There’s no worse way to learn about a new boat than to take a long cruise on her.

I realize that sounds contradictory, but there’s an elemental truth about that contradiction. If all you do is day sail or take short trips on a new boat, it will take forever to learn the boat’s eccentricities and to figure out how it needs to be modified to make it truly yours. Better to dive right in and take a long cruise that tests and stresses the boat and lets you learn how to cope or change things to make the boat your own.

That truth was born out to me some 16 years ago when we bought GALAXIE, our 46-foot aluminum center cockpit ketch in Galveston and set out to sail it home to New York. As with any new boat purchase, I had a survey done by a marine surveyor with a great reputation. He found problems, of course, as any good surveyor always will. After all, boats are complicated and there’s always something that is going wrong or having the potential to go wrong.

There are also lots of things on a boat that could be done better or that could be tailored to fit the owner’s preferences. In the three weeks it took us to get around Florida and up to New York (including the two days we spent moored in Apalachicola, Fla., to avoid Hurricane Andrew as it barreled across the Gulf of Mexico) we decided there was so much we wanted to fix or change on GALAXIE that instead of stopping in New York as planned we just continued north to Maine, where we turned over the boat to Y Worry Marine Services for the winter. Some $60,000 later we had the boat we wanted and have enjoyed her immensely ever since.

I’m writing this from the Galleon Marina in Key West, the halfway point in our delivery of Ding Hao, a two-year-old Gemini 105 catamaran from its old home of Bradenton, Fla, to its new home in Vero Beach. We’re four days out of Bradenton and a day behind our original schedule (hardly unusual for a sailboat trip!).

Most of the delay was caused by a scramble to find parts and make fixes to get the boat ready to go. Partly that scramble was the result of things the first owner apparently didn’t do while he owned the boat, part was due to things the surveyor missed and part was due to things we wanted to change before setting out. And we’re stopped in Key West waiting for spare parts to arrive that didn’t make it to Bradenton before we left.

Many of the problems have simply been annoyances. The zinc anode that protects the engine cooling system, for example, had completely corroded away and we needed to find replacements. One of the lines that raise the rudders for running in shallow water broke, the result of barnacles and oysters that had grown inside the rudder housing during months when the boat apparently sat unused. And the furling line for the screacher—a cross between a really big genoa and a spinnaker—had been wound on the drum the wrong direction. Those are easy enough to fix, but are nevertheless irritants.

We’ve also found some inherent problems in the design of the boat. The propane locker, for example, isn’t tall enough to hold the aluminum propane tanks that any boat used in salt water should have. So instead, we’re having to use steel tanks that are rusted and pitted. That’s something the owners will eventually have fixed. And while the cockpit of the boat is well protected from sun, rain and wind, it also makes verbal communication between the cockpit and the foredeck almost impossible. Either the owners are going to have to work out a system of hand signals or get some walkie-talkies to facilitate anchoring and mooring.

Having said all that, we’ve also discovered that the things that made the boat so appealing in the first place—lots of protected living area for a 34-footer, the amazing stability and speed that is inherent in catamarans and the 14-foot beam that allows the boat to fit into slips that most cats can’t squeeze into—are even more appealing after using the boat for several days in varied conditions.

By the time we get to Vero Beach the boat will have been thoroughly vetted. We’ll know the best combinations of sails, we’ll know fuel consumption under power, we’ll have figured out the electronics, the plumbing, the rigging, the engine systems and we’ll know more about the best ways to stow all the stuff anybody wants to keep on a boat.