Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Happy Holidays

For all of you that missed the Salt Holiday Party there is always next year!
and taking into consideration we didn't get one together your forgiven.
Enjoy your family, friends and pets!.....PEACE

Friday, December 4, 2009

New Caption Contest

Time once again for another Salt Yacht Brokerage Company Caption Contest!
A size of your choice Salt Yacht Brokerage Company T. to the winner!


Here is this weeks photo:

Last Caption contest winner David O from Riverton NJ seen below proudly wearing his Salt Yacht Brokerage Company T (thanks for the submission Dave)







Monday, November 23, 2009

Difference between the men and the boys.....

For the second time in recent history the Eastern Shore has hosted very big small sailing regattas. First Oxford hosted the North Americans and this past weekend Rock Hall hosted 16 of the top R/C Laser sailors. Thanks to Sailing Emporium for the great site and Maury and friends for a great regatta. Congrats to David Branning for the big win!


Salt Yacht Brokerage Company was there and and would like to dispell any rumors that these are toys.
They are not, they are serious racing machines! True some are sailed by clowns but what fleet doesn't have a few clowns?


Next weekend the R/C Laser circuit/circus travels to the beautiful and majestic Cooper River... a scenic waterway that courses through Collingswood, NJ for the first ever "Black Saturday Regatta"

...Be There
Salt Yacht Brokerage Company might be!

Friday, November 20, 2009

What do all these fine boats have in common?

'01 Catalina 470
'05 Jeanneau 45 Sun Odessey
42' Pearson 422
36' Pearson


31' ODay'99 + '01 + '93 Catalina 320's'83 Lippincott 3030' Catalina35' Caliber'01 Catalina 320
'93 Catalina 320


32' Bristol Bristol 29.9Alberg 30









...All SOLD by SALT YACHT BROKERAGE COMPANY this season!
which means one thing....
WE NEED LISTINGS!






















Sunday, November 8, 2009

Cold Kiting..


Skipped out for two hours on Friday for what might well have been my last day of kiting on the Bay this season.
Click on the picture to check out what a mid life crisis looks like in 44 degree air temp. and 17 knots NW!

Back to Salt Yacht Brokerage Company Site

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

And the winner is.......

David O'Really from Riverton NJ with his simple minded yet poignant local refererence laced, mildly insulting caption ....

















"Rock Hall"


Dave your Limited addition, size large, 100% cotton, Salt Yacht Brokerage Company T Shirt/Shamwow is in the mail.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

First Ever Salt Yacht Brokerage Company Caption Contest


Best caption gets a limited addition Salt Yacht Brokerage T shirt ( choice of three popular sizes)
Just email us your caption to: Tom@saltyachts.com the winning entry will be chosen by the Salt staff (either one) the winner will be announced during the 7 inning stretch of the 2009 World Series game 5 if you are unable to attend game 5 and make it up to section 700 row 12 seat 67 you can find the winner announced on our website tomorrow.
Early Returns-
Denny B. -"Do you think we'll need an anchor"
Skip L.- "But the depth sounder reads 12 feet?"
Bill M. -"Hello Moorings... we're on our flight home, ah you can pick # 63 up over on the North shore..."
Steve E.- " I said Scotch on the Rocks you idiot!"
Mark H. -" Craig thought to himself: Damn that channel looks narrow"
Glenn S.- " Honey I'm home"
Matt L.- " But I was yelling Starboard the whole time"
Greg M.- "I THOUGHT a bad day on the water was better then a good day at work"

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Big fun...little boats

I had the pleasure of participating in the R/C Laser North Americans last weekend at Tred Avon Yacht Club, Oxford MD....
Very cool event with 37 sailors from three countries competing for something you can't even brag about!..."Those two days I was the 12th best toy Laser sailor in North America" ...just doesn't impress!









But man it was fun... Racing R/C sail is something every big boat sailor should try, same tactics, same rules, same intensity as "real boat" racing but with the ability to see the entire fleet and race course at once.
Great group of people... I can't wait to play again!








