Life is good!
Today is May 11, I think. Funny how not knowing what day it is or what the time of day is has become so real. This life I am living is so moment to moment I’m practically comatose!
We have had a really awesome couple of weeks. We are at day 69, living full time on the Happy Destiny. We are getting closer by the day to tossing the lines.
Heres the low down.
We bought a new recliner sofa for our salon. I told you all a long time ago that Jim needs to have a place that is not a bed to rest his weary bones. He has worked so hard over the last couple of months. The new sofa will be great for him to kick up his feet and take a nap if he’d like. We also removed the dining seats and are having them reupholstered to match the new sofa.
Comfy Cozy
Jim and Kim removing 1,000,000 staples from the old dining seats at the canvas shop. Getting ready for Canvas John to reupholster!
I’ve been to the beach a few times last week. Ok. So- in Los Angeles when you go to the beach from Whittier, it will take you approximately one to two hours to get you to let’s say, Newport Beach. When you finally get to the beach, it will take you another half hour to park. And when you park, it will cost you, let’s say $12.00. Then you have to walk from your car to the actual beach. Another 10 minutes. At the beach you will have to deal with all the other people who are at the beach. Lots and lots of people. God forbid you have to pee. That will take you another half hour to walk back up to the sometimes not so nice public restrooms. UGH! You all know I love the sun, love the ocean, love to wear bikinis! I hadn’t been to the beaches in Orange County in several years. To much trouble.
Here, where I am living, there is the Gulf of Mexico beaches. It took me 7 minutes to drive to Nokomis Beach. It took me 1 minute to park. It took another 4 minutes to walk on a beautiful boardwalk right onto the most amazing beach I’ve ever been on. Oh, and FREE parking. I had the most beautiful day on a beach, ever.
Nokomis Public Beach, Nokomis, Florida
I liked it so much I invited Jim to join me for a picnic and a Sunset. It was a great evening.
After about a month of waiting on people who were not about what they said, we finally got a great engine mechanic, (THANK YOU RICHARD DARLING) and with the help of our boat broker Turk, we secured a date for hauling the Happy Destiny out of the water to get new bottom paint and fix a few items on that survey that could only be done while the boat is out of the water. On Monday, May 7th we went on our longest boat trip to date. About 10 miles to MarineMax in Venice. A boat haul out entails putting the boat in a big sling attached to a very big travel lift which lifts the boat out of the water. It is then placed on blocks. The mechanics and painters are then able to do their work which is almost the very last thing that needs to be done to prepare the Happy Destiny for its maiden voyage. Here are some pictures of this very exciting day!
Next, a very exciting time in our adventure. Becoming Florida residents. While the boat is “on the hard” as it is called, we became homeless. We planned time around this to road trip to Green Cove Springs Florida, which is where our mailing address is. As we planned our journey to live aboard a boat in Florida, we researched many things. One of them being- how do yo become a resident of Florida if you live on a boat. How do you get mail? How do you get a drivers license if you don’t have a permanent address? Well, I’m going to tell you. First, you contact and set up an account with a company that deals with people just like us. St. Brendens Isle in Green Cove Springs offers a service where our mail is delivered to them and they send us a notice that we have mail. We then have a choice. They scan it for us and we can see what is there. We can choose to have them shred it, send it to us, (wherever we are) or if it’s something we need to look at immediately, they will open it for us and email it. It is a great service and works really well for us. We have been in one place for the last few months and have received our mail perfectly. In our future, we might be in Georgia, or New York, or the Bahamas and our mail will find its way to us. For future reference, if you have something to send, here is our address.
411 Walnut Street #13467
Green Cove Springs, Florida 32043
Now that we have an address we can go to the County Recorder in Green Cove Springs to declare our domicile. We showed up there, filled out some paperwork, showed them our address, had it notarized and paid them $30.00 and voila, we are Florida residents. That being done we can then go to the DMV to get drivers licenses and have our car registered. Interesting thing, because we live on a boat, and the boat is our home, they make our Florida boat registration number our residence. So on our new drivers licenses our name is obviously there and under our name is a number. There is no address on our licenses. It’s pretty darn cool!
Heres a picture of the DMV in Green Cove Springs. No line, no making an appointment, no numbers being called out over a loud speaker. 😂
Eat your heart out Cali drivers!
Being homeless, we had to motel it. We stayed in Jacksonville Florida the first night. Jacksonville is interesting and so was the police action while we were enjoying a dip in the pool. A couple of gals walked past us into the parking lot to “their” car (not) and I kid you not, two policemen with their guns drawn took those chicks to the ground! Seriously, it was like a scene straight out of Cops! 👮♂️
Green Cove Springs is a 4 hour drive across Central Florida. We took the side hiways instead of the interstate it was quite lovely. Nothing like the coast. Green and rustic. No cell service, no services. There are many rivers and lakes. We stopped at a Orchid Farm in the middle of nowhere.
We then went to Clearwater Beach. If you recall, a few months ago we bought a dingy boat. Well, turns out it just wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Shit happens. So, we went to Suncoast Inflatables in Clearwater and purchased another one. This small vessel is much sturdier and has a better motor. YAY!
On our walk to dinner at the beach we saw a sign. Meeting before dinner!
From Clearwater Beach we traveled back to Nokomis Beach and got a little room on the beach. Nice you say? Well I’ve got news for you. It is now LoveBug season in Florida. LoveBugs are little black fly like creatures that are mating. The male and female are connected together. They fly in swarms. Big swarms. They come to Florida twice a year. May and September. There are billions of them. They commit Hairy Kari all over your car while you drive. They splatter and stick. If you are a bug-a-phobe you would flip out. It’s like a scene out of a horror movie! We found out that if you don’t get said bugs off your car they will ruin your paint because of their acidity. So, at our nice little room on the beach, we literally had to carry a towel to swoosh them off the door so we could get in our room. It was amazingly disgusting. They don’t bite thank god!
Ugh
Today is Friday May 11th. Happy Birthday to my son Michael. 🎂 It’s been a very busy week. We’ve had a lot of fun and traveled to a lot of different places. Our boat is back in the water in Venice and we will spend the weekend here in the VIP slip at the boat yard. We will do a sea trial on Monday to make sure all the work they did this last week will keep us safe and afloat on our long journey. We have just a few more things to do before we toss these lines and venture out to the wild blue yonder. We are awaiting Canvas John to finish up the dining room seats and we will drive our car to Miami this next week to Peter and Giselle’s place. They are going to foster our car while we are cruising. We are grateful to them for doing this for us. Then, I think, we are out of here!
I want to take this opportunity to wish my daughters Veronica and Aimee and my daughter in laws Millie and Giselle, and all my girlfriends who are mothers, a very happy Mother’s Day. Also, to my sister Cameron and her roommate Darlene, you are the best Cat Moms ever! I hope you all have a very lovely day and you all get to do something special and are treated like queens. And to my Mommy in heaven, I miss you and I love you. Happy Mother’s Day. I know you’d get a kick out of what Jim and I are doing. I hope you are proud of me. ❤️
