Learning more about this experience

Kermit and I are reading everything we can get our hands on about the trip. I just finished a nice book by Bruce Armstrong, Coming Full Circle. http://www.armstrongtravelventures.com/  Kermit has read several others. He picked up some maps of the Erie Canal when he visited the Hudson Valley for business last week. We just ordered another book with a spiral binding that shows what to see and what to expect on every single day of someone else's trip. 

We are learning that the trip will actually be kind of quiet. Most people spend a lot of time on their own, only running into other people at marinas on weekends. Most people anchor out in coves at night. We hear a lot about wildlife and birds. Most people travel only about 30 miles a day on average, only a few hours a day, leaving plenty of time for sightseeing and side trips. 

There are plenty of pools going on around us. When will we have our first fight (sorry, already happened!), when will I end up in the water, when will I end up in the dinghy at the end of 75 feet of line, when will Kermit break something, and so on. It is fun! But actually, we are very excited. We haven't been arguing much. We each have a job to do associated with the trip and we seem to be figuring out how to make it happen. 

I can't believe we are actually doing this. It seems completely unlike me not to know exactly what will happen every single minute. But letting go is part of the fun. 

It is getting exciting!

I just put the Christmas cards in the mail today. I sent out over 100 cards with this blog address on it so I suspect that a few folks will check in during the next few weeks. Welcome!!

I only post once or twice a month until we get closer to summer. When we leave on the trip in July, I will be posting regularly, probably daily. Until then, you get to hear about the stuff we are doing to prepare.

Last week the new canvas bimini was installed!! Yeah!! A lovely shade of teal green. They attached the canvas with a new system of sliding thingys (a technical term) so we no longer have snaps. This innovation should save us time and hassle as we put canvas up and down.

We just received pictures of the new swim platform made by Bill Gribble of PlasTEAK. The swim platform is about 22" wide and about 1 foot below the existing swim deck platform. You can't see it very well but a swim ladder is built in under the center section so we can open the ladder from the water - that is a safety feature!

Brad from Pflegar Marine will install the pretty red new generator next week. Then the electronics get installed the following week. By the end of January, everything will be installed. The last bit will be reupholstering the cushins and the curtains.

The Boat Show

I forgot to talk about the Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show. Wow. Hard to find the words. First of all it was warm. Very warm for the first few days then we had something of a little hurricane or so it seemed to me. Wind whirling and swirling and the ocean looking dark and frothy. It was exciting! There was so much water and the boat show tents were set up on parking lots that the water sloshed into the tents causing havoc! Exciting!!

The boat show can be separated into three parts: 1) the show itself, 2) reviewing and buying stuff at the show, and 3) eating and drinking around the show. So much stimulation in one week it is hard to describe.

The show itself was really, really big and over the top opulent. Actually with the rest of the country having difficult times it was embarrassing. Or rather folks at the show should have been embarrassed. I was. There were lots and lots of huge boats for sale. You could see them but not go on them without presenting credentials, essentially a bank statement. We snuck on an 85" SunSeeker - a lovely boat with amazing layout. My favorite though was the 55" Carver with the new design. It was amazing. I could really see us on that boat... if we had $750k that is.

Kermit and I spend three days walking around and trying stuff out. We had a shopping list with competitive prices so Kermit could talk price when we found the stuff we wanted. Our primary mission was electronics to replace the electronics on our boat that was destroyed by a lucky lightening bolt in September. The show has lots of huge tents in a really huge parking lot in which companies display any number of products. Actually just about anything you could want for a boat of any size is displayed in one of the tents. So we found the electronics tent and spent hours it seems at the Garmin booth. Garmin had a huge booth with almost every model on display. We played with a bunch and selected the 5012 touchscreen with integrated radar, AIS, and cruise control.

Then we had to negotiate a deal with some vendor because of course Garmin does not sell directly to consumers. We ended up purchasing it for about a 15% discount from West Marine. How it works at the boat show is you do your shopping then you go to West Marine and the nice folks find the price and give you a "boat show discount" which is about 15% off. So when we got to West Marine after shopping for three days, the totals were astounding!! It gave me heart palpitations to make such large purchases!!! But we have a budget and mostly bought things that were on our shopping lists so I guess it was ok.

We already had a proposal from a Cleveland company to purchase the Garmin 4012 gps version with all the stuff so we could price compare. We bought the stuff from West Marine then Kermit had discussions with the Cleveland folks. He really wanted to do business with a local NE Ohio firm so we ended up paying a little more, bought it from the Cleveland folks, and ended up returning the merchandise to West Marine.

This happened all week. We returned some things and kept others. We got a new stove to replace the broken stove plus some dishes that will probably go back.

The third way to consider the boat show is the entertainment. We were traveling with some great folks, especially Ron and Julie who function as cruise directors. We had interesting activities every day and ate well, usually with a crowd of interesting folks. The best part was the boat ride on the first day. Ron rented a 20" boat and we tootled around Ft. Lauderdale. We saw the boat show from the water which was cool. In order to take the boat out to the channel, the boat show folks had to move a section of the walkways, which made us feel very important!

Would I go back? No. But did I enjoy the trip? Yes. We had fun with the crowd we traveled with. We ate well, and certainly the boat show was entertaining.

Switching Places

I swear we have switched places. It is the most confounding thing. Kermit sits in the corner night after night reading books written by former loopers, exhorting me to read them too. He has stuff spread all over the living room - charts, boxes of stuff, information - that he insists we need to have close at hand so we are prepared for the trip. He searches the web everyday for the best prices on all sorts of items that are "crucial" for the trip. But I don't. I don't want to. I don't think I need to.

Usually I am the one deep in study with stuff spread out all over and Kermit is the one complaining. But he is completely and totally enthralled with every detail. And I am not. I am excited to be sure. But I am confident that we will be ready. I know that we will do lots of research prior to arriving in a place. We won't remember and we can't take all those prints of fascinating places with us on the boat. The sheer weight will sink us.

I keep remembering all those folks we met at the Spring Rendezvous who said you go on the trip with the boat you have. We don't have the boat we had last summer any more. It has changed so much over the winter that I am afraid I won't recognize it when we launch in the spring.

So I wait and work hard on building my business so I can work on it from the boat while we are gone. I have been to many of the places we will see on the way to Chicago. I am from Chicago. So I am covered until Labor Day with research. Kermit will have it covered!