview Marine on Samal on April 24th.

We had obligations that kept us very busy with both boats right up to the day we left the marina (May 5th) and beyond... replace the radar screen, get both liferafts repacked, put bottom paint on both boats, and get both Soggy Paws's launched and ready for cruising. We also promised to support the re-commissioning of systems (refrigeration, watermaker, putting the sails back on, etc) aboard the old Soggy Paws. Work on the new Soggy Paws took back burner right up until we waved goodbye to the new owner and crew in Sangihe, Indonesia on May 14.

Fortunately, the new owner, Rick, had wisely hired an experienced cruising couple to help he and his girlfriend deliver the boat from the Philippines, through Indonesia, to Western Australia. Jason and Jolene have turned out to be a significant asset on both sides of the transaction. The new owner is fairly novice at sailing and cruising... with big dreams but not much experience at either cruising or boat maintenance. Jason, a former Australian Army Lieutenant, now eco-crusader aboard s/v Labyrinth, is a good and patient instructor in all things sailing and cruising. And he's very good at that critical factor to enjoying cruising, boat maintenance. Jolene is an experienced cruising partner, and promised to show Rick's girlfriend, Melanie, the "ropes" needed to keep a cruising boat running from the "care and feeding" side.

We turned over a 200 page manual that we wrote on Soggy Paws' specifics, plus about 5GB of "Electronic Manuals". But still Dave ended up spending 3/4 of every day showing and coaching the Rick and Jason through all of the quirks of a 40 year old cruising boat, with many advanced "systems".

When we bought the catamaran, we opted to name her Soggy Paws as well, and without the II (two) after the name. We figured we'd be stuck with the "Two" for the next 20 years, and opted not to. The USCG in its infinite wisdom, permits duplicate boat names as long as they don't have the same hailing port. We figured the new owner of our boat would opt to name her something else. But the new owner really liked the name "Soggy Paws" and asked us if we minded if he kept it. There was no other Soggy Paws in the Australian registry, so no problems with Rick registering as just Soggy Paws. So now there are two Soggy Pawses.

This brings up another "fire drill" we went through in April... getting Soggy Paws the CSY legally turned over to Rick, and registered in Australia, so he could leave the Philippines, travel through Indonesia, and make it to Perth before his July 1 target date. Rick really wanted to leave with the Indonesia Rally, which was scheduled to leave on May 2. Through the marvels of the modern electronic age, and some hard work on both Rick's and my part, we managed to get Soggy Paws undocumented in the US and re-registered in Australia in about 2 weeks. Fortunately, the USCG accepted a scanned (PDF) copy of the Bill of Sale, to get the de-registration certificate. They accepted the Australian form of the Bill of Sale, which did not require a notarized signature. If they HAD required a notarized signature, that would have thrown a big wrench in the works. There are no US notaries in the Philippines, except in Manila or Cebu. We were poised to fly to Cebu for a date with the US Consulate there, to get our Bill of Sale notarized, when the USCG came through with the de-registration certificate using the Australian Bill of Sale. We did have to Express Mail the original Bill of Sale to the Australian Ships Registry departement, but they accepted the emailed copy of the USCG de-registration certificate.

Amazingly, Rick had the electronic copy of his Australian Registration Certificate in about 10 days.

Lots of other fire drills on both Soggy Paws in the last 10 days before we left on the rally... things like... one of our 4 6-volt batteries died. Fortunately the battery bank is large enough that the new owner could cruise back to Australia on just half the bank, and take his time replacing the batteries. Our Profurl roller furler on the genoa "locked up". This is the Profurl that had never failed us in 8 years of full time cruising. Rick went into Davao to the bearing place to get new bearings, and Jason and Dave rebuilt the thing on the dock. The foil on our staysail furling system had been re-assembled wrongly and we had to cut the Sta-Lok off to fix it, and then put it all back up. Every day was a new adventure!!

But we eventually worked through all the problems and headed off on the Rally on May 5. More on the Rally in the next episode.