Thursday, October 8, 2009

What a difference a day makes.....

Wind is amazing, able to grab a hold of water, lift and distort an otherwise perfectly smooth surface creating ripples. As the wind increases it pushes those ripples up into lumps, left unchecked it will line those lumps up create troughs so that the wind has a nearly vertical surface to now push against creating waves.
At about 35 kts water starts to blow apart... "smoke on the water"
Here are two pictures from the same spot 24 hours apart... Two different sailboats coming into Swan Creek
As I was rigging to go windsurfing Crab crusher #1 was grunting along at about 1 knt. SOG into 30 kn0ts. Crab crusher #2 24 hours later having a better go of it....
No moral here...oh hell maybe alittle one..."we've all done it, we've all said we'll never do it again...we all will."

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Winners of "I read your brilliant blog" Contest announced!

Congratulations Peter Gadd from Portland Oregon! Peter was the first person shameless enough to admit reading this dribble and will soon have in his possession our entire West Coast advertising budget! Send me back a picture of you actually wearing your new size medium "SALT YACHT BROKERAGE CO." t shirt and I might send you another amazing gift....
And no Peter, being friends with Tina had no effect on the outcome of this contest.
Runners up but just as shameless Jill and Dave Voeller will also receive T's but in an effort to maximize our East Coast advertising budget...they will need to pick theirs up at the Salt Corporate headquarters.

Submitted short story...


The following was submitted by Alex Potter, a client of ours that recently purchased a 31' Tartan, what makes this story cool is that Alex and Rebecca where very close to becoming parents when they took the plunge to purchase "Latitudes".... Now they have crew and Alena will get a chance to grow up "As a Daughter of a Son of a Son of a Sailor"...read on!



Son of a Son of the Sea

As a boy I can remember sitting on our Hobie’s wet trampoline white knuckling a green jib sheet with one hand while using the other to keep my butt from sliding downhill to meet Cape Cod’s Vineyard Sound as it rushed past to leeward. Looking back at my father at the tiller he glanced down at me and bellowed through a moustache veiled grin, “Hold on squirt!” I was soaked to the bone from spray, my eyes were stinging from the salt, and I couldn’t help but live every minute with the vivid image that ‘ol King Neptune was about to have another laugh at our expense. My own grin only got wider. I was completely hooked and loving every minute. This was one of the few times my father and I went sailing as just the two of us. Those summer days out in the cool Atlantic waters of New England taught me so much and the sea worked its way into my soul. Sailing was meant to be shared and if only I’d realized it would be twenty years until it would be just the two of us sailing together again I’d have asked for more rides with Captain Dad.

Many years later while living in southern California with my future wife we had a life altering conversation that went something like this:
Me: “Hey babe, what do you think about buying a little sailboat and living …”
Her: “YEA! Let’s do it!”
Me: “…on it…um, really?!”
I’m not sure it was that particular moment that my ‘she’s-the-one’ suspicions were confirmed or not, but it was certainly one of the many. The hunt began and each serious contender inevitably involved a call back home to ask my old Captain his advice. After an extensive search we found a 1983 Catalina ’30 named Abhoca that was just right. We learned so much about sailing, each other, and ourselves and this time the sea worked its way into two souls and bound them together. There were numerous adventures and misadventures aboard Abhoca and I can’t even count the number of times I wished I had the wisdom of just a few more sailing trips with my father as a kid. The makers of the board game Othello must have been sailors, hence the game’s moniker, “A moment to learn. A lifetime to master,” Come to think of it living, loving, and sailing all seem to share that. Ironically, we paid exactly the same for that first home as my parents did back when mortgages had fewer teeth and took smaller bites. Six months after moving aboard our little boat we were engaged and four months later, while a strong wind joyfully tossed her beautiful dress and tugged at my coat, we had our first pictures as husband and wife over looking the same sound that my father first taught me to be a man of the sea. After a short 14 months of living aboard, and breaking every wineglass we owned, we answered another knock on opportunity’s door, sold our floating home, and moved back east swearing we’d have another boat before we could miss it too much.

