In the Beginning…

Toni was driving home from work as a 6^th grade school teacher one afternoon in September. She was mentally exhausted and frustrated from a particularly tiresome day, I assume. She asked God for a sign as to how to ease the troubles. What did He want her to do? As she drove up the 528 bridge, she spotted a boat, in full sail, headed south on the Intracoastal Waterway, undoubtedly to some exotic destination she had never dreamed of. "THAT MUST BE IT!"

She stormed in the door of our house and I expected to hear another "grump session" as to why the children in her class were allowed to pass into her grade without knowing basic 3rd grade material…, and how they can't even…, and the idiot driver who…, and the school board has now…

"We're selling everything!"

"Wha…?"

"We're selling EVERYTHING, and buying a bigger boat and sailing the Caribbean."

"Ok", I said, as I turned the gas off on the meat frying in the skillet. "You wanna salad?"

Well, she was serious. We put signs up for the custom built, 3 bedroom, 2 car garage pool home with a fenced, fruited yard that was only 5 years old. "Geeze, we won't break even on this. It's gonna be a small boat!" We did "break even" and put a little in the kitty around December. We tried selling the furniture in garage sales, but folks go garage sale'ing with little more that $5 in change, so we ended up giving most away to relatives or friends. We moved into a guest bedroom at Toni's mom's condo. "If it won't fit in here, it won't fit on the boat…" We sold our 22' sailboat the end of December so we now had $7500 in the kitty for the boat. We had gone to the sailboat expo in St Pete, just to check sizes, and had decided the smallest boat we could be comfortable on was a 33 footer with an aft cabin.

I had been looking on the web for boats since September, and was getting a little disappointed at the price, size, age comparisons. We had figured we could get a 33 to 40 foot "fixer-upper" for $10 to $15 thousand. I tried to hide it, but my worries started to show in January. Then I spotted this possibility and was a little lifted. The engine was on the seawall and needed to be installed. A minus. We were told it was just rebuilt. A plus. The freezer/refrigerator was ripped out and in it's place was just some plywood boxes. A minus. The entire galley needs to be redone. A minus. The head/shower area needs to be rebuilt. A minus. The keel diesel tanks were filled with rocks and foam, supposedly for ballast and because they accumulated too much condensation for diesel. A minus. The 4 sails were just back from the sail loft and had been restitched and checked out. A plus. She was roomy. A plus. She had a flat wide deck. A plus. All the rigging and winches were of top quality. A plus. There was some rot in the engine room and the cockpit that needed to be replaced. A minus. The hull was solid fiberglass and well constructed. A plus. It went on and on. All in all it was a toss up in the plus minus area. Scott was asking $10,000. I offered $7500, expecting him to say that he had just put it up for sale and would hold my offer in consideration, when, without too much hesitation, he said, "Make it 8 and we have a deal".

We bought the boat with the "minus factor" that she had to be moved by the 31^st of January because the marina had new owners who would be doing some major demolition on site and enlarging the marina area itself. We had 2 weeks. Could I get the engine in? Would it run? Was there enough water in the channel to get her out without a towboat?