Selling a boat is not much fun. There are many reasons involved. First, for me at least, is getting rid of something I love. It feels like a death in the family or maybe a divorce. I bought the boat (s) because I love it. When I see it I think to myself, “That is a good looking boat!” When with her, I feel content. I am sad; even I as I look to bigger and different experiences on another boat.
For 
my sailboat, I looked forward to seeing her in her slip, I practically skipped down the dock, to get to her, for a sail. Feeling like an excited teenager, I remember excitedly fumbling to unzip her sail cover and unsnap her canvas. I always seemed too hurried as the time was too short, to go slowly. With the covers off, as quickly as I could, I got down to business. Started the motor. She shuddered. I untied the lines. She rocked gently back and forth.
After we moved from the slip, we are in our element. But its not until I clear the break-water and raise the main that my excitement changes. Once the rattle of the engine is removed from our presence and the sails drawing, I experience a deepening calmness. The regular pace of life subsides to reveal only my boat and I, in the moment. Nothing else.
To sell a boat, at least to my reckoning, it needs to be clean. The process of cleaning takes some time. I start with what is inside. I remove each items that is in the cabin or any compartment. Each unpacks a memory. Each memory unpacks experiences that can only be found with a boat. There’s the candle holder that my wife had on board when we went to the Keys. Its small tea light offered little light, but a warm tone below as we sat in the cockpit on late winter evenings. That image triggers a sensation; deeper memories of the trip flood back. Like meeting Scott, the dockmaster at Pennekamp state park in Key Largo. Each morning he would raise a flag on a pole right next to our open hatches. The scent of his pipe tobacco comes back to me and that sends my mind back to more distant memories of my father.
A sealed plastic bag with a roll of toilet paper flashes back a night of “boat camping.” We anchored off a small forested island, on a fresh water lake. The TP sealed in the bag, so it wouldn’t get wet on its trip to shore. That night we made a camp fire on the beach. Not just any fire though. When we went into the woods to find kindling and firewood we happened upon several dead and felled pine trees. The four of us on that trip pulled an entire tree down to the beach and burned it.
Later, as the wind filled in we went moonlight sailing. For hours, we tacked back an forth. You could just hear the water trickling by. There was also the faint hum of the keel, more aptly the keel cable, as we sliced through the water and she reach a speed that caused the stainless cable to resonate. Then we headed back to the island to settle in. That same breeze brought the smell of other fires from across the lake that night and I recall waking refreshed in a way I can’t seem to find during the work week.
Boats are truly time machines. They bring you into the future, but at a speed and awareness that ensures your past is but a scent or touch away.
After I empty the entire boat I go through all the items. What’s broke or worn, heads to the trash. The personal items still rich with memories and impossible to part with, I take home. What I think the new owner needs I clean. They are mostly clean already; but the process of selecting each and handling it brings me back. Those recollections stay with me. After touching each and assessing them, they go back on-board. The new owner will put their own memories in them with new adventures.