These Guys!!!
It’s official. We bought a Pearson 39-2 sailboat. We plan to move onto this lovely lady in the Regatta Pointe Marina after the New Year. Until then, we will be dwindling down (and of course adding to) our to-do list. We are looking forward to taking her on some shakedown sails this weekend when Rob’s dad is in town to help.
After our first day of boat ownership, we are SO excited and SO exhausted. We spent the entire day cleaning, scrubbing, organizing, troubleshooting, and inspecting. Our boat is 26 years old and desperately needed a good cleaning. But our hard work paid off–she looks better already.
We are starting to envision how we can spend the next year of our lives here. We are starting to envision our new home. In fact, I’ve already started sewing new cushions for the salon. Because I haven’t used a sewing machine since 8th grade home-ec, I started with the throw pillows. Thanks to sailrite’s wonderful how-to videos, the pillows were a success and I will be moving onto the box cushions next (eek!).
Today, we also inspected many of the boat’s systems and organized all of the goodies the previous owner left behind (spare parts, tools, safety systems). We found ourselves asking the question, “What the heck do you think this thing is for?” more than once. When in doubt it ended up in our spare parts storage cabinet. We certainly made a mess of the place before organizing and stowing items away. It was a hot, messy, sweaty day for us.
Meanwhile back at the beach apartment, Baxter and Jaela took naps in the air conditioning (lucky dogs). They are adjusting to beach life. They love playing in the sand and water. We haven’t shown them the boat yet, but we plan to take them sometime next week. With Baxter’s fear of docks and Jaela’s fear of odd noises it should be interesting. Hopefully we won’t have to test out those man (dog) overboard drills.
This all sounds very, very familiar. That first day (or really, first few weeks) is overwhelming – moving things around aimlessly because there isn’t an organization strategy yet, scrubbing everything, finding broken bits, trying to figure out what the switch that says “accessory” powers, and on and on. Glad you’re making progress, though. She’s a good looking boat!
That’s so true Will. And of course everything takes about three times as long to complete as you originally thought it should. Oh well…we’re learning. Maybe we’ll start fixing stuff soon…instead of just identifying what’s wrong :).