“Buy a boat, they said”. “It’ll be fun, they said”.
We have official been living aboard the Happy Destiny for 36 days. And, we really are having the time of our lives!
I ask Jim every morning as we are sitting on the sun deck drinking our coffee, “what’s on the agenda for today” . He then spouts off a whole list of projects that he will be tackling. This past week has been the week where we have employed people to do some of the work that we can’t do ourselves. The propellers on the boat needed tuning up, whatever the hell that means. They had to be removed by a diver who literally scuba dives under your boat with a huge wrench and even bigger hammer and begins the process of banging the huge nuts that hold the propellers in place. It is quite daunting. The boat rattles and it is very loud. It feels like one wrong move on the divers part and there would be a huge hole placed in the hull of the boat and we would sink right here in our marina slip! After a few hours of work, the propellers were dislodged and brought to the surface. Jim then drove them to the prop shop where someone else we will pay a pretty penny to, will evidently tune them up, again, whatever that means! What I know to be true, is that, if a hurricane blew through right now, we couldn’t go anywhere because we got no propellers! 😂
Another project, that, Thank You God, I didn’t have to do, is detailing the boat. Over time a fiberglass boat gets a powdery look about it. It loses its shine. You must then pay someone, or in our case, a few people to come and make your boat shiny again. They buff on a compound product and then put a wax on it. This company is doing a great job and their attention to detail is spot on. End results, which I’ve yet to see, is a beautiful, shiny boat!
Project number 3. The canvas and strataglass enclosure. Over time, the elements here in Florida, Sun, heat, humidity, salt and rain kick your boats ass. Things get ruined. They get moldy. Hence the reason for it all to be removed and cleaned up. Most all of our enclosure needed to be re-stitched. I am not a seamstress, nor do I own anything that even slightly resembles a sewing machine, so we found an outfit who specializes in this type of work. So, off it went to get fixed!
Jim has been busy this week rigging electronics. As I’ve stated before, we are hard pressed to know what day it is, what time it is, and we hardly know what’s going on in our world. We haven’t been able to watch the news because we didn’t have a very good antenna. What’s difficult in this marina where we are is that it is covered. The TV set on the boat does not get a good signal. Off to Best Buy for the two of us. We got a decent antenna and once again we see Jim up on the roof attempting to put us in touch with the world. We also have very a very nice speaker system on the boat. There are speakers inside and outside. But the receiver on the boat was very old, and we are pretty hip folks who need Bluetooth products. I wanted to be able to play pandora and our music playlists, of course, right off our iPhones. It will be amazing being able to play our favorite tunes as we are cruising the waterways!
So- once again it has been a busy week. We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of an engine mechanic and we have a possible date for a haul out to get some work done on the bottom of the boat. Once those two things happen we may be ready to toss the lines and be on our way, somewhere!
Hope you all are enjoying your day!
❤️
Here are a few random pictures of our comings and goings
