Things are happening fast. Too fast. We are not ready to start seriously looking for our boat and especially not ready for making offers, but today our offer was accepted. We just could not pass up on losing this opportunity, but is she a lemon?

The boat is an old 2010 Alliaura Marine, Privilege 515 currently laid up on a tiny Danish island in the middle of the Baltic Sea. She looks weather beaten and a sorry sight, needing lots of love and attention, but otherwise structurally sound, we hope. We’ve arranged to visit her on 23rd and 24th June with a surveyor for a sea trial as well.

Update 1: We coordinated our visit with a marine surveyor (David) and he has confirmed that while she needs lots of cosmetic attention there are no obvious structural or mechanical issues, and that many basic maintenance activities have been left unattended. He has provided a detailed report of all the things we need to work on.

Meanwhile the sales/purchase process has been, well, very stressful, and given the importance and value of this transaction we have engaged a fantastic marine lawyer to help us navigate through this new world and collect the documents we may need to evidence later for customs or when we come to sell her in a few years.

We began making plans for her, we’ve contacted Cherbourg harbour and confirmed availability for her from August until April. We have a number of insurance quotes. We've begun investigating how to restore teak and get an idea of costs to renew rigging in Denmark, France or Turkey.

Update 2: After many many hours coordinating documents and negotiations between ourselves and the seller we have come to an agreed purchase/sales contract and will complete the sale on 26th August and then sail her away the next day.

Update 3: We returned to Bornholm to complete the purchase. We checked through inventory and documents and everything was in order and completed the transaction in international waters and then sailed her with a delivery crew (Dieter and Phil) with tail winds blowing us quickly to Gosport in the UK for refurb under Inward Processing.

After battling with a gradual loss of power (house batteries were not recharging from engines) we arrived at 5am after a continuous sail through the Kiel canal and across the North Sea running shifts of 3 hours on and six hours off with winds up to 30 knot winds and 3m swells.

Update 4: Our paperwork is now complete with the arrival of our owners ship registry certificate! Yay, finally, this first stage of our new journey has come to a tidy end.