Meet Our Sailboat

Researching Our Boat

Buy­ing a sail­boat is a lot like dat­ing. While on paper, some­one may seem like a per­fect fit, when you final­ly meet in per­son, you dis­cov­er there is no “chem­istry.” At the time, how­ev­er, we had no idea how many “dates” we would go on, before we would final­ly meet the right one, our new sailboat.

We went into the search with a list of cri­te­ria we thought we  need­ed, or want­ed. On our short list were things like sleep­ing berths to acco­mo­date our fam­i­ly, blue­wa­ter capa­bil­i­ties, and enough space above and below, so the length need­ed to be atleast 35 feet.

We want­ed a boat that need­ed work because we had a lim­it­ed bud­get, but the work should, for the most part, be some­thing we could han­dle. Price was not our main cri­te­ria… qual­i­ty and rep­u­ta­tion were!

Finding Our Boat

When you are in the mar­ket for a sail­boat, there are many online resources to help you. We start­ed by research­ing boats that were reli­able and could get us where we want­ed to go. From that list, we delet­ed boats that had known flaws (his­to­ries of thin hulls, sep­a­rat­ing keels, and so on) and those out of our price range. We want­ed a boat that would hold its val­ue and would still be a great bar­gain after all the work we would be doing. The list became small­er still. We then start­ed look­ing on online forums for own­ers’ comments.

Final­ly, we searched online mar­ket­places like Yacht World, Ebay, and Craigslist, look­ing for that jew­el in the rough. When we saw it, we’d know. It took us a cou­ple of years, but many road­trips lat­er, we were on our way to meet our boat. We were final­ly on our first date with “the One.” The sec­ond I’d laid eyes on her, I knew!

Meet Our Boat- Finally!

Here she is: a 36 foot Allied Princess. The own­er was relo­cat­ing and gave us a great price. We drove down that night to exam­ine her and we moved her to a boat­yard with­in the week.

About Our Boat

Accord­ing to alliedboatowners.com, “the Princess was most like­ly Allied’s most pop­u­lar boat of the time (1972–1982).” Here are the spec­i­fi­ca­tions, tak­en from the Allied website:

Spec­i­fi­ca­tions:
Over­all length: 36′
Water­line length: 27′6″
Beam: 11′
Dis­place­ment: 14,400 pounds
Bal­last: 5000 pounds lead
Draft: 4′6″
Keel style: mod­i­fied full
Fuel: 37–70 gal­lons (most 40)
Water: 60–100 gal­lons (most 80)
Sail area: ketch: 604 s.f. cut­ter: ? sloop: 595 s.f.
Head­room: 6′4″
Design­er: Edmunds
The­o­ret­i­cal hull speed: 7.027 knots
Dis­place­ment to water­line length ratio: 309.112
Beam to length ratio: .306
Sail area to dis­place­ment ratio: 16.361
Cap­size screen­ing val­ue: 1.81 (A low­er val­ue indi­cates a more sta­ble boat; the screen­ing val­ue must be under 2.00 in order to be offshore-capable)

Our Next Steps

The boat needs work, but the bones are good. The biggest expens­es will be replac­ing the motor and paint­ing the body. We have a list of repairs and replace­ments, but, luck­i­ly, we saved mon­ey on the ini­tial outlay.Our top pri­or­i­ty is hav­ing her ready to set-off by next sum­mer. We will be doc­u­ment­ing our work on our boat as we go, so SUBSCRIBE to keep up-to-date on our adven­ture. Until next time!