FINDING TANGAROA
The story of how we got Tangaroa is, in our humble opinion, a pretty good tale. Handcrafted on the Gold Coast of Australia, Maritimo’s line includes a variety of models. Tom loves the look of a “sport fisher,” even though we rarely fish! These boats have a long front bow (that’s the pointy end), a flybridge (the upstairs level where the helm station is located), a spacious cockpit (the rear deck) and can cruise fast when necessary.
When Tom gets an idea into his head of what he wants, he gets really focused. Like playing a chess game, he plans out every permutation imaginable of “what if’s” and “why not’s” and “how to’s” in order to reach his goal. When all the pieces click into place and he has a solid game plan to achieve his goal a picture of the end result, such as the Maritimo 51, goes on his bathroom mirror. That way, he sees it every day and can keep steady on his plan. It took a couple of years of careful planning before a photo of the Maritimo even went up on the mirror. But once it was there, barring unforeseen events, it was as good as a done deal!
It’s easy to think, when you look at a boat like Tangaroa, that Tom is rich. People do wonder how he could afford it. He’s had 3 successful careers. He has a good retirement and has very carefully crafted his savings. Even though Tom has done well with his few careers and wise planning, a boat like this isn’t something Tom could just plop down money on. We were on the lookout for a lightly used model. But these rarely come on to the market; M51 owners generally sell their boat because they want a bigger Maritimo! Over the course of a couple of years, we looked online at every Maritimo that came up for sale around the world.
One of his favorite sayings is that you have to make money while you are sleeping. Nonetheless, it still required some major changes that people might not want to take: we had to sell our beautiful home and add that into the financial portfolio. But ever since the morning when Tom woke up and said, “if I don’t do this now, I never will,” he had begun to put those pieces into place.
The first piece was selling our beautiful home on 6 wildlife-filled, quiet acres.
After months of looking, in late 2019 we found the perfect vessel: a 3 year old, beautifully equipped and maintained M51 berthed in Florida. For weeks, we looked at the photos online. We talked to the salesman. We even planned how we’d pick it up and cruise it through the Panama Canal. But, at that time, we were waiting for our house to sell. We couldn’t risk taking a chance on putting down a substantial refundable deposit on a yacht and having the house fall out of escrow. It came as no surprise when that lovely vessel sold.
There was another Maritimo 51 on the West Coast, in California. It was close to having everything we wanted on it, but it, too, sold very quickly. Now, there were no boats available. But every day Beth looked online. And then another came up, this time down in South America. It looked pretty good and ticked most of the boxes, so we called on it. We discovered the one major downside was that it was wired for overseas, not the US, electrical connections.
About this time, the huge Palm Beach International Boat Show was getting ready to take place. Reaching out via Facebook messenger, Beth sent a PM to Maritimo. “If someone comes up to you at the boat show and wants to trade in their M51 for a larger boat, please let us know!” (The M51 is the smallest model Maritimo now builds and we know that people often choose to move up to a larger vessel.) Within a few days we were talking to Dave Northrop, President of Maritimo Americas, who told us he’d prefer to see us in a new boat, rather than a used one.
Over the course of a few months, we had many long conversations, tossed a lot of emails back and forth, and looked at a plethora of photos online. In the end, Tom agreed with Dave – a new Maritimo made sense. To make it happen, he had to do some serious asset juggling, not least of which was selling our home and some other things he’d planned to hold on to. But, for Tom, to have a new custom-built Maritimo was worth it!
We had the opportunity to visit the Maritimo factory for an all-to-brief whirlwind tour of the facilities where these marvelous vessels are crafted.
Maritimo profiles new owners and we were delighted to have them publish this article about us, and our upcoming adventure, on their website:
https://www.maritimo.com.au/guardians-of-nature-to-set-off-in-guardian-of-the-seas/