Nan's Idea - Our Liveaboard Adventure

When we arrived at our boat in the boatyard on Oct 20, we figured we'd be in the yard for a couple of months. Mainly because of the holidays and the number of projects we needed to do, we weren't on a strict time frame of having to get in and out of the boatyard. But here we are,  on New Year's Eve, and we're still here and are planning on being here one more month. You see, when you own a boat, you don't really own IT. IT owns you. But we went in knowing that, and luckily, Tom and I are spontaneous people. We know that we have to "go with the flow", and we're both good with that. We had 3 main projects that we wanted to accomplish while in the boat yard, and A LOT of little projects on the "TO DO" list that could be done at any time. The 3 projects are: get the generator head rebuilt, have AC (air conditioning) installed, and do a bottom job. And here are the issues we've been up against, trying to get them done: The generator h

We're taking the dinghy out, for the second time, while we're still in the boatyard. The boatyard,  Charlotte Harbor Boat Storage  , is located in a canal system off Charlotte Harbor Bay in west Florida. Since we bought the boat in the storage area, we hadn't been through the canal and we wanted to go see how the lock worked (which is at the mouth of the canal and the Myakka River). The lock is manual, where the boater has to pull a chain to open & close the locks. Most locks have an operator so we wanted to go try it out. The first time we took the boat out, we only went half way to the lock. It's almost 10 miles of canal from the park where we launched, past the boatyard, to the lock. I hope you enjoy this little cruise we did on Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!     Charlotte Harbor Boat Storage at the red arrow in the left corner. Black arrows are the route to the lock. First trip we went as far as the beginning of the lake on the r

Leilani, our 9.5 year old Shih Tzu, is so laid back. We moved onto our liveaboard boat, in a boat yard, a little over 6 weeks ago and she is adjusting quite well. Ever since we sold our house on September 18, she has been traipsing around with us all over the place. We first stayed with friends for about 5 days in the DFW area, waiting out hurricanes to pass outside of Florida. They have a dog too, and the dogs got along just great. The only problem we had was Leilani wouldn't use the doggie door. I think it hurt her little nose, and was too close to her eyes. Yes, we call her Princess Leilani because of her stubborn streak. She will only come up to you when SHE wants to, not when you call her over to you. But for the most part, she's a real gem.   When we were boat hunting in Florida, she would stay at the condo by herself, and then we would take her out with us to a local outside bar. This was her first experience, going to a place like this. She was the hit of th