While slowly decorating our first house (that didn’t require bow lines) on the spoils of two government salaries – ok, so it was really slowly – we went back to school and time slipped away. We had purchased our house hoping that the housing market would stay strong. Then we could sell it in a few years, buy another boat, and go on our first real cruise before trying to make our parents any grander. After all, if I was going to teach my son or daughter some day the way my father had taught me I’d better get some more experience. Well, life, like the weather that fills our sails, shifted and we’ve had to adjust our lines.

During our four year “dry spell” we religiously attended the Annapolis Sailboat Show every October and fantasized about the boat that we’d be taking home that year. Then, last October, while fantasizing over the Tartan 3400, we met Tom Lippincott. At these shows you meet a lot of people who are familiar with boats but only a few true yachtsmen. We had a feeling Tom might be one of the latter, so when he offered to take us out on a brand new Tartan we felt like it would be time well spent. If sanity got the better of us and we found a new Tartan 3400 wouldn’t fit into our bank account we were pretty sure Tom could help us find one that would. As it turns out we found out a lot about Tom during that test sail and also discovered we really liked Tartan. Tom really knew his stuff and was so easy going and down to earth that we liked him instantly. We found out that he and his family had built boats of many varieties until recently. Ironically, every summer for the past five years we’d sailed on my uncle’s Lippincott Lightening and didn’t make the connection until later. Also, Tom had taken his wife and kids on a two year sailing cruise. This was the perfect guy to help us find our next floating adventure and maybe even help us solidify our own cruising dreams. We were getting pretty close to our savings goal so the search began in earnest. After many discussions with Tom and many calls back to Captain Dad, we had a few good options. Almost all were Tartan, but none were perfect. Then we found her. Mon Repose, a 1993 Tartan 31 Piper, was listed just the day before. We called Tom and Dad and got the same message from both, “Get up there and check it out.” We drove the five and a half hours up to Milford, Connecticut and saw her up on the hard still shaking off the winter. She was perfect. On the way home we called Tom and he convinced us that we should put in an offer right away saying, “a boat that clean and well outfitted isn’t going to last long in any market”. We did and Tom helped us get her under contract ahead of six other offers. Tom even drove up to meet us after she was put in the water for the sea trial. Even with conditions gusting to 40-kts the trial went flawlessly leaving nothing but a bunch of signatures between us and becoming ‘yachties’ again. I really can’t say enough about how much of a help Tom was and we really felt rather like we had a new sailing friend than just a great broker. Delivering the boat with my father a little over a month later I found that there were quite a few questions that neither of us could answer, but a short call to Tom had us back on track.

Since having the boat safely home after an amazing 400-mile delivery trip we got to know the boat fairly well (with a few more calls to Tom), and with a few lines of Latitude under our belts and many more to come we decided to re-christen her Latitudes. Of course any good Parrot-head knows the “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” connection and for us there is a whole new dimension each time we step aboard our little floating piece of paradise. Recently, with my wife’s growing belly, changes aboard Latitudes are indeed underway and I can’t wait to share the sailing life with our new little girl.

Thanks for putting the wind back in our sails Tom!
Note: You too can have a story published here...simply submit any story that shamelessly talks highly of us and we might use it!

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Our First Contest!


Ok...The first person that admits to reading this blog (ever) gets a limited addition SALT Yacht Brokerage Company T Shirt!

All you need to do is be the first one to send us an email with "I read your brilliant blog" in the subject line and I'll send you a t shirt, hell I'll even pay postage!

email "I read your brilliant blog" to Tom@saltyachts.com
Disclaimer: (You have to read this part really fast)
Contest is limited to clients. family, employees, relatives their pets, their pets friends or anyone that has a mother or ever had a mother or who ever was a mother, not valid in any state other then slight confusion, Salt Yacht Brokerage Company, LLc reserves the right to give away two t shirts if we want, contest starts right..........NOW

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Lack of Salt this summer...




