Admiral or Chief Navigator

So I said to the Admiral, the other day, "Honey, I'm really going to need some help on this cruise. Do you think you would like to be our chief navigator--you know, learn a little bit more about how to use all our wonderful electronic instruments, GPS, chartplotter, radar--beyond the basic stuff we already know??" She replied that she felt like she might want to do that, so we decided she would go online to the various sailing web-sites and see if she could find some kind of navigation course she could fit in between now and when we leave. Well, the next day and $????????.00's later she is signed up for an extensive course leading to her certification by the American Sailing Association (ASA). She is out on the water right now and will be for the next three days. BUT---I'm going to let her tell you all about it.
What is truly great is that I love the excitement she is experiencing with this. When she called to tell me about it she was absolutely giddy. I won't see her until Friday night and really don't expect her to call me in the middle of all this, but I can't wait to share her excitement when she gets in Friday. If I can finish my work on time Friday I plan to sail out to meet them as they come in from Galveston.
This whole thing just gets more exciting all the time.
I've been anxious for Diane to meet and talk with some boat neighbors who did what we are planning to do last year and who are getting ready to leave again for the Exumas around the time that we depart. Rusty and Linda Sitton (www.sittononthebeach.com) have a 30 plus foot Catamaran--Sea Yawl Later-- down the pier from us. We were able to talk with them at length last week-end and went into a lot of the particulars of cruising in an effort to benefit from their experience. We talked about everything from batteries to dinghies to routes to food storage and learned quite a bit---all helping to buttress our confidence level as the big day approaches. I have to say that every time I talk with them I gain in confidence in our ability to pull this off. They are very nice and fun people and we truly look forward to meeting up with them in the Bahamas (We ran into another couple while we were at the Marina Saturday who left today on the same trip--exchanged boat cards and will see them over there as well, we hope.)
Then, to top it all off we heard from our son, Scott, today who reported that he landed a job with a law firm in Bejing that he has been pursuing but also will be coming home (from Taiwan) to be with us for a month in October--Just really great news on all fronts. ( For those who don't know Scott--he graduated from Boston U. with a degree in International Relations and a minor in Chinese (and Business) and has been studying Chinese and has lived over there for several years. He did return to the states long enough to attend and graduate from U of Texas law school, landed a job with a huge firm in New York but then lost it several months later when the firm laid off a couple hundred of their lawyers including all the rookies--they specialized in mergers and acquisitions and got positively killed with the downturn in the economy in early '09. He then returned to Asia to further refine his language skills at the U of Taipai where he recently concluded those studies. He digs Asia!!)
Enough for now---I'm going to get Diane to post when she finishes her training this week---till then---Live and love

Preparations Part 2

The House:: As many of you know, in anticipation of this complete life change we have been trying to sell the house for the last year and a half. (Wasn't our timing impeccable??) We love the house but it is just too great a burden having to heat, cool, landscape, maintain, pay taxes and insurance on nearly 6000 ft of living space (2000 of which we hardly ever use) on nearly one acre of land--especially as we contemplate almost complete retirement andconsidering the fact that we don't plan on living here at all for much of the next year and possibly more. For a long time now I have wanted to sell and buy something, like a patio home, ( No townhomes--I've had enough "communal living" in our townhome in Vail) that we can lock the door and walk away from for extended periods without worrying about pool maintenance and yard maintenance and huge absentee utility bills------BUT-----it just didn't happen. I suppose we could sell it if we just kept lowering the price, but we don't need to give it away and I'm not about to. It's too nice of a place.

So, unless a miracle happens in the next 60 days we'll keep the house, lock her up tight, pay for pool and yard maintenance and hope she survives our absence. It would be nice to have someone rent it while we're gone so we could kill two birds with one stone---someone in the house to keep an eye on things, and some rental revenue coming in to help defray some of the expenses----let us know if you know of anyone interested.

Other issues that we're having to plan for:

The cars---Suspend insurance and keep them locked up in the house. But if we rent the house we'll have to find a place nearby to keep them. We'll want them somewhere near the airport for our occasional trips back to Kingwood

Bills---We're in the process of getting everything on auto pay or pay on-line, but we'll need to be sure we have internet access wherever we go. This could be a problem in the Bahamas, but more on that later.

Mail---We think we'll just have Lupe (our once every other week cleaning lady--and dear friend) come by every couple of days and gather the mail, sort out the junk, forward on anything that looks urgent, and send the rest of the relevant stuff every week or so----to where? This is the hard part. We'll have to plan ahead and make arrangements to retrieve our mail at different locations as we progress down and around the Fla. peninsula--different privately owned mail drops like the one here in Kingwood in the HEB center.

Climate control---We'll need to keep the air and then heat on so we'll need someone to come by every now and then and check on things---Ed?? Are you reading this??

