H a b i b i S a i l s: Boat

Habibi is an 2003 Island Packet 380

Designer: Robert Johnson

Ships Data

Hull Material: Fiberglass

LOA 39’7’’ / 12.6m LWL 32’ / 9.75m Beam 13’2’’ / 4.01m Draft 4’7’’ / 1.40m

Max. Bridge Clearance 54’3’’ / 16.54m Displacement 21,000lbs / 9,562kg

Sail Area 885 sq ft / 82,22m2 Fresh Water 170 gallons / 644 litres Diesel 85 gallons / 322 litres Holding 40 gallons / 151 litres Engine Yanmar 4JH3BE 56HP / 41kw

We bought HABIBI in Rock Hall, Maryland from her only other owners, John and Sandra, she was named Llyrical at this time.

Island Packet (and our model in particular!) was honored to be in the book The World’s Best Sailboats, Vol. II. You can download the excerpt here:

http://www.ipy.com/WorldsBestBoats.asp

If you wanna know why she is named Habibi and why we went for an Island Packet?

There are hundreds of books and maybe millions of blog entries about buying the "right boat". But finding it is actually quite challenging. And you will hear several, very opposite opinions, after your final choice - we do not care too much about that - different people have different needs. We will not bother you with too many details from our findings: Check our personal priority list and compare it with our final choice.

- Safe and stable: Preferably a full-keel-type with protected rudder/prop

- Easy to handle sails for two – a Cutter rig was top of our choice

- Built for two! No need for several bathrooms and even more cabins but more living space and a huge galley (yes, we love to eat)

- Lot of storage and a huge tankage (some modern light displacement designs have a real weight load issue)

- Great resale value, reliable and known producer

- And yes, good looking as well but easy to maintain (a bit teak trim to give a dressed-up yachty look would be nice but not at the cost of endless maintenance in the tropics)

We finally decided for an Island Packet 380

First we haven't been looking for an IP380 in particular, but the market was moving towards our budget. So we could afford a newer model than the planned older IP35. Island Packet is a US based producer, still family owned, and they have an extraordinary reputation. The boats are rock solid and come with a guarantee up to 10 years! IP was even one of the first US producer that was CE certified (in case we would like to bring her to Europe).

Habibi is Arabic ( حَبِيبي ) and stands for “Darling” or “My beloved”

We have been indeed a bit nervous until we got the boat name “Habibi” confirmed! The reason is quite simple - Switzerland has very strict rules to register a yacht: You are just allowed to have a name registered once for a private vessel; You will not find twice the same name under Swiss flag! So there are chances that your desired name is already taken as there are estimated 1500 private Swiss yachts sailing the high seas. But now we got “HABIBI” approved, and we are very happy!

We choose this name after having lived in the Middle East for three years – it’s a very often used word, to hear in several love songs as well and it’s a very nice memory to take with us. Habibi is even a very common yacht name in the Arabic Area – thanks God not in Switzerland! And yes, we know that Habibi stands for a male object of affection; the feminine form is habibti or habibati but we decided to use the shorter version for our Lady – and since Rahel’s cat, which was with her for 22 years, also had a boy's name while being a (naughty) girl, we assume this cannot be a bad sign, right?

In General: How did we choose a yacht name?

A lot of people do use very fancy names with multiple words like “having big fun on the water” or so. This might be funny on a lake but to travel internationally you may use the name quite often in forms or in radio calls with harbours, customs and so on. So having a long name introduces just difficulties – can you imagine to spell a fancy, several words long boat name over a bad radio connection in stormy weather – and this in a foreign language? So short and easy to spell is better. Habibi spells quite easy over the Radio: Hotel Alfa Bravo India Bravo India. But this are just our five cent…

Our Home Port “Basilea” – or why we can register an ocean going vessel in Switzerland?

The only register port in Switzerland has to be Basilea (or Basel, Bale depending on which official Swiss language you choose). The next question usually is: does Switzerland have sea access? Yes, of course! We even have a very nice cargo fleet under Swiss flag! Basel is located just 832km or 450 nm from Rotterdam on the river Rhine which is the most important shipping river in Europe. So you could bring your boat to Switzerland sailing it up the river to Basel if you wish :-)