About that boat...

Photo by Koocheekoo

My last post here generated a question of sufficient magnitude to warrant answering with its very own post. At some point I will post separately with our current whereabouts and plans for the next week or so.

Reader Lisa asked: "Are you getting rid of the Odyssey when you get the boat????"

This, of course, is an excellent question, and deserves a complete and thoughtful answer. Which is, "Maybe." In all seriousness, when we first decided to follow our land tour of North America with a sea tour of, umm, the rest of the world, we assumed that we would be somehow parting with Odyssey whenever we completed the transition to the boat. The "ideal" situation would be that we'd be able to live in Odyssey at the boat yard while "the boat," whatever she may be, was outfitted and readied and tested and whatever. Then we'd pass along Odyssey's keys to her happy new owners as we sailed off into the sunset. Or so the story goes.

To that end, at some level, Odyssey has always been "for sale." And, face it, like that old "will you for a million dollars" joke, nearly everything in the world is for sale, at the right price. Having said that, though, I will tell you that in our very first year on the road, a woman expressed interest in buying Odyssey and we were definitely, at that point in time, not ready to sell -- at least not at any sort of real-world price. But after perhaps our second year we started saying that if the right offer presented itself at any time, we'd take the money and run. And of course, the "right offer" naturally has decreased over the years.


Photo by Elsie esq.

In our first year on the road, someone would have needed to offer us not only every penny we invested in the bus, including the value of our own sweat equity, but also something extra to make up for the time setback to our dream, sort of a loss-of-use payment. Somewhere during the second year our price had dropped to just under what we had invested, and after we'd been to every state in the continental U.S. it was more like "fair market value," where our idea of fair market is influenced by the special capabilities we included when we built it.

What has happened, though, in the past two years has really changed everything. Which is to say, the bottom has dropped out of the RV market, and in particular the bus conversion market. Many of our readers already know that several coach builders went out of business entirely, and others were bought for a song. Inventories are at an all-time high, and used rigs are all but worthless. Many RV owners found themselves upside down on their coach loans in short order, and the resulting short sales and foreclosures or repossessions have driven used inventory up even further and prices lower.


Photo by P M M

The reality is that we'd have trouble selling Odyssey in today's market. Oh, sure, I harbor fantasies that there is someone else out there "just like us" who would value the highly specialized features and capabilities of our bus as much as we do and would be willing to pay a premium for them. But to most buyers, Odyssey is just another converted bus, and a quarter-century old one at that, and there are thousands of used bus conversions on the market today. Most are newer than ours and many are selling for a fraction of what we could accept for our beloved bus. Compounding this issue is the fact that we have led a very public life right here on this blog, and so every tiny little problem with the bus, whether since corrected or not, is now public knowledge. We can't very well claim that it belonged to a little old lady who only used it to boondock at church on Sunday.

So here's the answer: Odyssey is, and has been for some time, "for sale." If someone walks up to me with the right offer, which might be cash in hand or it might even be a trade for an appropriate boat, with some cash in one direction or the other, we are ready and willing to move out of it and turn the keys over tomorrow. But we are not yet to the point of actively pursuing such a sale by, say, creating a sales page on our site, or listing Odyssey with any brokers or sales sites, although that day will surely come. However, we are making alternative plans for the possibility that we will move aboard a boat without selling Odyssey at all.


Photo by Ole M

Those plans broadly fall into two categories. One would be to find a nice, inexpensive, secure, and climate-friendly place to store the bus indefinitely. We would take all the appropriate precautions to preserve its condition for some future time when we retire from boating and return to the land, at which point it would again become our home. In the meantime, several of her systems and appliances might be moved into the boat for use there, such as the marine refrigerator, the inverter, the diesel boiler, the Advantium oven, the A/V equipment, and even the batteries.

The other would be to find a "tenant" or bus-sitter. Someone with similar interests and skills who would be willing to take care of Odyssey, keep up the maintenance, and take care of any problems in exchange for the ability to live and/or travel in her rent-free. There would be a contract and some sort of deposit to ensure that the bus was not deliberately mistreated in our absence.


Photo by tracky_birthday

We are often asked about timing. When, exactly, would any of this happen? And in keeping with the rather unplanned and unscheduled nature of most of the rest of our life, the answer is not pat. We're asked often enough, though, that I am very practiced in responding: We will move from the bus to the boat when one of three things happens: 1. We get an offer we can't refuse on the bus. 2. We get a deal we can't pass up on a boat. Or 3. something happens to the bus that renders it impractical to repair (Louise worries about this one every time we embark a ferry). At this writing, #2 is the most likely event of the three. But you never know -- maybe someone with cash and a secret longing to own our bus is reading this post.


Photo by bunky's pickle. All photos used under a Creative Commons license.