Becoming a boat owner :-)

To be honest it was inevitable really that we'd end up getting a boat of our own. We wakeboard pretty much every weekend and when we sat down and worked out how much we were paying other people to tow us around for 15 minutes at a time, it seemed more economical to actually invest in a tow boat of our own.

There is so much to consider when you're thinking about actually purchasing your own boat. Firstly the cost of the boat, maintenance - yes they need servicing just like your car - the cost of parts when things go wrong, where to keep it? On a trailer outside the house? Wet berth? Dry berth?

Of course first you have to find your boat. We found ours on Dubizzle, for sale by a lovely British couple who just didn't have the time to use it. A Centurion T5 Air Warrior, two years old with only 41 hours on the clock. It's a direct drive boat and a good all round water sports boat that will keep skiers, boarders and skaters alike happy.

Then of course you have to do all the ownership transfers, de-registration, re-registration, which now the NTA now insist you pay 7,000 Dhs to have a GPS transponder put on the boat (the fee is refundable if and when you sell the boat on). As is usual in the UAE, it was much easier to just pay someone else to do all the running around and get the job done :-)

We decided to dry berth the boat and just tractor it in and out the water at a local marine club. One obvious factor to consider is, who's going to drive the boat? It's not law in the UAE at this time for boat drivers to hold a license, but this is going to change very shortly and it's something that is well worth doing anyway. So the other-half and I went off and did the RYA powerboat 2 course. It'sa easy enough and only takes two days to complete. We're not doing a bad job of driving so far, although towing people takes alot of getting used to.

You forget when you just rock up for tows, the amount of maintenance that needs to be done, such as flushing the engine through every time the boat comes out the water, washing everything down to get rid of the salt to stop equipment and parts corroding. But so far so good and it's great to be able to just go out whenever we want - although we'll see what happens when something major breaks, as happens with all boats lol