We made the decision in April to pull the plug and move onto the boat full time this summer. It sure sounds easy when you say it, but the amount of work involved piles up in a hurry. We knew it was going to be a good challenge, and it has proven to be so. BUT...all things considered, everything has gone quite smoothly. Here is a nut shell summary:
- April - we decide to make the move and the serious planning commences. We start to get the house ready to sell, and also begin the process of deciding just what we are going to keep and what we are going to downsize. Our basic plan is to keep a storage unit near the house, and use it to keep everything that we want to make sure is waiting for us when we decide to live on land next. Everything else is being tossed, sold, donated or we're taking it with us on the boat.
- May - Sandy announces her official retirement date of June 1st...YAY!! What a huge relief it is to have this accomplished. It takes Sandy about 1 day to get used to the idea of not going to the office anymore! We put the house on the market in mid-May, and it sells in less than a day...WOW! We settle on a closing date of June 30th, and the really serious work begins.
- June...so far...things are still on track. It has been a whole bunch of work - lots of boxes packed, lots of trips to the storage unit, lots of reminiscing when we find something that we haven't seen for a few years. And plenty of "why do we still have this hanging around" dialogue. Many challenges to figure out how to live without things that have been previously deemed absolute necessities. We actually expect to feel a bit of relief when we learn to live without a lot of "things" and simplify our daily lives.
Since blog entries with no pictures seem to us to be less interesting, here are a few shots of a couple of projects that we managed to tackle in the midst of the chaos of the past few months.
First - our new ladder treads. The original treads were teak, which were traditional, but not maintenance free. Our desire from the beginning was to have a boat that had zero external teak to take care of. And all but the first 20 - AT 34's that were built have synthetic ladder treads. So...we updated:
And when we had the new electronics package installed, we knew that we were going to have to pull the boat out of the water in order to install a transducer (this is a transmitter thingy (sonar) that goes through the hull of the boat and communicates with our helm station and gives us a picture of what the bottom of the waterway looks like). Coincidentally, our friends and dock neighbors who have a newer version of our exact boat were having some service done at the same time. So we snagged a picture of the entire Chattanooga American Tug Fleet being serviced at the same time! That's us on the right in the slings...and our friends on Proud Mary lll on the left.
One of the other "must haves" that was on our list was to add a cockpit shower. (The cockpit is the rear area of the boat where we get us and the dogs on and off the boat.) We considered it essential to have the ability to use this area to hose off the pups after walks ashore, and also the best location for those dreaded baths they will need on a weekly basis. Without a self contained shower, we would be limited to these types of activities only when tethered to a dock. So...a shower was always on our to-do list. It doesn't make for a very interesting photo, but it'll really make our lives much easier.
During May, we noticed that our house battery bank was struggling. This set of batteries is responsible for many of our comforts when we are not at the dock. Things such as most of our lighting, fresh water pump, head system, etc. all run off of this battery bank. The last time these were replaced was back in 2009. These are huge batteries. Imagine 2 car batteries placed end-to-end and you get a rough picture of the size of each of these...and we have 2 of them for our house bank. They each weigh about 130 lbs, and are located under the floor in the salon. Not a difficult job to replace these, but certainly it was a good workout.! Once again our dock neighbor and friend John was a huge help to Rob to get this important task completed. This new set ought to last us for the next 5 years or so.
And finally, we are currently having the carpet throughout the boat replaced. The original carpet has held up exceptionally well, but after 14 years, it is time for a change. We'll try to remember to snap some before and after shots and share them next time.
We now have about 10 days left before move-in day...and thankfully all is still on schedule. Lots to be done yet, but the finish line (or is it the starting line?) is definitely in sight!
