Donn and Alexandra Calder are comfortable in small spaces, but they’ve always strived to live big. The couple share an adventurous spirit and an eagerness to live in new places, which is how they wound up moving to a motorboat.
“The most recent place we lived was in Albuquerque, where we had this great house that we fixed up within walking distance of museums and restaurants,” Mrs. Calder, 60, said. “But after a few years we were thinking about what we wanted to do next.”
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The Calders met in high school, lived together in the Lake Tahoe area of California in their 20s, then reconnected after a decade apart when they both moved to the San Francisco area. (“We lived in a loft above a garage that was so tiny you could kiss a person on the toilet from the kitchen,” Mrs. Calder joked.) After getting married, they returned to Lake Tahoe, where they were caretakers for second homes and Mr. Calder worked as a contractor.
The next stop was “a little casita” in Palm Springs, where the Calders lived during Covid. They moved to Albuquerque when the summers got too hot in Palm Springs for their dogs, said Mr. Calder, 60, a former boat captain.
“We’ve spent time on boats with friends in Australia and other places,” he said. “Plus, we have a camper that we use often to explore other places.” It was that sense of adventure, and a fondness for efficient homes, that led them to the water.
“After 20 years as contractors and caretakers of big houses, we could see the burnout factor people experience when they own a big property,” Mrs. Calder said. “We like to be hands-on and fix things ourselves, and we don’t need much space.”
With Mr. Calder’s experience as a boat builder and remodeler, plus a budget of $350,000 in cash from the sale of their Albuquerque home, the couple scoured the internet for boats that met their requirements.
“We knew we wanted a trawler” — a commercial fishing boat that uses nets — “because of their stability and seaworthiness,” Mrs. Calder said. “We also zeroed in on boats built by Arthur DeFever because we knew they had good, livable interior space. We like boats where the galley is on the same level as the living spaces. Some boats have the galley on a lower level, but that makes the cook really isolated.”
Although they enjoy sailboats, the Calders wanted a motorboat so they could safely and comfortably manage long journeys without additional crew members.
“We decided a 49-foot trawler would work well for the two of us and our two dogs, with two staterooms so we could have guests, and a cruising range of at least 1,000 miles,” Mr. Calder said. “We also wanted a boat with stabilizers that make it easier to handle rough seas, because old trawlers tend to roll in big seas. Adding those could cost $80,000 to $100,000.”
The Calders found multiple DeFever boats online in Southern California and along the East Coast, so they traveled to see some in person before narrowing their options.
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