Westerly Griffon No 67 Paxi Moon

We purchased Sea Maiden of Lymington in September 2004 at the Lymington used boat show. She had been advertised on the "for-sale" board of the Westerly Owners Association and was the only boat we looked at when we were in the position of purchasing. A few days earlier we had sold our Westerly 22 "Windrush".

When we first started to think about upgrading, our criteria was max 26ft (8m) as our Hamble mooring was restricted to this max length, and enquiries at the Harbour Master's Office suggested a long waiting list of approx 8 years. So a shortlist was drawn up and various yachts considered however the favourite was a Westerly Centaur. On a visit to Chichester, we visited the Yacht Basin and spoke to the Broker there, who suggested we look at both the Centaur and Griffon. Minutes later we had the keys to both and set off down the pontoons. On boarding the Centaur we both agreed it did not feel homely, however it was a well used vessel and needed some serious updating down below. Boarding the Griffon was like meeting a long lost friend. It just felt right so the budget was increased and sights were now set on an early Griffon, and Windrush was put up for sale.

Sea Maiden of Lymington was purchased and we decided to re-name her to Paxi Moon. We had Honeymooned on the Greek Island of Paxos and vowed one day we would have a yacht named after the island, some 13 years later our dream had materialised, however it was to take 3 months for the registrar to grant the new name.

Due to holidays we left her at Lymington until the end of October and then moved her to her permanent River Hamble mooring.

Four weeks after moving Paxi Moon to our mooring we were lucky enough to be able to relocate the mooring to one further down stream. So in the space of 5 months we had changed boats and mooring, a good result all round.