My Boating Experience

Compared to many Helmsman 38E owners, we are relatively new to boat ownership. We bought our first boat, a 1988 Sea Ray 30 Sundancer in 2017 along with our partner Ed. We planned to used the boat on alternating weekends. It turned out Ed didn’t have time for his alternating weekends so we bought out his half of the boat. Christina and I really enjoyed boating and within a few months bought a newer boat. It was a 2001 Sea Ray 310. We were very happy with this boat but made the mistake of going to a boat show in Boston. There we saw a Beneteau Swift 30 that we fell in love with. It had a ton of glass that made it feel like you were outside even when inside. We didn’t have the money for new Swift 30, so we looked around and found a used 2017 in Florida. We travel down to see it and the broker let us live on it for 4 days. We were hooked. We had the boat trucked up to us to our marina, Spicer’s Marina in Noank, CT. The boat was originally owned by a wealthy man in Columbia South America. he had several boats, but for some reason never took care of this one. While the mechanicals were mostly very good, cosmetically it was not. We put a lot of time and effort into cleaning her up and making her “our boat”. We were convinced this would be our last and best boat. It ran like a trawler at hull speed and got over 3 miles per gallon, or could go up on plane and go 22 miles per hour and get 1.1 miles per gallon. Them, we saw a Helmsman ad in a magazine and liked it. We read tons of articles and YouTube videos and decided to take a trip to Seattle and see one. We sold my Corvette, my two Yamaha jet skis, my Yamaha Raptor quad and my Trailblazer SS to get money a new Helmsman.