A California couple, searching for a boat to use as a second home and workplace, bought a Princess F50 in San Remo, Italy, sight unseen, during the pandemic and are now shipping it back to the U.S.
Cindy and Ariel Poler are lifelong sailors, and members of San Franciso’s St. Francis Yacht Club. They had lived in San Francisco, but when their youngest son went to college they sold their house there and moved to Stinson Beach, across the bay in Marin County.
But they wanted to keep their ties to the city. According to a story in Britain’s Motor Boat & Yachting, they looked for apartments, but prices were too high. Then they thought about using their sailboat, docked at the San Francisco Marina Yacht Harbor, but it was too small.
They decided they needed a motor boat. They didn’t know anything about motor boats, but after going to boat shows in Seattle and Miami and looking at boats on both coasts, they knew what they wanted: A boat in the 40-foot range with a large salon where they could work and entertain and a large master stateroom.
They quickly realized they needed a bigger boat, and saw some brokerage Princess F45s that looked just right in Europe. After more looking, the F45s became F49s, which were replaced by the newer F50. But new F50s were out of their price range.
Then two things happened. The pandemic, which left some European dealers with an inventory of new boats without any new buyers, and the drop of the British pound versus the dollar.
Over last summer, the Polers made a deal with Princess Yachts Italy in San Remo for a F50. They hired a surveyor, and then bought the boat. They figured that the cost of shipping the boat to the U.S. was less than the price differential between buying in Europe and buying in the U.S., particularly with the weak pound and the Covid-related low price for the boat.
Last September, once the Covid lockdown started to ease, they flew to Italy to see the boat. They were only able to stay in the country for five days, but they took a short cruise, and loved it. Now the boat is on its way to Florida, where they have friends and relatives to help them enjoy it, before it makes its way to San Francisco. Read more:
