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| The Dehler Top 34 |
Our newfound dreamboat is a Dehler Top 34, 1992 by
naval architect Van de Stadt. It’s robust, stable, and rapid, designed for open
ocean and short-handed sailing, has a hand-laid fiberglass hull reputed to be
impervious to osmosis, and has a beautiful mahogany interior. The chart table is the most impressive I’ve
ever seen, with a full sized table and modern instruments next to an electrical
control panel that looks like something you would find in a small airplane. And there is storage space EVERYWHERE. It is clear that this boat was designed to
sail, and sail, and sail.
We had learned that one of the first questions to ask owners
is what sort of sailing they did with the boat.
This tells you immediately whether the boat has just been lolling around
local waters on family outings or if it has been outfitted for real sailing by
real sailors. I was already over the
moon about the boat just based on the photos and description in the
announcement. When the owner told us he
and his girlfriend had just come back from a one-year tour around the Atlantic,
I was sold. And just before their
Atlantic tour, they had replaced just about everything: rigging, sails, and electronics, and all were
still in excellent condition.
We are currently stumbling clumsily through the arrangements
between buyer and seller like kids at their first dance. We have never bought a boat before and they
have never sold one, so we’re all babes in the woods here. We have laughed our
way through most of the official hurdles and have become quite chummy. When we signed the first slew of papers, they
asked us if we intended to keep the name of the boat. That sounded like such a simple question.
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