Winter Sets In And We Are Getting Excited

It's crunch time! Our winter gear is out, the boat is insulated up with reflective bubble wrap, and the heated blanket is on full blast. As it gets colder we are getting more excited to get the heck out of here!

We are finishing up our last few projects and planning. While Christine is figuring out the provisioning I am planning the route. We will post a preview in a few weeks when it's complete. Any advice is surely welcome. We plan to take the ICW down to West Palm Beach, Fl and then hop over to Free Port, Grand Bahamas!

I am currectly working on the dinghy davits/solar panels. We decided to hire a contractor to prevent any problems. They ended up only installing the davits and I got enough ideas and confidence to finish the project so the solar panels will be our job. At first we wanted them on the dinghy davits, but because the davits are small and angled the panels would hang off a lot and be tilted at a bad angle to the sun with the Bimini casting a shadow. So instead we will attempt to mount them on top of the bimini. I walked around the dock for ideas but it seems most the boats with solar panels have already headed south!

We never found our oil leak so it will just be. It's not large so we will just keep an eye on it. The leak is between the transmission and the engine block which is too big of a job for me right now. At first we thought it was the lube oil pipe but after I removed and replaced that it still has a leak.

We had a water cooling system problem for a little bit but after I ran some engine cleaner through the system and let it sit all the junk came out and it ran smoothly again.



Speaking of water cooling, we were reading in bed one night when Nala jumped up and ran across us all wet and then shook off like a dog. We had heard her and Nomy running around on deck and knew exactly what had happened. Christine dryed her off with a towel while I grabbed a flashlight and followed her wet tracks out the boat, down the dock and to a ladder. That is the 3rd time that silly cat has fallen over, when will she learn, shes running out of her 9 lives.

Since the weather has gotta cooler we started taking showers on the boat. We velcro up a shower curtain and our bathroom doors open up to a nice large shower. We have to be water conscious but its better than nothing.

Our Wirie is fully mounted and the internet is running smoothly so hopefully our blogs will run uninterrupted.

Home Depot has a great deal, 10 led flashlights for $10.  We bought it the last time we saw it but still seem to lose all of the flashlights or can't find one when we really need it.  We havn't seen that sale again until this weekend so this time we bought 2 packs!  Light can be scarce on the boat sometimes so flashlights are our best friend. Yes we know, it's like we are camping always!

EDIT/Update by Christine: FACT --- These flashlights look like sticks of dynamite to x-ray machines at airport security. That was a really exciting experience for both of us. 

We just got back this weekend from our house in Florida. It is all fixed up and ready to rent so let us know if anybody wants to rent a really nice 3 bedroom 2 bath single family home for $1095.

The lead pic is the Hibiscus Flower we have growing in the front yard of our house :)

-Joey

The Last Big Purchases Have Been Made

Sorry we have been afk for awhile.  September was a stressful month.  After a closing delay and having to cancel our FL flight, the house finally went to close on the 23rd.  So it's official, we own a house!  Our next step is to fly down there and get it rent ready, which does not involve much.  Then we will let a management company rent it out while we are cruising.

Since I've been home I have cleaned everything corner of our boat/home.  It took awhile and requires constant attention but its nice having the open clutter free living area.  Christine has been busy working and taking 3 college online classes.  And through all this, she still hasn't smoked one cigarette! We also started running again and finally got to the 10 mile per week mark again.

Well now that the house is takin care we were able to spend money again and bought two 80 watt Sunforce Solar Panels with the controller.  We also bought Martek Dinghy Davits.  These are two big items that we have been watching and saving for for awhile.  It feels good to finally buy them because they are the last big items to purchase!  Once we have them installed, then we just need to repair the engine and we are ready to go.

We plan on putting the Solar Panels on top of the Dinghy Davits.  We have been walking around the marina to get ideas on how to do it.  We also have contacted some boat contractors because drilling into the hull is my worst nightmare.  So if it is affordable we might let them do the scary part.

-Joey

Great news all around!