Starting Salt Yacht Brokerage Company back in April has been an exciting and rewarding experience but not without a downside...
Not enough time aboard Salt.
Melinda, pusscat and I finally snuck off to Annapolis last week and had a great overnighter, it was our first of the season! We have managed our share of day sailing this summer, the best the season has to offer is still ahead so we plan on
continuing to "knock about in Salt" until the water gets to hard.
















Above are a couple of pictures I took that I thought where worthy of sharing....enjoy.



























Saturday, July 18, 2009

Ever wonder what a pair of "Pessoptimrealist" look like...









“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjust the sails.” –William Ward..



Thursday, July 16, 2009

thoughtful...

I lifted this off of Sailing Anarchy this morning (always my first read.) It is an excerpt from a book titled "Saving Sailing" by Nicholas Hayes that is due for release in October.

I liked it.

"First, the physics: We rig a sleek, lightweight canoe with enormous wings, some that face up into the sky and some that face down into the sea. We listen to our senses and nature’s cues. We point things in roughly the right direction and are always awed when pure, free, invisible solar power grants us forward motion. Impressive speeds require tiny bits of energy, and sailboats use what they get very efficiently, leaving absolutely no waste or wake.
It is an engineering marvel; a scheme to trick water and air to cooperate to give motion. So good that it approaches the possibility of perpetual motion. Tuned right, a sailboat can go on forever. Set the sails, lock the tiller and stand down. Some cross oceans this way.
But a sailboat needs people to go well, and then it seems to take life. Small adjustments and constant care from teams return comfort, safety and speed.
And so the psychology: The sailor at the helm feels both directed by nature and, for a time, an anointed director of a privileged natural state. Sailors seek what they call “a groove” -- a few moments or occasionally hours where the boat is precisely balanced and the driver's concentration follows only water and wind.
On bigger boats sailed by groups, the groove only comes when the boat and the team are in perfect balance. Through their work, a sailboat’s passengers share rich, lasting emotional connections on par with the mingling of singers in a gospel choir or players in a jazz quartet. It is no coincidence that jazz players also seek a “groove,” a mix of rhythm, melody and riff that falls into place, and feels right, then and there. Once sailors or jazz musicians find their groove they are almost certainly addicted. It can be organic, mystical, erotic, magical and musical all at once...."

By Nicholas D. Hayes
Copyright 2009 Nicholas D. Hayes, All rights reserved.



Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Bens latest delivery...was on time!

Rock Hall, Maryland to Point Judith, Rhode Island June 27th to July 2nd....


Congratulations to Rich and Deb Walter on their beautiful Catalina 320 purchased from Salt Yacht Brokerage Company It was pleasure working with the Walters, not just a "brokerage sale" we where there to oversee the recommissioning and refit and safely deliver it up to Rhode Island.

I'm hoping Ben will write a short story and post more pictures about this delivery, stay tuned.


Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Riverton for the Fourth

Salt Yacht Brokerage Company will be open Friday the 3rd, closed July 4th & 5th...
By Monday Ben will be back from his successful delivery up to Point Judith and I will be back from family fun in Riverton... have a great Holiday!

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Down River Race or "Jesters on the Chester"


Friday saw us chasing the annual CRYC to RHYC "Down River Race". Our youngest daughter Charlotte and friend Julie wanted to sail a 420 so we had the perfect excuse to turn the office over to Ben and go sailing! The Down River Race starts at Chester River Yacht Club and ends 10 miles downstream at the Rock Hall Yacht Club. The entry list included everything.... Log Canoes, A Cats, Beetle Cats, Comets, International 14's, Day Sailers, Windmills, Hobies....



Two log canoes started, one made it all the way to the Log Canoe bar at RHYC the other fell over before the second sand bar. The A Cats looked silly on the first leg which was straight downwind going 10 knots at very high angles allowing the 4 knot boats sailing straight downwind to keep up...that is until the river turned 90 degrees right and the A Cats disappeared at 15 knots! We finished lunch about 3 miles into the race shut down the stinky on SALT, put on some sail and had a delightful ride down and out into the Chester.












