Well done! I'm not familiar with the Navigator name. Where'd you find her? Docking in New Bern, or Oriental?
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"The Beaty's: Making slips available at Northwest Creek Marina since 2009"
Navigator has a history that is intertwined with Californian. It's not a long history as a brand itself, but they built good, solid boats out of Parris, CA until 2013. It's a thick and solid fiberglass hull with some good flair for cutting through stinky seas. The layout is VERY unique on the inside, however, it does create a few challenges. Nevertheless, there is tons of storage. Anywhere there could be a cabinet... there is one. It also has two very large hanging lockers. Four reverse cycle AC units and two pretty great engines with low hours for their age.
The engine room has pretty good space for moving around and you can get all around the engines (I pushed hard for us to get the Californian because of the stand-up engine room). Although, one of the first BIG projects I want to undertake is to make a couple of hatches in the saloon to allow much better access. The framing is there, I'll just have to make them proper hatches.
How we found her is a cute story. Two years ago we went to Ocracoke in the trawler. We ended up in a slip next to this boat. At the time, neither of us had plans to sell our boats, but Bess and I gave the owner a courtesy boat card and said, "Call us first if you want to sell."
Fast forward two years. We sold the trawler and were making offers on coastal vacation property in Kill Devil Hills. Less than a week after geting an accepted offer on a nice place, we got an email from the Navigator's owner saying he was thinking about putting her up for sale. Figures, right? Well, we turned him down and went back to house shopping. I was convinced we needed to use our money in a positive way and not buy another boat.
One year and four bad real estate deals later, Bess and I decided that we really just wanted to be on the water again. We spent months looking at boats that weren't the Navigator. Most of them much larger than 42'. The Nav was the most money for the least length. Well, finally, after looking at bad Bayliners and colossal-size Californians, we started taking a serious look at the Navigator again. We got a very good deal because the seller wrote us into the broker contract as an exception since we pre-dated the broker's listing. However, we did work with Mark Bowerman (Grace Yachting and a TF member... DaddyO) to manage some of the closing details (He was great BTW). So here we are.
Now we have a boat that is efficient on fuel at slow speeds, but can gettyup if we need to... And during our slow trawler years, we found out we really needed to sometimes.
There you have it... Certainly we should have bought this one from the get-go and we have lost a whole 'nother season of boating, but the way I fig'gr it, now we have the Fall and Winter to learn her, make her our own, and shop for a place to moor here.
