Have you ever gotten behind in something? Then when you got far enough behind it seemed like you couldn't catch up.. Well that's kind of what happened with the blog over the past couple months but now its time to get back to updating. My last update has come and gone, meaning we had purchased a new boat and it's now sold to someone new. I'll try to condense the timeline and catch it up now.
We had gotten sick of the houseboat and really wanted a small sailboat we could take out sailing more often. Red Solo Boat was placed for sale and sold to friends of a friend of ours (stay with me) at which point we purchased a 1977 Coastal Recreation Balboa 26. "Roxy" had been owned by some other friends of ours Bob and Beth and she was a beautiful classic Lyle Hess designed boat. This became the kids school, bedroom and pretty much their boat. She sailed well and was more balanced than anything I'd helmed.
In late Oct we took a trip to Key Largo and stayed at the Key Lime Sailing Club (KLSC). KLSC has cottages that come with a 22ft sailboat that is yours for the week along with kayaks, snorkel gear, bicycles and just about anything else you can think of to keep you occupied. Of course we were there mostly for the sailing and enjoyed multiple days of pods of Dolphin swimming with us, 5 hour long tacks, Manatees, Mangrove Kayaking etc. The days flew by and we only left the resort on the last day to take the kids snorkeling at John Pennekamp reef. Both of them dove and didn't want to leave, even after 4 hours in the water. There is a trip report for KLSC coming in the next couple weeks on another blog I started for my travel photography and writing, I'll post a link for that blog soon. I will be posting travel reviews, reports and am trying to submit several of my short writings to larger publications.
We also stopped by Marathon City Marina at Boot Key and spent the afternoon (election day for time reference) exploring the marina and local area since this is where we would like to call home once all is said and done.
When we arrived back in TN I don't think any of us actually came back mentally, especially me. I became determined to find a way to get back as soon as I could and was obsessed with shortening our timeline once again. Now keep in mind we had started with a 5 year plan, which was promptly reduced to a 3 year plan, then a 2 year. So here we were in the 2 year plan but I was hell bent on getting out of here far sooner.
I was actually having a rough day, slightly depressed, it was raining and I was hatching a scheme to get us down to Florida when I came across and ad looking for a crew member "1 Crew member needed for one way trip from Port Canaveral FL to Puerto Rico. I thought to myself "This is it!, a chance to get some real offshore experience before I set off with my family" I sent a message and waited for a reply. I mean I actually sat there and waited for an hour or so, checking my email every few minutes with excitement, only to be let down like the kid in the movie A Christmas Story. (damn no decoder ring!) Anyway 3 days later I received an email then a phone call and within a day I had accepted the spot, bought a plane ticket and started packing. Funny thing is I had no time left to take at work, didn't ask at that point for a leave of absence and did not have the slightest clue what the hell I was doing. I did know that in less than 7 days I was leaving to go offshore on a 9 day trip.
I think sometimes it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission and in this case lucky for me it worked out, but if only I knew what God had in store for me on this trip. This trip is also being written about and will be a short story when it is finished. I kept logs of the trip with coordinates and wrote about everything I saw, felt and did. This should make for a pretty good writeup once I get it finished. I also have hundreds of photos from the trip to go through and to be honest it's almost become a full time job keeping everything documented. After returning from my trip I tried to get settled back into "normal" life and did my best to just deal with the fact it was getting cold, I was getting old and I needed to be free.
This brings us up to where the story gets good.
Since getting diagnosed with cancer my life has undergone a dramatic change, my views have changed my zest for life has increased and my desire for self sufficiency and freedom is at an all time high. I have also learned that God has a plan for me, if I follow his plan things go amazingly smooth, if I don't it gets a little bumpy. When I feel like there is something I should be doing I do it, I leap without asking questions or why, and since this began I've been amazed every time with how it all just turns out.
Saturday Dec 7th there was a knock on the cabin top and in the rain stood a stranger. "Can I help you?" I said, wondering who this guy was and why he would be knocking on my boat. "Is this boat for sale?" he said, to which I replied "Not really, but it could be if you are serious and buying".... Well within the hour the man reached into his front pocket and said "I'm not sure why, but God told me to put a blank check in my pocket today and walk up to your boat" There on the bow he wrote a check out for the asking price of our baby, his penmanship suffering from the deep woodgrain of her bowspirit. In minutes we had sold Windsong, our plans were put in the blender once again and God had something in mind.
I had been looking at an Endeavour 32 for sale that was the same exact year and build as ours and belonged to a friend of mine in Pensacola. His boat however was well equipped and had many of the things Windsong needed already done. I gave him a quick call and was crushed when he informed me that the boat had sold that morning as well. "It wasn't meant to be" Jessica said as I began to panic and began obsessively scouring sailboat ads for a new boat. By the end of the day I had sold our 26 Balboa as well and we were boatless, even if only technically, we had until Friday to vacate.
Fast forward a couple days, laying in the vberth of our,,, (err I guess actually someone else's) boat I had revisited a sailboat I looked at on Sailboatlistings in the past, and saw they had another reduction in price. Now what we would have in our pocket after selling still wasn't even close to the much reduced asking price, but it was a boat I really liked. To finish this chapter of rambling let me just shorten how the rest happened.
I made an insanely low offer on this boat, spoke to the owner and explained who we were, what we were doing and what we were using the boat for. I got to do this all prior to him receiving the offer from the broker. I explained why I offered the number I did and how it wasn't meant to be a low ball offer but an offer of everything we had saved. About an hour later I got a call from Gordan saying "My wife and I want your family to have this boat, she feels like your family needs it" Once again divine intervention? Our offer was less than half of the original asking price and somehow we had a buyers agreement, we sat in amazement wondering "Now what?"
Here I sit exactly 10 days after that knock on the cabin door in Indiantown Florida, on our new boat a 1979 Watkins 36 Aft Cabin writing and updating the blog with a whole lot of real news. We packed up our cars Saturday afternoon and without thinking just moved to Florida to move onto a boat we had never even seen in person. Crazy? Yeah we've got a few screws loose I'll admit, but damn it sure feels good to be crazy sometimes, especially when it's warm outside and I'm soaking up sunshine with a pair of shorts in December.
So to close this up.
WE DID IT, WE MADE IT!
More on the crazy adventures of the Young family coming in the next few days.
Cory
No comments:
Post a Comment