Personal Belongings---If we rent the place we'll need to move our stuff (everything but the furniture) out. We have climate controlled storage at our building in Humble where my office is and there's plenty of room, but what a hassle, especially if we don't get it rented until after we've left---we'll have to fly home and spend a week moving "stuff"

Stuff---That brings me to a conclusion that I've come to as a result of all this planning. I'm tired of "stuff". I don't want to own anything anymore. If you own it you've got to make room for it, maintain it (I spend an inordinate amount of my time and/or money either fixing "stuff" or paying someone else to fix the "stuff " that I can't.) You have to insure it, pay taxes on it and then move it when it's time. It's that insurance and taxes thing that really irritates me---sorry Ed---. Imagine a world where you owned nothing other than your clothes and personal effects---No insurance, no taxes, no maintenance time or costs,---When something breaks you simply call the guy that owns it and tell him to fix it. All you have to do is make the rent payment on time and go traveling. Hmmmmm! Might get boring--Oh well, I guess there really is no perfect answer.

Well, we just keep adding to our lists of things we have to do before we take off, and believe me I've only touched the surface of the obvious things in this post. Kind of begs the question, doesn't it?? Is it worth it?? We sure hope so.

Preparations Part 1

We are already experiencing sleepless nights thinking and worrying about all that must be done before we can take off. Basically they break down into 3 categories: the boat; the house; and our personal and business affairs. The boat is mostly ready to go but I will be adding some equipment. There are three things that are problematic when doing what we're doing (other than the obvious things like weather, navigation, etc)---they are: water, electricity and comfort factors. We have already decided that we will probably be "marina hoppers", ie. traveling from marina to marina to spend our non-sailing hours and days. We certainly plan on spending quite a bit of time at anchor , hopefully in beautiful, isolated, quiet, private bays and inlets, but we do like our comforts and do not mind spending the money to stay tucked into a nice, secure berth from time to time. The difference is --shorepower---When we're in a marina we are plugged into 120V electric power. This runs our air conditioning and keeps our batteries charged so we can run our refrigeration, lights, radio, TV--all the creature comforts, without having to worry about running out of juice. Also--nice restrooms, ice available, plenty of water. At anchor, these things are not available and we have to provide our own . This is not so easy. Remember, we will be in salt water---can't drink it. We could add a water maker but they are very expensive and use a lot of electric power--so we have opted to go without it (for now) Our boat carries about 80 gallons of fresh water and we carry lots of bottled water for drinking. We have learned that we can get by for about 4 days on what we carry and since we plan to visit marinas frequently--we'll just replenish every 3 or 4 days.(This could become a bit more difficult in the Bahamas--cross that bridge later). For electric--my battery bank will get us through about 3 full days without having to recharge---that's not enough. I can recharge by running the diesel engine for a couple of hours a day but that is annoyingly noisy and very fuel inefficient. Thus, I have decided to add a small Honda portable generator. They are amazingly quiet and efficient and will even be capable of running the air conditioning on those sticky nights. The only problem is that we'll have to carry a couple of jerry cans of gasoline to run it--no biggy, I'll already have spare diesel fuel cans scattered about on deck--what's a little more clutter? This little generator will run our 115 volt charger which can recharge our batteries in far less time than running the big diesel. So, we've addressed the water, electricity and comfort issues. We may add an alternative power generation (wind generator or solar panels, or both)system later after we see how this system works out.
I have a few other things to get ready on the boat--auto pilot needs a repair and anchor windless needs servicing but essentially the boat is ready to go. Next post I'll talk about our plans for the house.

Thought I'd add this picture for those of you who have already forgotten what we look like (or who don't know us at all)

The Plan Details

Remember---it's still just a plan, but we think we know what we want to do and how we want to get started. It should be interesting to come back to this post after a few months "at sea" to see how the plan played out.
We have always felt that we like to "walk before we run" into any major changes in our lives, so, we think we will start out with another run down the coast to Port Aransas and Corpus Christi, just to get our feet wet. Besides, Port "A" is one of my favorite places. It just has a nice rustic charm about it that appeals to me. After returning home I plan to set out along the intracoastal waterway, towards the west coast of Florida with stops along the way in New Orleans, The Miss. and Alabama coasts and various ports of call in Florida. Diane is not thrilled about the ICW route between here and New Orleans as it can be very busy with commercial traffic, especially large barges and tugs, so I'll probably be looking for some crew to help me navigate this leg of the journey.
Eventually, we want to explore the west coast of Fla and the Keys and then hopefully over to the Bahamas, returning to the States before the new hurricane season ensues--head up the east coast with the thought of summering somewhere in the northeast (I'd like to spend a month in Washington DC and see the monuments and museums the way they should be seen, with plenty of time to spend.
Who knows!! we may hate it after the first few weeks or we may love it and keep going. We'll certainly take time out to visit the kids and grandbabies and we hope to see a lot of friends and relatives along the way. The boat has a guest cabin!!

The Plan

Well, we have finally made the decision. We will be leaving the comforts of our huge home, and the close embrace of our dear friends and heading off into the wild, hopefully blue, yonder in November of this year. We didn't sell the house but we were more successful with our Colorado properties, such that the "dream" is now financially feasible.