We found our Endeavour 43 during a lunch time internet search in the spring of 2015. She was located in LaSalle, Ontario, Canada. Little did we know what an adventure that advertisement would kick off.
After contacting the broker and explaining our distance from the boat he sent us 150 very detailed photographs. He showed her, warts and all, and it was clear he was not hiding anything. After a few conversations via phone and email we decided to make an offer with contingencies for our inspection, a professional survey and a professional mechanical inspection.
There was only one wrinkle, we didn’t have passports yet. It was one of those things that just kept getting put off, but now we needed them fast. Kristi contacted Congressman Adam Kinzinger and he was able to help by getting us an appointment immediately. We dropped everything and rushed to Chicago, and spent most of the day traveling, waiting, and finally getting our passports. Even with our congressman’s help, it required a large surcharge for this service.
Now we were off to see the boat. She looked just like the pictures, no real surprises good or ba
d. She needed work, but it was work we could do, so we decided to move ahead. Next came another trip to LaSalle for the survey, which didn’t reveal any deal breaking defects. The yard put her in the water and the mechanic checked her out. Everything worked as advertised, so she became ours. We spent the next four weekends traveling to Westport Marina in LaSalle, ON on Friday after work and back home Sunday evening, working to make sure she was safe for the trip to our home port in Racine, WI. I’m sorry to say I can find no reason to recommend Westport Marina. There must be better facilities in the area, but that’s where our boat was when we bought her.
After a lot of research we decided to buy new sails from Mack Sails. UPS screwed up no less than three times getting our sails to us, but we finally got our sails thanks to Travis at Mack Sails being bulldog persistent in dealing with UPS. We were delayed a day but that made dinner with some old friends possible, so it wasn’t a total loss.
At first light on a crisp clear morning we backed out of the tiny marina and headed up the Detroit River. Phase two of our adventure was beginning.
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