Boat Prep

1/21-24/07 – Ah warm weather and sunshine; we must be back in Florida. The boat is in great shape, and I would swear appears to smile and bob with eagerness of new ownership. Unfortunately the previous owner never bothered to remove any of his “rubbish” and I’ve had my work cut out for me. Every day we make trips to the dumpster and/or Goodwill with his treasures. Meanwhile, Tom has been busy in the pilot house installing all the new electronics we’ve recently purchased. It was great to discover the boats transducer appears to work, so there’s one less thing to install.



1/25/07 – (Happy Birthday Wendy) Today we took on our first load of fuel, 645 gallons. As it turns out, we’ve got four tanks, each holds 250 gallons. As the tanks are just about full, jokingly we said “better check the engine room, see if those tanks are holding”. Oops, not so funny to find diesel fluid on the engine room floor and a drip-drip-drip coming from a small hose. Since Tom has not had the opportunity to familiarize himself with everything in the engine room, this was a great first test. As it turned out, not such a big dilemma with a few hose clamps and lots of rags to clean up the gallon or so of spilled diesel.

1/28/07 -We've done as much as we need to get under way and plan to depart Tuesday morning. I never arranged for 24/7 internet access so I will only update this website when we've found a marina with Wi-Fi.

Road Trip

1/15-17/07 – We decided to start our journey today. We’ve waited a few extra days hoping the weather would improve for our drive to Texas, but it doesn’t appear that it’s going to get any better – so we’re off. I’m driving the motor home loaded with everything we’ve purchased for the boat, and then some. Tom is driving behind in his truck. We’ve got these great walkie-talkies son Brian bought for us so we can communicate while we drive. (They are wonderful!) Since the motor home is so heavy it’s eating up gas, and the drive is slow with the bad weather we’ve been experiencing. Coming down through Texas we actually hit the fringes of an ice storm, made for a very scary drive that day since it iced the extremities of both vehicles.

1/18-20/07 – We arrive in Texas during the coldest, wettest winter in years at our final destination, Palacios, Texas. After driving around this amiable little town we found the Serendipity Bay Resort. (www.campingfriend.com/serendipitybayresort) This is the place we’ve chosen to dock our boat, for now. It’s a nice marina with plenty of room for motor homes (currently full of snow birds) and appears to have quite an agenda of activities for everyone. We drove to Port Lavaca and checked out the Nautical Landings Marina, also a great location. We headed to Florida with improved weather, and very excited to see Amanda and number one grand-daughter, Stella.