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 ...

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...

Well, here we are. Today is the end of our 5th week in the boatyard, and we just celebrated Thanksgiving & my birthday yesterday. What an interesting day, spending a holiday in a boatyard, with people you just met a few weeks ago and a few you just met today.   "The Hut" in the boatyard, where we had our Thanksgiving, next to the channel.     As I mentioned in an earlier post, a lot of people  come down from up north and haul their boat out of storage here to cruise during the winter months. These people are called "snowbirds". I had heard of snowboards coming to vacation homes in the south for winter, but never knew about the group that do the same thing on their boat. A lot of the snowbirds here have been around for 10 years or more. I would call them "Boatyard Ratz" (LOL), at least for the holiday season. I laugh at that because those of you that know Tom & I personally, know our group of friends back home call ourselves t...

       This boatyard is amazing! Charlotte Harbor Boat Storage  is a premier dry boat storage and do-it-yourself boatyard in SW Florida. They take extremely good care of your boat when transporting it in and out of the water. And it is safe and secure when you store it in their gated boatyard. They are located in a protected canal system off the west side of Charlotte Harbor mid-state off the Gulf of Mexico. Here are a couple of videos, one taken while standing on our boat, and another of our boat being put in the water when we did our sea trial.         Since we're living "on the hard", meaning the boat's up on stilts and we can live onboard while it's here in the yard, we are having to adjust to what we can and can't use on the boat. Electricity is not ran like regular shore power at a marina. Every few storage bays have a 110v plug for an extension cord to your boat. This runs lights, fan, TV, ...

When we bought our 40' Heritage East early October, it was stored in a boatyard on the west coast of Florida. While the owners stayed onboard her for a few days to get their personal items off of her, Tom and I headed back to Texas to get our things from storage. We didn't have much left after we sold or donated the majority of our belongings, but we did keep a few things like kitchenware, pictures, and a few more personal items which all fit in a 5x5 storage area. We stayed in Texas a little over a week to enjoy some family birthdays and relax before another long trek driving back to Florida. Instead of renting a UHaul, a friend offered to drive our things to us, using his long enclosed trailer. We took him up on it, since paying him would be easier on us than driving a UHaul ourselves. On our way back to Florida, we stopped in Pensacola in Florida's panhandle, so we could spend some time at the beach. The whole time we were looking at boats in Florida, we did not go ...

We arrive in Sebastian, FL on Mon Sep 25th, and started looking at boats the next day.  Over the next 4 days we drove over 1,000 miles from Fort Lauderdale to Cocoa Beach, with no luck of finding what we wanted or what we could afford. After exhausting all the boats on the east coast of Florida, I decided to post a question about our search on Facebook. On both the Live Aboard Boats page and the Trawler Living & Cruising page, I told them what type of boat we were looking for and asked if anyone has a boat for sale to give me the sales link online or PM me the information. One nice gentleman PM'd me that he had a 40' Heritage East trawler for sale and was asking $40K for it. Way under our budget! I responded and asked if he had any pictures and where it was located. It's located on the west coast of Florida, in a boat yard in Placeda which is north of the Fort Myers area. I told him my husband would be calling him. The picture of the boat that the owners sent us. ...

The Viking owners finally made it down to Port Aransas the first week of September, driving from the east coast, about mid-week or so. Hurricane Harvey was moving north of Louisiana at that point, but they had to navigate around the flooded areas of Houston to get there. As stated earlier, the Viking's fly bridge hard top was ripped off, and all the canvas was torn off. Plus the boat had some dock rash, but no holes thru the hull. They said the engines and generator started right up, and there was no damage on the inside of the boat. The flat screen TV, which was just sitting on a shelf, didn't even fall over. This was all great news, but the logistics of everything had us questioning what we should do. The owners asked if we wanted to back out on the purchase, and we said "Yes". The logistics would be a nightmare, and they gave us back our earnest money.  Hurricane Irma was hitting the Caribbean islands of Barbuda and the Virgin Islands during this time as a Categor...

We accepted an offer on the house on Aug 22, 2017, and were scheduled to close on Sep 18, 2017.  Three days, just 3 days later, Hurricane Harvey hits the Texas gulf coast as a Category 4 hurricane. The eye of the storm crosses right by Port Aransas, located on Mustang Island, where our future liveaboard boat was located. We hadn't finalized the purchase of the boat, but we did give the couple earnest money down and were planning on finalizing the purchase after we closed on the house sale. See Port Aransas Tx, located south of Rockport Tx where Hurricane Harvey's eye passed. When Harvey made landfall in Rockport Tx, maximum sustained winds was 130 MPH, and Port Aransas had storm surges of 9-13 feet ( https://texasstormchasers.com/2017/08/25/category-4-harvey-makes-landfall-port-aransas-port-oconnor/ ). It made landfall on a Friday night when the owner's had just been on the boat the weekend before and left on Monday before the storm was even past Mexico's ...

In May 2016, our youngest daughter graduated from high school and moved out on her own shortly after. She knew how much her dad and I wanted to move onto a boat, and she felt like she was holding us back. I wasn't expecting her to move out that quick, but she was ready for her independence. We always told her that if she ever needs a place to come home to, we'll always have a bed for her.  Being a young adult is hard in today's world, and I wanted to give her time to be settled before we pressed forward with our plans. My busy season at work is in the Fall & Winter, so I didn't do a lot of research during that time. But at our Christmas break at work (between Christmas & New Years), Tom and I decided to go stay at our friend's vacation home in Aransas Pass (close to Corpus Christi TX). During that trip. we went to a local restaurant/small marina to enjoy dinner & cocktails. As we were walking into the restaurant, Tom saw a trawler type boat with a sun...