Go, Go, GO!

From the start of February til now has been go, go, go. At the start of February, we had 2 cars, an apartment half-full of stuff, Bill was still employeed, and a boat not ready to go and with engine trouble. Now that we are almost at mid-March, we have no cars, no apartment, only the stuff we kept for the boat, no employment, a full functioning engine, and a boat that could push off the dock at anytime. Wow, it's amazing how much can change in one month!

All of this could have not been accomplished, as quickly as it was, without the assistance of Bill's sister Jen and her spouse Iris. Jen kept KJ and Dy during the last full week of February, so that I could spent that week at the boat, getting her ready and Iris let me borrow her suv for a month.

During the last week of February, I was able to get the engine was fixed, transducer and fish finder installed, water system flushed, girl's room redecorated with Princess and Fairies, the boat cleaned from bow to stern (on the inside), adjust the location of stuff for weighting purposes, and gas tanks and propane tanks filled.

Bill was hard at work that last week, as well. He was still working and empting the apartment of stuff.

After all of the hard work, this week has been the finale. Monday we turned the apartment back over to its management, visited my dad in Alabama, and it was Bill's last day at work. On Tuesday, we drove from Alabama to Savannah and started putting the last of our stuff away. Wednesday was another day of hauling stuff from Iris' suv to the boat and Thursday was spent on the galley and putting stuff away, ending in a nice visited from Bill's brother David and his wife Nancy.

Today and tomorrow we have a few more loose ends to tie up, ending with a visit from Jen and Iris. We are soooo close. If the weather stays as predicted, we will be shoving off from the dock on Sunday morning, headed South.

Thank you, for everything Jen and Iris!! We love y'all!!!

Snow, NFL Playoffs, and Headway on To-Do Lists

Last week was really interesting. To start the week, Mother Nature dumped 5 inches of snow and 1 inch of ice on Atlanta, which meant that the city was almost completely shut down for the entire week.

This down time allowed us to tackle some of the apartment related tasks, such as painting and the continuous task of sorting (storage, sell, donate). Almost everything going with us is on the boat. I also was able to make headway on the boat related tasks. We ordered the parts needed to fix the small 5 hp engine (recoil starter and carburetor gaskets), contacted an outboard motor mechanic in Savannah to replace the impeller on the Honda 40, ordered Navionic Gold 3XG chip for our chart plotter, ordered bulk sunscreen, and won ebay auction on webbing.

The end of the week, we spent time with the Aunts watching our Atlanta Falcons take on the Green Bay Packers. First quarter of the game was great, but it was all down hill from there. What a downer!

Everything is moving along. Won't be long until we step onto the boat, push off the dock, and sail south.

Safety Tethers

This afternoon I made two safety tethers. Each tether is constructed from 6 feet of 1 inch tubular webbing and 2 brass snap hooks. The total cost of each tether was $6.46.

The tubular webbing has a multitude of uses. I can see purchasing more of the tubular webbing to make a lift harness for the dinghy engine, lift straps for the dinghy, jack lines, harness for each of the girls, and just to have on-hand for emergencies. This is a great boat item!

As a side note: Yeah!! I accomplished something today that was on my to-do list!!!

Unproductive 1st Week of the New Year

This past week has been very unproductive for me. I have a two page to-do list and can't seem to get motivated. I'm a person who excels under pressure. There is plenty to do and the clock is ticking, but I just can't seem to get myself in gear. This is not to say that I've accomplished nothing this past week, but I just feel like I should have accomplished more.

Beside feeling not particularly productive, the main engine (Honda Outboard) on our boat is not peeing. This is not terrible, we have the parts to rebuild the impeller and to break up any salt deposits that might be clogging up the cooling tubes. My concern is that to change the impeller, we have to remove the lower unit of the outboard engine. Now the engine weights about 250lbs and is bolted onto the back of our catamaran. Our catamaran is in the water and the bottom of the engine,when fully raised, is approximately 8 inches off the water. So we have to somehow remove the lower unit, which is currently 8 inches above the water, while being behind the boat without dropping it into the water. After that we can rebuild the impeller, remove the salt deposits, and reinstall the lower unit without dropping it or anything else into the water. We are all set to attempt this, but the weather is not corporating (really cold/windy on the weekends). So this weekend we decided to punt and ask our boatyard to handle it. This made me feel very confident that the engine would be up and peeing the next time we're in Savannah. However, our boat yard does not work on outboard engines or any engines for that matter. They were able to give me the names and numbers of two people that they would recommend. This is great, but I'm not feeling warm and fuzzy like I was before when I thought that the boatyard could take care of it. My concern is back.

This past weekend we purchased 12 feet of 1 inch webbing and 4 brass snap hooks to make safety tethers. I think that I will go make the tethers now. It shouldn't take very long and will feel good to accomplish something.

Troubleshooting and Thinning

Over the past couple of days, 3 electronic devices have some sort of issue. The range of issues include: dead, lost to the sea, and lens error. Fortunately, repairing/replacing these device has not cost us one penny.

Direct TV is sending us a free dvr, ours died over the holidays. My iPhone was lost to Poseidon on Christmas eve, tomorrow I will obtain a new sim card for a Quad band phone that was gifted to me. Finally, my Nikon camera that had a lens error was fixed by accident. I was using the vacuum cleaner hose to clean some sand out of the camera crevices and decided to turn it on the lens. The vacuum did the trick. The lens error must have been caused by some debris (sand). In any case, I don't have to send the to Nikon for repair and pay the shipping cost.

Thinning continues. It is amazing how much stuff we have in our 2 bedroom apartment. None of the closets were stuffed or overflowing and we don't have stuff stacked everywhere, but we have tossed over 30 bags of stuff to the garbage, sold a SUV load of stuff at the swap meet, and have donated at least 2 SUV full of stuff to Goodwill. This does not include the 6 tubs of keep stuff we pulled out to store at Jen's, Bill and my clothes, kitchen stuff, and furniture that has to be sold. Now I understand why estate sales sell stuff by the box/bin.