We signed our life away and are the proud owners of a sailboat. It was / is very exciting! I must admit it is a bit surreal as well. Word is the two happiest days of a boat owner's life are the day they buy the boat and the day they sell it. I think there is going to be a lot of fantastic days in-between.
We closed on Friday afternoon, which was really just a formality as we had already wired the money. It didn't take much longer than 30 minutes but as every other time we were with Paul, our broker, we had a ton of questions for him. Paul and his wife used to live in Frisco. They sold everything, bought a sailboat and went cruising for a couple of years. They're back in Texas now, still living on their boat and Paul is brokering boats. He is a wealth of knowledge and we feel very lucky to have accidentally stumbled on him.
After closing we spent a few minutes at the marina office signing paperwork and spending more money to keep the boat in the same slip it has been in for the last couple of years.
The weather in Houston / Kemah was awful this weekend so it's a good thing our plans were mostly to spend time below deck doing an inventory of what all was on the boat. We made it about half way through the nooks and crannies when we broke for a nice dinner and a bottle of wine to celebrate.
Saturday was "Battery Day". It's the first time I can remember buying three batteries in one day. That was on three different trips to two different stores. Blame me for trying to squeeze the biggest battery we could get into the space. Third time was a charm and we finally got the right size. You may recall we got all new batteries as part of the deal since all were dead when we did the survey. The owner was required to replace like for like and the starter battery was a different type (flooded, like most car batteries) than the house batteries (AGM). It's "OK" to mix those two types but it is recommended to have them all the same so we bought a new AGM starter battery. Whoever buys my Four Winns will get the new flooded battery and I'll be taking the old back to West Marine for the core on the AGM.
Saturday evening Susan and I drove over to have dinner with some people I had been emailing with over the last month or so. Ralph and Beverly are in Texas for the winter and will be heading to the Bahamas in the spring. Seems backwards and I think they've decided it is, they won't be wintering in Texas again. We had a nice dinner but I suspect they felt like they had been interrogated under a bare light bulb by the secret police by the time we left them. Every time we get a few answers, we think of more questions.
Sunday we spent some time strolling around West Marine while it rained cats and dogs outside. Eventually we went back to the boat and finished our inventory. Anyone interested in a LSU flag? Or some life jackets? Every time we turn around we find more life jackets. We are easily over 20 at this point. Just after noon we packed up and left so I could get Susan back to DFW in time to catch her flight to Atlanta. It pretty much rained all weekend, the entire drive back and Susan just landed and texted that it is raining there too. Somehow I have a feeling none of this is falling anywhere near Cedar Creek though.
Sorry I didn't get this out earlier but the wifi at the marina is so slow I could never get past giving this post a title. That's an issue we're going to have to resolve if I'm ever going to be able to work from the boat. Anyone have an experience with doing a fair amount of data over a 4G LTE connection? How is the speed?
That's it for now. At the moment we're planning on going back down to the boat next weekend to do some serious cleaning and working on a few of the small things that need to be fixed.
Brian
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