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I'd read the tired line on online forums, and I knew that sooner or later, some one would say it to me. "You know, they say a boat is a hole in the water into which your throw money." I had hoped that I'd be the first sailor in many years to avoid hearing that curse. Upon entering the world of boating you're bound to hear tales of what the boating life has cost the owner. It ascends to a crescendo of bragging for about how much each person has spent on their boat. "I spent $1500 on my windlass." "Hell, it took that much just to paint the port side of my hull!" "I never leave a haul-out without spending at least $10,000." "Move aside lads, I just installed a $20,000 engine." My good friend Jerry helpfully pointed out that boat is an acronym for "bring on another thousand."

The late George Carlin once said that he doesn't have hobbies. Hobbies cost money. He has interests. My surveyor Scott Peyerk told me, to be successful in boating, you must go beyond a hobby and make it your life. He told me this while we stood on top of a 1968 Columbia 36, a thick-hulled boat from the era before the oil crisis. Less than a year after the purchase of our first boat, a Catalina 27, Eric and I were once again in the market for a boat, a bigger one.

It had all fallen together rather serendipitously. After running our Catalina 27 aground, I still vowed to stick with sailing. Tropic Moon, the catalina, is doing just fine and only suffered mostly only a few scrapes and rubbed the fairing off the lead keel. We weren't changing boats because of the grounding, just taking advantage of a new local listing on Yachtworld listed by Ala Wai Yacht Brokerage. During a routine ogling, I mean, examination of the boat listings I'd come across the 36' Columbia listed for $20,000. Upon closer examination of the pictures, I noticed the boat was in Keehi Marine Center. Hmm, it was in the marina next door. I walked over to the edge of the La Mariana pier, and looked around. Surprisingly, I could see the first couple feet of the Columbia's bow peeking out from a slip over at KMC. It was like a seductress, teasing me from afar.

Well, certainly it was at least worth a quick look. I called up John to schedule a viewing of the boat, but he couldn't show it to us for a day or two. Someone advised us that if we waited by the gates to the Nazi camp that is the Keehi Marine Center, we could probably get in to see the boat. Getting past the first gate is child's play. We merely walked in with a passing car. However, when we came to the second gate our arrival coincided with someone leaving the gated area. If it had been anyone else, we could've just walked inside. However, it happened to be Christian, one of the property security dudes. He told us that to view the boat we needed to be accompanied by a broker. We found our way out through the front gate and went back to La Mariana.

An anxious couple of days later, we finally got to take a look inside the boat. On the way there, we examined the facilities and docks of Keehi Marine Center, one of the island's private marinas. Overall the docks seemed to be in very good shape. However, there were plenty of derelict boats in slips. There were also plenty of vacant slips. From what I heard, it was a myth that a lot of people were trying to get into the slips there. Apparently they had more empty slips than they needed for the construction work they were doing.

Anyhow, Eric, John, and myself walked up to the Columbia 36, named Tempo, located at the end of the furthest dock.