You can't scare us

Last winter.

This winter.

We are surrounded by cautionary tales. We heard that a liveaboard couple on one of the catamarans in the yard gave up the other day. They were on a model of boat that we were very interested buying. They just packed some bags and left their boat.

They called the local broker a few days later and told him to sell it. When the broker opened the boat up to clean it, they discovered toast still in the toaster and other food just left to rot. The couple must have really wanted out of there.

 

Next is Paul who owns a beautiful 50' catamaran a couple slips down from us that he bought brand new. He dedicated a blog to writing about all the troubles he has had with the boat. Of the three years that he has owned it, he says most of it has been spent fixing the boat (he did cross the Atlantic though).

 

If we were smart, we would probably be worried. We are spending most of our time fixing up our own 20 year old boat (with nothing major wrong that we know of) so we can go somewhere exotic. Matt has lost 20 pounds without trying (while drinking a lot more beer than he used to).

 

Everything associated with a boat seems to cost about a thousand dollars. For example, the small stainless steel piece we had to buy for our mast (similar to the one pictured below), set us back about $112.

 

There are many, many conversations with lots of different workers and businesses. Today, Matt had an annoying conversation with a Best Buy store clerk about a bracket for our computer monitor. He knew he was in trouble when he saw her tattoo of the Microsoft logo. He likened it to getting a Betamax tattoo back in the day. At some point it is just going to seem outdated.

 

Despite all this, we are still excited about starting our journey. It could be the newness of everything and our lack of experience with what can go wrong. But right now, we are in sunny Florida in the middle of winter instead of in an office in Chicago. Talk to us in three years.