May 13, 2015
Nomad 1
Various circumstances led indirectly to my acquisition of a 1990 Nimble Nomad. A friend who often trolled Craig’s List found the listing and sent it to me, totally out of the blue. I wasn’t familiar with Nomads, and my first gut reaction was that the boat was so ugly it was cute. This particular example was priced at the very low end, and was advertised as needing work: it had an original 1990 outboard (reportedly running),and very faded original gelcoat on the hull. It was an interesting design, but I doubt this would have progressed at all had not the boat been located right in town–what were the chances? Given the proximity, I thought I would have a look. Some online research on “The Google” revealed a virtual cult status for this boat, with surprising values and asking prices. This boat was well below the average range of prices I could find online.
The pictures below are from my first viewing. As expected, the boat needed a cosmetic facelift on the outside. Inside, she was OK–just OK, but there was plenty of opportunity for improvement. I was impressed, however, with the boat’s spacious layout, and the forward cockpit was a really neat idea that opened up the whole boat and made the small size, with its walkthrough design, amazingly unclaustrophobic. She was small, trailerable, and simple. I liked the boat, but left petty much deciding that just because I liked it didn’t mean I had to own it. Honestly, I didn’t really want another project for a while.
After a night’s reflection and discussion, during which time my wife fell in love with the boat, with some reluctance I decided to make an offer on the boat–lower than the asking price, and without contingency. I thought given the design’s cult status that the seller wouldn’t take my offer, and I was ready to (expecting to) walk away. To my amazement (and disconcert), he accepted my offer, so just like that, I had another project. I was sort of angry at myself. But my wife loved the boat, and I thought that I could make the boat pretty nice without spending a fortune–or without spending a huge amount of time. There’d be no set timeframe for the work, and if it killed me I’d keep the scope as minimal as possible–a hard thing to do when I liked to make boats just so, but it simply had to be the new way forward at this point in time.
We completed the sale and brought the boat home the few miles the next day.