The 2009 Raymond James, Rock Hall Real Estate, Rosica Builders, Salt Yacht Brokerage, Service Equipment, team building exercise was a huge success!

Good time was had by all, next year we will be racing!


Back to Salt Yacht Brokerage Company

....Thank you Sue for the Photos

Monday, June 22, 2009

Sign of the times...

You want it sold?.....


boats that is.... not the company

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

OWNED!

Coming in from a seatrial and survey on a very nice Caliber 35 we sold yesterday we noticed this...













Never underestimate how much a good dodger and gas grill can add to the appeal of your boat.

You can find Osprey free boats for sale at

www.saltyachts.com

Friday, June 12, 2009

Growing in leaps and bounds...




WOW! SALT YACHT BROKERAGE COMPANY doubles its sales staff after only one month in business....


...We hired Ben!

“Salt Yacht Brokerage Company is pleased to announce Ben Armiger as their new Yacht Broker. Ben comes from a lifetime of sailing in New England and the Chesapeake Bay, racing and coaching one design sailing both at Gunston Day School and throughout Long Island Sound. For five years he was the waterfront director at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum where he taught everything from advanced navigation to learn to sail camps. Ben has worked as a delivery captain up and down the New England Coast. Ben currently owns and sails a classic Tartan 34. He is obsessed with boats and would love the opportunity to find the right one for you or find the right buyer for your boat.”

editors note:
Not to mention that Ben is also a founding member and lead for The Greatest blue grass band ever to rise from the banks of the Upper East Side of the Chester River..."Chester River Runoff"






http://www.chesterriverrunoff.com/



If you have never been to a Runoff show your missing something! (If you have stop booking him so he can work Saturdays)

Contact Ben @ www.saltyachts.com

Monday, June 1, 2009

Roll'n


Its been a busy first month for Salt Yacht Brokerage Company, having taken FIVE boats under contract, half dozen good new listings and two closings we couldn't be happier! For us and most other yacht brokers I have spoken to the smaller boats seem to be the hot ticket. With the stock market seeming to find its feet, and a general feeling that the housing market is calming down I think we will eventually see a rebound in the 100K-300K priced boats also.

The secret to selling your boat is really no secret...clean, empty and priced right...an average condition boat priced in the "average selling price range" simply is not going to sell! The only boats that are moving are extremely clean and priced right... or fire sales!

But boats are selling! If you want to sell don't be afraid just be reasonable. If you want to buy you may not see a better time....

Check us out @ www.saltyachts.com

Sunday, May 17, 2009

NEW boat?.... of the week...

I have a pretty good selection of bizzare boat pictures collected over the years. This one I post to pay homage to all the dreamers, homebuilders, and outside the box thinkers....A picture is worth a thousand words so I'll just shut up and post...

Monday, May 11, 2009

Hey Neptune it's "Reprisal" now...



You have to wonder about the wisdom of changing the name of a boat. Just coming up with a new name can be very trying, add in removing the old name, coming up with a font that works, dealing with the Coast Guard, let alone the effort required to appease the Gods! This all adds up to a lot of boat time spent not sailing... I have to give credit to Dave and Jill Voeller for accepting the challenge. Dave and Jill recently purchased a beautiful Tartan 4100 that was the boat of their dreams with the exception that it was being pushed around by an unacceptable name. This was taken care of at approximately 6pm Saturday with a wonderful "changing of the name" ceremony. I'm not sure of the exact ceremony used... I'm pretty sure it was either the Poseidon or Neptune version but I do remember that the old name was banished to the deep and some cheap champagne was poured East to West...then lots of expensive Champagne was consumed...then it gets a little blurry.
Kudos to Jill and Dave taking on the challenge and thanks for the wonderful Party!
www.saltyachts.com