Recent News

For Sale, For Sail, Fore Sail

As you can see from the lapse in posting, we have been a bit busy lately.  I started working on the boat in mid-March to clean things up, paint some things, and overall just make it look pretty for potential buyers.
Yes, we did make the decision to sell the boat.  It's been somewhat painful at times, giving up (or at least postponing) some of the dreams that went along with our go anywhere home.  We could probably figure out a way to make it work, cruising with the three of us in our current boat.  Many have gone before us, in boats that were smaller and less sturdy, with more kids and pets, to all corners of the oceans.  Financially we are not rich, we have no steady income, (no income at all for quite a while now) but seem to make it work with what we have and could continue to do so.  It just came down to the fact that we didn't really want to try, at least not now.  So, the boat is on the market and we can just hope it sells quickly before we change our minds, again.
So back to what we have been up to, because mid-March was almost two months ago.  I'm picky, and wanted things on the boat right, so I've been working away at a never-ending list of little things.  Add to that the fact that the boat is in Everett and we are staying with friends in Maple Valley, it means my commute each day is 2 hours on a good day, and up to four or more hours on the bad days.  I hate traffic, so you can imagine how well this has been going.  A lot of the outside work on the boat needed dry weather, so spring in the Pacific Northwest has been doing its part to slow things down as well.

Urgent Care=No Fun

The first week of April, on my birthday in fact, Madeline had an accident on the playground slide that after several visits to area clinics was confirmed as a broken leg.  Nothing makes you feel like "parent of the year" more than an experience like this.  Happily, and quite amazingly to us, she is doing fine.  Three weeks after the accident and I'm having a hard time keeping up with her as she runs around the toy section in the store giggling, yes, running and giggling.  I should probably know from the multitude of Emergency Room visits I shared with my mother as I dashed, smashed and crashed my way through childhood, but I can't believe how resilient kids are, and comparatively what total wusses we adults are.  Needless to say, the trips to urgent care, a trip to Children's Hospital in Seattle, and lots of days of close observation have also added to the slow progress of the boat projects.  All that said, things are wrapping up on the boat.  We are sorting through gear to choose what goes with the boat, what gets sold separately, and what gets saved for the next boat.
Oops, did I say next boat?  We really don't have a clue what we are doing next, but several options that we are kicking around would involve another boat.  If you look back earlier in this post where I mention finances, the fact that I am rapidly approaching my one year anniversary of unemployment means that some other issues need to be worked out before much of anything happens.  If anyone reading this has a bunch of spare cash laying around that they would like to loan out at the current lending rate of 5.5%  you could save us all the fun of dealing with banks and such, but I'm thinking that isn't the most likely scenario.

Our new 4Runner

Speaking of money and selling things, our Roadtrek camper van is also for sale, as was noted in the last blog post I wrote.  We ended up purchasing another Toyota 4Runner very similar to the one we had in Sitka, so we have alternate means of transportation and it's time to say goodbye to the van.  The van turned out to be one of the best investments we have made, giving us basically zero trouble through four months and almost 13,000 miles of travel.  Hopefully someone else will buy it and continue to enjoy all it has to offer.
That should get folks up to date on our news.  We have a very nice sailboat and a cool camper van for sale, (sailboat link here) we have a cat that we would probably pay to get rid of,  (Seriously, if anyone wants a quirky cat please let us know)  and a daughter that we wouldn't give up for anything.  A lot of unknowns for us in our near future, but overall life is pretty good right now.