Late in our search for boats, my uncle Tom contacted us to ask whether we had considered a boat called a Seastream. He had an English friend who was part of a syndicate that had purchased one many years ago and were now in the process of selling it. We were not familiar with the Seastream so was interested when Tom sent us the details of the boat and found it met a lot of our requirements. We decided to research the boat a little more and soon discovered the Seastream was an extremely well made, highly regarded, bluewater design with each boat custom made to individual requirements so no two Seastreams were the same. The boat my uncle had found us was located in Greece so we decided to see whether any were for sale in the UK so we could go on board one without having to travel to Greece first. Our thought was that if we liked the design, we would then arrange to meet the owners in Greece. Luckily for us, there was one for sale in Southampton and she looked even better equipped than the one in Greece.
We had employed a broker based in the UK and we were in regular touch with him, asking him to arrange viewings for us on the boats we were particularly interested in seeing. Our broker contacted the selling agent and as we were receiving the answers to our numerous questions, we tried not to get too excited about the prospect of viewing the boat. Three weeks before we were due to arrive in London, our broker gave us the gutting news that the boat had been sold. I felt like the wind had been taken from our sails – quite literally! The next day he contacted us to say that another Seastream was coming onto the market at the end of February and when we received the details, our excitement grew. This boat was even better than the one that had just sold with a better design, layout and more up to date equipment. We had to act fast as our broker had discovered another couple were interested in her too. On our behalf, he inspected the boat and sent us over 400 pictures which gave us a better idea of both the set-up and her condition. After seeing the photos we were even more excited about seeing the boat for ourselves. On our brokers recommendation we decided to submit an offer as this would ensure the boat was still available on our arrival. Our offer was accepted and we arranged to see Cerulean of Penryn (CoP) two days after our arrival.
After waking from our long slumber on our first morning in London, I received a call from Paul, whose house we were staying in. He and Wendy were at a ski resort in Northern Italy – close to the epicentre of Europe’s biggest Coronavirus outbreak. Their holiday had been cancelled and they were on their way home where they needed to self-quarantine. If we didn’t want to be quarantined with them, we would have to leave!
Fortunately we were heading south the day they were due back and managed to arrange to stay at another family members flat on our return the following day. In the meantime we had organised to meet one of the syndicate owners of the Seastream in Greece and did this in a deserted Italian restaurant in Richmond on our second afternoon in London as the daylight started to fade at around 3pm. It was lovely meeting Ken who talked to us enthusiastically about their boat and the many happy years they have owned her. It appears to us that Seastream owners are part of a small but very special club, with all filled with a sense of pride in their boat.
The next day we hired a car and drove to Portsmouth. We arrived at the boatyard early and wandered around the boat storage area looking at the huge variety of boats sitting in their cradles. Our eyes fell on an elegant, highly polished boat with a fresh coating of red antifoul. She really stood out in the crowded yard – this was our first look at CoP.
