And we are planning to go sailing tomorrow! Yay!
Sorry for the long time between posts, it has definitely been a bit of a whirlwind, and then I needed a break to catch up on administrative stuff.
I did attempt to connect the radar as originally planned.... I took the ceiling halfway apart, found evidence of a past fire, which was kind of scary, and in the process realized that without taking out the bookshelves on the starboard side of the boat, there is absolutely no path for the wires to go and get all the way to the panel.... It took two days to get there, but I had to stop and rethink the plan.
I spent the next two days with Bean putting it all back together and making it look like we never touched it - but with some new wood to replace the burned beams, and some new foam insulation to replace the stuff that had mildew on it - so at least it wasn't a total waste - that, and I now know that much more about how the boat goes together :-)
We decided labor day weekend would be a good time to move the boat. Michael had an extra day off, so we checked weather and tides and it looked like Saturday would be a good day.
Our neighbors Bob and Sonja were leaving for Ecuador on September 5, so we had drinks with them Thursday night to say goodbye (we'll go have drinks again when they get back so we can hear all about it - but we'll need a DD then ;-) ), had a great time - a big thank you to them for being great neighbors while we were in HarborWalk!
We also stopped and said goodbye to our friend Stephanie and our little buddy Bubba :-) We are his official fan club, so we couldn't leave without a goodbye petting session!
Then Bean and I got the boat ready on Friday (groceries, tie downs, etc), and we all slept there prepping for a mid-morning departure. The day started out great, we got up, got ready, enjoyed a final walk by the pool, prepped the boat, and headed out around 0900.
And then the day took a slight turn - don't worry - it all turned out ok! Given that it was Labor Day weekend, traffic was a little heavier than usual, so we were watching for all the little fishing boats, power boats, etc zooming to and fro as we exited the channel heading for the ICW... and the helm picked up the wrong buoys for the channel mark.... and we went straight across the channel and promptly 'parked' the boat in about 3' of water.....
Ooooops.....
We tried several things to get out ourselves, we our engine just wasn't powerful enough. Thankfully, we signed up for the BoatUS towing - so I gave them a call. Unfortunately, they dispatch out of Clear Lake - so it was going to be about two hours before they made it to us - so they could spend 10 minutes pulling us backward 4 feet into the channel.... so embarrasing.
But - we got lucky again! A fishing boat saw us stuck and trying many things to get unstuck (our next try was going to be throwing the anchor from the stern and trying to winch ourselves to it) - and they were kind enough to give us a pull - it took about 15 minutes, but they got us free and we were back on our way again! I am forever grateful to the nice fishermen who stopped to help us :-)
The rest of the trip was mostly uneventful - we got stopped by the bridge again so we got to do circles in front of it for awhile, and then when we got to Galveston Bay we decided to do some jib only sailing. We played around for a couple hours in the Bay before heading into our new slip at Seabrook. It was beautiful. The day, the time on the boat, the teamwork between the three of us - all wonderful. There was a race going on as well, so we saw more sailboats out that day than we ever have, we took several pictures and videos.
The other funny thing that happened was we saw the original owners of the boat - they recognized us (took us a few minutes to recognize them) - as we were heading towards the Galveston Causeway bridge, so they took some pics and videos and shared them with us, it was pretty cool. He may not be the best DIY, but he is a nice guy and his heart was in the right place, even if I curse him when I am fixing his handiwork ;-D
The video is a little grainy, but still fun to see ourselves :-) Now we just need to get some pics with the sails up!
So then this week, I took a much needed break (my whole body was tired from the week before), and tomorrow we plan to head out to the boat and go sailing again. Next week, I'll pick up with some of the final wrap-up projects :-)
Comments