“I’m busier now than I was in June or July” is the cheerful response from John McDonald down in Kinsale at the south coast MGM Boats boats for sale office writes W M Nixon. Normally there’s a slowing down of sales as Autumn draws in, or brokers might find their time being taken up by the perennial tyre-kickers who will only move if an absolute bargain is in the offing. But September 2016 has been different.
The affable and informative McDonald reckons it’s the post-Brexit effect. Much and all as Brexit on June 23rd was only an electoral decision, and nothing concrete has as yet flowed from it – indeed, it could take years for any significant changes to kick in – the feeling is that when a major decision is coming down the line, every other decision is deferred. So the fact that a decision has been made, whatever about its longterm consequences, is better than a state of uncertainty.
For Irish boat buyers and sellers, the main interest lay in the effect on the euro-sterling rate of exchange, and we’ve reported on Afloat.ie about the way Howth YC maximised on the initial plunge in sterling by sending off a very focused procurement team to the Solent area in search of four good J/80s for use in the club’s sailing development programme. They hit the ground running to find the exchange rate in such such a sweet place that they came back with five J/80s.
But now things have stabilised, rates of exchange seem to have settled down with sterling at a lower level, and boat buyers can move with a clear idea of the true comparable prices between boats in the Euro zone and across the water.
This Westerly Fulmar 32 is back on the market with MGM Boats through a change in the owner’s circumstances. The significance is that an already good example of the noted collaboration between leading designer Ed Dubois and volume boatbuilders Westerly Marine is available at a price of €33,950 which seems even more attractive when you factor in the impressive array of new equipment and sails she has acquired during the past year.
The Westerly Fulmar 32 is the very epitome of a “sensible” boat. She’s a big 32–footer, yet the designer didn’t try to shoehorn in more accommodation than there was comfortably room for, and the result is she actually seems even bigger than she really is.
But this doesn’t come with an impairment of performance. On the contrary, the Fulmar achieves the ideal of a more-than-respectable average speed when sailing on a cruising passage, and it’s all done in a sea-kindly boat in which the miles slip effortlessly by. In this case, the high standard of equipment is matched by a very good general level of maintenance, providing the ideal package in a very attractive size range, details here.
