Here's a good example of why boat projects can take so fucking long. The hatch over my helm is busted up. See that boom on the left? It strongly objects to the hatch being open in the most violent of ways as the previous owner discovered.
Fortunately the manufacturer of said hatch is still in business and still makes the exact same hatch. Same part number, same dimensions. This should be an easy job!
But nah, the holes on the bottom frame were all moved by 1/10 of an inch. My bimini top is aluminum and I know of know good way to "relocate" a hole 1/10" in Al. This isn't the first time where I've replaced an item from the same manufacturer only to discover that the mounting template is totally different. Why?!
Since you don't have much I'd recommend negotiating straight cash, as much as you can and grossed up, and you take care of everything. You can turn it into a nice bonus that way. Just hire movers on each end and a company like ABF to move your container.
My wife once worked for one of the largest corp relocation companies in the country and she's got crazy stories about the shit that CxOs put them through. Long term hotel stays, 0% mortgages for new homes, guaranteed sales price for their current home, refrigerated trucks for their wine collection, cranes to lift their custom built outdoor grill over their home because they can't live without it.
A tornado in Auckland vs 56' catamaran. Fuuuuuuck.
I've been away from the boat the last 6 weeks but will be back in Florida in 2. I did get a nice email from the marina office shortly after I left that my shore power pedestal let out all of its smoke. Boats... they can't go 1 week without needing attention ($$$).
Yeah that was probably us. We started learning about 2 years ago, bought the boat 18 months ago and have been living aboard and fixing shit since then. We've been in SW FL the entire time.
Most of my boat pictures are of stuff I'm working. Corroded and burned shore power connectors, the backside of raymarine windspeed display, etc. I'll try to get and post up more boat pics though.
Current plans are to leave in Nov-Jan to head to the Bahamas. Longer term is to get south to Grenada for next hurricane season.
Hauled the boat out two weeks ago for a bottom job, port saildrive work (new gasket, ring, and valve), and replaced two thruhulls.
We brought her back yesterday and were soon greeted by this:
There was no getting around it. Sanibel Island was to our starboard and the storm extended far to the south off our port. Fortunately we caught just the northern tip of it and only had bad weather for an hour. Once we got past it we had great sailing. 15-20 knots of wind on our beam for our ~40 mile trip past Captiva and Cayo Costa and into Charlotte Harbor.
You'll know the first shot has been fired when they downsize the drink sizes. Medium will go from 32 to 21 oz and the price will stay the same. The bean counters will salivate over the money earned by doing that alone.
I'm a fan of oatmeal when done right. Done wrong using instant or quick oats with nasty artificial flavoring and it's gross. Seriously America, how can you fuck up something so gawd damn simple?
Steel cut oats, slow cooked. I top with granola, dried fruit, and fruit compote.
Team Breakfast Taco.
I'm also a total snob when it comes to flour tortillas. All of the brands in the grocery store in the bread aisle are fucking gross and should be outlawed.
I used PagerDuty at my previous company and it's a great product. The UI is fantastic for being able to set up schedules and escalations. I could see them owning this space for a very long time.
Hate webex? Be glad your org wasn't suckered into using webex teams over slack.
It's been fantastic. Everyone is still happy with the lifestyle and boat even though we've not left Florida yet. We decided to spend another year here to gain some experience and finish up a couple of more biggish jobs: new solar panels (going from 360 to 1200 watts), new batteries, new fuel filters (racor 500s),and getting the watermaker working.
We try to go sailing every week and have anchored out a couple of times.
We were anchored last weekend in Pelican Bay. After spending time on the beach with some friends we were heading back to the boat when we came upon this scene:
That monohull on the left with sails up and facing the opposite direction of all the other anchored boats? Whoops. The two dinghys were trying get him off the ground but they were both underpowered (<10hp outboards). One of the ladies hopped in our dinghy and between her, my wife, and our 20hp outboard we were able to induce enough heel by pulling on one of their halyards enough to get them off of the shoal.
I haul out in June for a bottom job, saildrive & thru hull maintenance. I'm not looking forward to whatever else we find.
Speaking of heat exchangers, I've made my yearly contribution to the Volvo Penta pension fund:
I vacillate between thinking we're going way too slow and way too fast. Most of me wouldn't mind staying in Florida for 6-12 months but I'm leaning towards getting out and avoiding another summer storm and hurricane season. Our marina got hit by lightning several times and took out the electronics on a couple of boats.
I hear you on the maintenance. I dedicate a full day each weekend and a couple of weekday evenings working on the boat. I enjoy it but damn does everything take 10x longer than in a house. I installed a Vesper AIS transponder, VHF/AIS splitter, and new fixed VHF this weekend. I spent 16ish hours on that and still have work to do (need to feed ais/gps data to chartplotter, heading data to AIS, AIS to VHF all over nmea0183).
What do you want to do?
If you want to charter big boats in the Carib with friends, then doing the ASA courses (up to bareboat cruising) will get you there.
If you want to sail around the lake then take ASA 101 and buy a small boat or join a club.
The ASA courses are good but nothing is better than time on the water.
My son has gone through 2 walmart bikes in 3 months. Both with busted hubs on the rear wheel. I've been riding all my life, bmx and mountain, and I've never seen a hub lose its bearings. This is on my 10 yo sons bikes and he's not a big kid. Freaking insane what a pile of shit those walmart bikes are.
My wife and I have been planning to do this for 2 years now. Sold everything 6 months ago and bought a Manta 42 cat in SW Florida. Neither of us are boaters so we're taking our time learning and hope to leave the dock for good in the spring.