Our house has been on the market since the end of March. Six showings later, and some realtor feedback that the house is nice but should be priced $20,000 lower, and I was feeling despondent. Our neighbor keeps parking their ugly car in front of our house. They don’t mow their lawn, the paint on our baseboards is chipped, we didn’t have time to pick up the dog doo in the back yard, and what if no one ever wants to buy this house?
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Welcome
Welcome to a slice of our dreaming, planning, and preparing for the next stage of our life together. Living on a boat on the East coast of the U.S. is where we plan to be come Fall of 2012. There’s quite a bit to accomplish between now and then: sell a house, plan a lifestyle, buy a boat, move aboard…and then on to the great blue yonder. We will keep all our friends and family updated here as to our challenges, struggles, and victories as we follow our dream. Register today and enjoy the site . - Shannan & Leigh
Leukemia Cup Regatta 2012
Shannan and I used to race our Hobie 20 quite a bit. We weren’t top performers, but we had fun. I haven’t put in much time on the old Hobie lately, as I’m just ready for a big boat. So when our sailing buddy Steve invited Shannan to crew on his Hobie 18 during this year’s Leukemia Cup Regatta, I said, “Go right ahead!”
Not to be a total stick in the mud, I tagged along and talked my way into a post on the race committee boat, which gave me an excellent vantage point for watching the action.
Other Recent Articles
Books I’ve Been Reading &...
INSPECTING THE AGING SAILBOAT – Since we’re about to embark on our dream of owning a sailboat, I thought it would be important for us to know what we’re looking at when we start browsing. This book is wonderfully short and comprehensive about what to look for, what to be worried about, what will need fixing, what’s not important, etc… I feel like I can do a general survey of a sailboat now, prior to making an offer and paying for a professional survey. This will save us much money and time wasted on boats that I can now identify as just too much trouble.
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Meet Skyler and Pepper.
They don’t know it yet, but with each passing day, they are that much closer to becoming boat dogs.
Anyone who has known us or read our blog for long knows that Skyler loves the water.
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A few years ago I read a book, Changing Course: A Woman’s Guide to Choosing the Cruising Life, by Debra Ann Cantrell. I recall it being a great book, but there are only two passages in it that I distinctly remember.
1. One woman and her partner devised a great way to maintain their personal space and navigate antisocial moods by buying two identical blue baseball caps. Whenever one or the other felt like being left alone, they’d don the blue cap as an unspoken message to the other to steer clear until calmer winds prevailed.
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I came home from work yesterday to find this in the front yard:
Oh, I knew to expect it. I knew our real estate agent (highly recommend Mark Barnes, by the way, to anyone wanting to buy or sell a home in the Dallas-Fort Worth area) was coming over that morning to measure, drop off some paperwork, and hammer that sign into our lawn. But I was still confronted with an unexpected flood of mixed feelings. Putting our house on the market is a huge milestone for us, a stake in the ground insisting that we refuse to simply stay put, treading water for years on end, living the staid life that society expects of us.
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First off, a shout out to Eva and ShannOn who left yesterday to follow their dream of moving to the Texas coast! Hope to land on your door step soon and ask for a place to crash! Congrats guys!
So, we’re making some progress, making some decisions, and moving forward with our plan to live aboard a boat:
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I know, I know... It's been so long since we've posted about our dream to live aboard a boat. It seems we are not immune to the creeping unknown of when is the right time to take the plunge. We've been talking and we hope to make some decisions about timing after the beginning of the new year (2012). I've had some opportunities come up for business that have slowed things down and we've been patiently waiting for our older/larger dog to go to the great big doggy house in the sky.
BUT! Maybe those are just excuses. Read more...
Well, this last week has been an exciting week for us. We came very close to putting in an offer on a Morgan 44 Center Cockpit we toured while we were in Annapolis last September. We were very excited to see that the price for her had gone down another $15k and it was an emotional time for us as we started to think maybe this was the boat for us. Read more...
All in the Same Boat: Living Aboard and Cruising is a comprehensive book detailing just about everything Tom Neale has learned in his decades of cruising. This man and his wife have owned several boats, traveled extensively up and down the east coast of the U.S. and the Bahamas, and raised two daughters aboard. While Neal would probably not be so bold as to say he's experienced it all, he sure has experienced a heck of a lot of it, and generously shares his knowledge with others contemplating the cruising lifestyle. Read more...
Honestly, I didn't get to know Frank all that well. I'd met him and Linda prior to asking Leigh to marry me and one other time we spent a week in Florida visiting them both a couple years back. We were also fortunate to spend a couple days with him while he was in the hospital. We had planned a trip to spend some time with them this year, but a week before we were to leave and go cruising together in the Keys, we got the call
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When Shannan and I tell people that we plan to live on a sailboat someday, we often get a response along the lines of, "Have you ever spent much time on a boat?" Well-meaning folks seem to be concerned that we might not know quite what we're getting into. Read more...