"Why don't we just live on a boat?", my husband of 6 years teased me while driving to the next house for sale. Weeks of house hunting became tiresome since we couldn't find the "perfect" home coupled with a reasonable price. In our opinion, the economy today has not fully recovered and real estate is still not a safe investment yet.
Later that evening, we went back to the temp apt and looked out of our balcony which faced the Stamford Harbor. Once more, the view beckons--yes, we should do it. Followed by a ton of research and questions with the local liveaboards, we started the hunt for Red October.
great blog! keep it up! you won't bore us to death! enjoy the blog! hugs! sharon
ReplyDeleteHello-- I'm just back from sailing with a friend who is also a live-aboard here in our little marina community. Great day for sailing and the Long Island Sound was pretty empty of boats, as a lot of people have already winterized. Felt like we had the Sound to ourselves.
ReplyDeleteMy buddy (who has been a big help in us getting settled in here) was giving me a hard time about getting a stinky motoryacht, when we could be sailing. I told him, "you got sail, we got power, so between the two of us, we're covered!" Anyway, it was a great way to spend an afternoon--we sailed to Long Island and he showed me on the charts a lot of great spots to anchor or moor for the weekend when the season gets going again.
We're going out on RO (Red October) one more time (tomorrow) and then settle in our slip for the winter. Going to partially winterize the boat--the systems that we'll not use during the winter season--swim platform shower, anchor washdown--that kind of stuff. Plus, winterize the engines and reverse the holding tanks Y valves. I've gotten to know the engine room and machinery spaces pretty good, but still got a lot to learn. Luckily, we have some good expertise here.
As for getting to the myriad of valves, motors, filters, lines, seacocks, fittings and so on, requires being able to bend oneself into unusual angles--we call it 'boat yoga' (or as Pam's sister suggested, 'Boga'...
So, it's been good so far and now that we have fixed some things that needed to be attended to straight away, the 'to-do' list has settled down to a somewhat normal level.
There are trade-offs, of course. But there are also 'trade-ons'--yesterday was a perfect, gorgeous indian summer day and having lunch on the sundeck looking out across the Stamford Harbor and Long Island Sound was pretty good...