My First Article

I got my first article published! I sent an article to Living Aboard magazine about us moving aboard and they published it in the Sept/Oct. issue. The actually sent me a check for it. It wasn't much, but it was more than I was expecting (nothing). I was planning on submitting some articles to other mags about our trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans, so this really encourages me to follow through with that. I don't know if the one I scanned is readable, you might have to go to livingaboard.com to read it.

Cutting the dinghy in half

My brother is building us a dinghy to take with us. It is a B and B Yachts design. It is constructed of plywood and epoxy, and then painted. It is a "nesting" model, which means it can be taken apart into two halves and the front half stored in the rear half, so as to take up less space on the fore deck. We went up to his house the other day and took it for a little spin in the lake before we cut it in half. You don't build two halves and then put them together. Instead you build a complete boat, then cut it in half, then finish the two ends. It seems strange to cut a perfectly good boat in half. But if you are going to make an omlet, you have to break some eggs. When it is done the inside will be white and the outside will be red. We are discussing names for it right now. I think it should be named "The Rose". So it would be The Rose of Sharon. Sharon thinks that is to corny. Any suggestions?

Working on Morgan

New swim platform

Our new bed

Our own personal movie theater

How true it is

Lots of new shelving

Sharon got this for me

This weekend I installed the swim platform that I made, it turned out really good. It makes getting on and off the boat so much easier. I installed the steps on the mast, so I can climb the mast when needed. That was a chore. I tied the drill and the rivet gun to the halyard, and would pull then up and let them hang close to the area where I was installing the next steps so I didn't have to carry them up and down the mast with me. It actually wasn't as scary as I thought it would be to install them. I put our new mattress in that we made. It fit perfectly. The mattress cover that Sharon made also fit perfectly. We slept on it this weekend. It is every bit as comfortable as our mattress at home. I also put the sun shade on that Sharon made. It fit really well. It made so much difference in keeping the boat cool it was unbelievable. I took some pics of the other mods that we have done. New counter top, new sink, the new 5 day cooler that we installed into the counter top and surrounded with another 2 inches of foam, sshelving across from the toilet, shelving under the stairs, a fold down shelf in the v berth for the computer. It's all coming together, but we still have alot to do.

Shade, shade, glorious shade

That's not so high.

Bringing Morgan home

These are some pics of bringing Morgan home. That was an adventure in and of itself. A borrowed truck, a borrowed trailer, two new tires, one new rim, one new taillight, and one New York state trooper with an attitude.

First Post 8/4/2010

Where to start. Let's see, well, two and a half years ago I decided that I wanted to live on a sailboat. I didn't just wake up one day and say "hey I want to live on a boat". But I'm sure it felt that way to Sharon. It had actually been brewing for about a year before I made that definitive statement. At 49 years old, one heart attack, one failed business (never go into the restaurant business), both kids grown, it was time for a change. Call it mid-life crisis, boredom, or an adventurous spirit, but traveling around by sailboat just seems like the right thing to do. I started sailing three years ago with my brother. Then in 2008 We bought "Morgan" a 1970 Coronado 25 on eBay for $610.00 sight unseen. She was in Boston, we were in Indiana. It cost us $2,000 to go get her and bring her back to Indiana (gas was $4.25 a gallon then). We were blessed in that the sails, rigging, hull, and about everything else was in really good shape. That is except the motor and the wiring. I am a master electrician, so the wiring was nothing. I found a used Johnson sailmaster motor for $750.00 and we were in the water. Morgan was to be our starter boat, and then buy a bigger boat to live on. Then the economy went bust, work slowed down. So we came to the realization that we go now on Morgan or wait and hope that things will turn around. I'm not much of a waiter. In the space of three years I had three near death experiences. One heart attack, one motorcycle accident, and one auto accident. I knew it was time to go enjoy life while I could and not take a single day for granted. We set the departure date as November 3rd, 2010 to leave Kentucky Lake (that's where we keep Morgan) sail down the Tennessee river to the Ohio river to the Mississippi river to the gulf, and over to Florida. We will start cruising Florida and see from there. In the mean time we are three quarters of the way through a refit. I will post pics soon of how that's going.


See post "Catching up" dated December 11 to see how the Mississippi River trip went.