Strolling through Jersey City one evening a year earlier, they had stumbled across some intriguing trash, including a sail and several nautical maps. The couple began lingering near the house that had discarded them, and, sure enough, one day the owner was on his porch, smoking. “We were kind of dazzled by him,” Ms. Collins said. “Here’s this Hemingway-esque guy who has sailed all over the world.” He invited them in and served them top-shelf Scotch.

Barely a year after they met, he offered the couple his boat. They declined. “We’d never be able to afford a boat like this — never, never,” Ms. Collins said. “But he wanted us to have the boat. He was like, ‘Don’t worry about the finances.’ ”

So they arranged a deal: “Whatever we got for Hambo was what we’d pay him for Sarabande,” Mr. Nisbett said. That turned out to be $11,000; they pay an additional $750 a month in docking fees.

The Sarabande is larger and much better equipped than the Hambo. It has top-of-the line electronics, sophisticated navigation equipment, a water maker (to make seawater potable), a generator and even heat and air-conditioning. With its diesel tanks full, it can stay at sea for 90 days.

But the Sarabande was in even worse shape than the couple’s previous boats. It had been dry-docked — and ignored — for several years. “The whole boat was like a mold-ateria,” Mr. Nisbett said. “It was disgusting. When it would rain, it was like it was raining in here.”

And so all through the last winter the couple worked, night after night, often long after midnight. What they didn’t know how to repair, they learned. “We are always digging ourselves in too deep,” Ms. Collins said. “We take on projects we don’t really know how to do, and then we have to tear them out and redo them.”

Image Credit... Gabriele Stabile for The New York Times

Mr. Nisbett said, “We’ll get to the point where a project is ruining every aspect of our lives.”

The boat was tented in plastic to keep out the freezing winter winds, but it didn’t have a working bathroom, so they had to walk over to the marina’s.