We're still in Ohio

Our boat did arrive safely in Mobile. Turner Marine, is closed between Christmas and New Years so we will be in Ohio for a few more weeks.

It has been quite the emotional ride since we have been here. My mother in law has improved some but I received a call from my brother about my father declining. That was kind of a surprise to me since I had seen him just after Thanksgiving and he was doing fine. He passed away on Monday the 21st. He lived 100 years, 8 months and 16 days. I think he just decided it was time to go and be with my mother in heaven for Christmas. We laid him to rest on the 26th.

I probably won't post again until we are back on the boat. We are still planning on heading for the Florida Keys once she has been launched and thoroughly checked out to make sure everything is back working again.

Getting close to actual cruising.

Three weeks ago we drove to Ohio to be with Sandy's mother who's health had declined some. Last Friday, the 4th, I flew back to Dallas, rented a car and drove up to the lake to get the boat stripped and ready to transport. During the process it was discovered that we had some major damage to our roller furling unit on our genoa sail. It appears it was struck by the mast of the boat in the slip next to us during a storm when the boats were rocking side to side. It is a Harken roller furling and not cheap to repair. It may even have to be completely replaced.

The transport truck will be arriving on December 17th to take the boat to Turner Marine in Mobile Alabama. We had thought of maybe going to Bradenton Florida and asked for a quote to transport there. It is a good thing that I still have good agility and reflexes because I had to catch my eyeballs as they popped out of my head when I saw the quote. Not sure if I got them back in correctly. My vision has been a little off since then.

I found out that another boat on the lake, Sea Mist IV, a Catalina 400, is heading out about the same time we are. They are transporting their boat to Pensacola, Florida, which is only about 14 hours sail from Mobile, or 55 minutes drive. The owner has done a lot of sailing in southwest Florida and we may meet up to buddy sail down the west coast of Florida. They will be able to give us some first hand tips on that area.

Sorry, no photos of the decommisioning process. My camera is 1000 miles away. The next report should be sometime in January when we are back onboard in Mobile.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to Y'all.

The Clewie Clips

Now that we are living aboard our newest crew member would like to get involved in the reporting. She is a tender 10 months old but has had a wealth of experience traveling. Her reports will be known as The Clewie Clips.

Heeerr's Clewie:

Howdy everyone from Texas. I had to learn that howdy lingo. I am originally from Georgia. A southern peach indeed. Here is a picture of me when I was just a baby.


I have already flown in an airplane, traveled by car from Texas to Ohio and back and spent many weekends on the boat.

I was getting really worried when all the furniture started disappearing from my house. The humans weren't going to work either. I thought for sure we were going to be living under a bridge somewhere, what fun that would be. All kinds of critters to chase there. Here's another picture of me laying on my favorite perch. I am a little older in this picture.
Heck, I'm a lot older, not even recognizable from my baby picture.

Well, I just wanted to introduce myself. It is going to be really interesting to see if my humans can really pull off this cruising thing.

Officially Live Aboards

We are now officially boat live aboards. We moved our remaining items that we wanted on the boat to the boat today. Our house closing is tomorrow, Friday, at 2:00. We have scheduled to have the boat hauled out of the water on December 2nd. Since it is later in the year than we had originally planned to move the boat we are now thinking that we will move the boat to Bradenton Florida. It is a little further south, just south of Tampa Bay, and will be warmer. Also, the Gulf of Mexico can be a rough place to be this time of year and this will eliminate the crossing of the corner of Florida between Pensacola and Clear Water. From Bradenton we can take out time getting to Marathon in the Florida Keys. We will be able to use the Intracoastal Waterway part of the way to Marathon if we choose.

Let the packing begin!

We have a contract on our house. We have to be out by the 20th of November. Talk about stress. We need to separate what goes into storage and what is going on the boat, mainly clothing. We also have to set up our mail forwarding, change address and take care of a bunch of other administrative items.

The boat is still on the Lake and we still have a few items left to do before moving it. We need to keep it on the lake so we will have some place to go after we close on the house. I also found out today the lake level is up again from all the rain we have had. The dock where the boats are hauled out of the water is almost under water. If the lake goes up another foot it will be under water which means no boats can get pulled. As it is now we can't even think about moving the boat until December. Hey, we're retired and everyday is a Saturday so it doesn't really matter.

YIPPEE Retirement!!!!!

We made it, finally. Both Sandy and I turned in our computer equipment to our respective companies on Wednesday September 30th. A day that will be remembered by us for a long long time. What this means is that our cruising plans will start moving forward in earnest.

Last week I installed the SSB radio equipment. I still have the antenna and the counterpoise to finish up. I will post photos when completed. I also received our life raft. I purchased a Winslow 6 person standard offshore raft.

I have finished getting the permits for our radio equipment from the FCC, received our 2010 U.S. Customs sticker and have applied to the Bahamas Department of Agriculture for permits to get our cats into the Bahamas this winter.

We have left to bottom paint Xpereince and move her to the coast. We are planning to move to Mobile Alabama sometime after November 15th. We would like to spend December in the Florida Keys and then head over to the Bahamas until April before heading up the U.S. east coast to the Chesapeake Bay where we will spend summer of 2010.

Solar Panel Install

I have added three Kyocera 85 watt solar panels on a mini arch over the bimini. The mini arch also has four antenna mounts. I put the GPS, XM Satellite, Wi-Fi and Cellular antennas there. The solar panels are connected to a Bluesky 2000E MPPT charge controller. This controller boosts the input charge up to 30%. Each of the panels has a rating of 5.02 amps. On a sunny day I was able to get a total of about 90-95 amps. This is plenty to maintain the batteries for normal use at anchor where our largest draw is from the refrigeration. While sailing and using the chartplotter, auto-pilot, radio, and other electronics we should be able to go for a couple of days without additional supplementary charging.

Click on an image to enlarge.