- Christine

I quit smoking 3 weeks and 3 days ago!!! Things have been a litttle tense around Bright Eyes so we havent ventured out sailing and therefore havent written, but I'm all better now. However!!!!... Joey just got laid off! Yay! So now he has tons of time to get all those pesky boat projects done before we leave. Including, some engine brickabrack, changing a halyard, davits, and solar panels. And were done! Or more likely there is other stuff to do I just cannot be bothered with remembering what it is right now.

There is also this thing called money, but we are working on that. We are supposed to close on our house by the 15th! Thats next week! Woot! We are scheduled to fly down the 22-26th to fix it up to rent it, if any handy people live in FL and want to come help! Then we have the more important job of renting it out. Once it's rented my worrisome mind can calm down and rest assured that we ARE leaving Jan one.


Oh yeah, Joey hired an engine surveyor after our disastrous trip in August, and he can post the details later.

Getting Ready for our Vacation Cruise

Well first great news, Our offer on the house was accepted! The house was listed at $94,500 when we found it and we got it for $82,500, a great deal! I know what your thinking, it must be a dump right, nope!




Click for pictures



It's a 3 bedroom 2 bath in Palm Bay, FL just 15 min to Satelite Beach. It's 1600 square feet with a 2 car garage and florida room on a quarter acre. It has nice hardwood floors and really cool built in shelves in 3 rooms. The master bathroom is straight out of the Hilton and even has a bidet'! We are really excited about it and think we got a pretty good deal. Once we go to closing we will fly down there to set it up and then hire a management company to rent it out for us.







In more boat related news we leave for our 10 day cruise next friday! There are still a few things to get done so we've buckled down and started working on the boat again.



Things to do in a week:



We finally have all the parts to install our new Racor 500 fuel filter.



We bought a Xantrex Link Lite Battery Monitor which will help us keep track of our electric usage while cruising since we don't have solar or wind power yet. Our friends John and Yvonne just installed one of these and it doesn't look to hard so hopefully we can knock it out this weekend.

And finally our Lofrans Royal manual windlass. This has been on our to do list for way to long and I finally dived in. Drilling the holes into our boat is mentally tough but I finally did it and the installation is going well. We decided to put the windlass in our anchor locker. We have a inch thick piece of wood as the backing plate underneath. Then we will drill three 2 inch holes that allow a PVC pipe to go from our anchor locker to below our v-berth. So then the chain will just feed down the PVC pipe and below where we sleep. It is far enough down the v-berth that our feet wont even touch the pipe, remember our v-berth is 11 feet long!

The lead pic is me enjoying an achor locker bath before drilling the holes.



So hopefully these three projects will be done and we can cast off prepared on Friday. We are heading south but other than that we don't really care where we go. Probably not any further than VA beach.

-Joey

It's Always Sunny In Florida

Last weekend we took a lil trip down to Melbourne Florida for a three day weekend. Our good friends Missy and Josh live down there and were kind enough to let us stay with them. We had a great time visiting the shops and beaches and wildlife refugees.

Both nights we walked the beach we saw a huge 3 foot long sea turtle coming up to lay eggs. We also saw three alligators at a wild life refugee. We were about 40 feet from one, it was awesome! We were on a raised look out tho and had our car ready to go in case it tried to get wild on us, but it was a calm alligator.



We did some shopping at the outlets and went to Ron Jons surf shop which is huge and has a salt water tank in the middle with a 3 foot shark and a long eel in it. Pretty Cool.

Every where we looked we saw BBQ eateries and golf courses, I was in heaven.



But the main reason we went down there was to look at cheap houses! Yep, we are buying a house. The houses down there are pretty cheap and if we can rent them out, then it will pay for itself. Since we pushed the departure date back to Spring of 2011 (April 1st now!) we have some extra money and it will be nice to come back to a house when we finish cruising. Plus later in life we can rent it out and maybe cruise forever!!!



We looked at 22 houses and are in talks with a seller now. Wish us luck!

-Joey