Size Isn't Everything

Having made the decision to downsize, it’s just a matter of finding their sea legs for Gilbert and Maire

- Gilbert Park

Over the years I have been boating I have bought and sold many craft, all of them used. Increasing age and the degeneration that naturally occurs with it led me to spend some of the children’s inheritance on a brand new boat for myself and my wife, Maire.

Why did we choose to downsize from a Sabreline 36 flybridge to a Sealine C330? There were several reasons. The Sabreline we had before was a great boat; it was comfortable, safe and spacious. However, it did need a bit of looking after and following a winter with an expensive generator repair, three days of polishing the hull and with the thought of more necessary jobs to come, I decided I wanted to do less maintenance and more boating. Living on the French canals for much of the year, we also realised that the Sabreline was too high for some bridges and the Caterpillar engines weren’t enjoying a lot of slow-speed cruising.

So having made the decision to change to a smaller boat, why did we go for the Sealine? For starters, there is a Sealine dealer half a mile away from our berth in France, so we thought that would make any teething problems easier to solve. In fact, we ended up buying it through Thames Boat Sales in the UK as we bumped into the broker who had sold us one of our previous boats at the Southampton Boat Show. He was working for Sealine at the time and TBS had a stock C330 that could be delivered in time for our late spring/ early summer cruise. He offered us a tempting deal that included a handy discount off the new price and taking our Sabreline 36 in part exchange, so we went for it. We named our new boat Let’s Go as it summed up our fresh approach to boating.