Boat Units...

John and I made our first shopping trip to the mega-mart of boating - West Marine.  We needed some new life vests, a pair of hand held VHF radios, anchor rode, a new boat hook and cooler for the boat. We spent a couple of hours looking up and down every aisle until our buggy was filled to the top with all the goodies we had selected for The Hoot.  As we were checking out, the elderly Aussie accented clerk chatted with John about our new boat purchase.  After ringing up the last item and throwing in a "free" t-shirt to seal the deal he announced  our total bill to us "Just barely over one boat unit!"  

We've quickly come to learn that a "boat unit" is $1000.

Today we have lots to do.  We are flushing out the water tanks. Inventorying the back lazerrette - it's filled with who knows what.  We also have some small repair work to do on Ripple, our sad little dinghy that doesn't want to hold air. And if we get all of that done we'll start on tomorrow's list or... have happy hour!  I think I know what I'm leaning towards. ;-)

The Adventure Begins

After months and months of searching, we finally found her! Our new "home away from home" is an Irwin 37' Center Cockpit Ketch.  Her name is currently the "Hoot Mon", which I thought was some kind of Jamaican term for having fun, but I'm told it is the Scottish way to say hello.  The Hoot (as we call her) is currently waiting for us in Marathon Fl.  The town of Marathon is located on one of the middle keys where we will spend a week or so getting her shipshape, sort out a few maintenance issues and provision for the journey back to Panama City Beach.   Once we get her back home, we'll do the fancy-schmancy ceremony to rename her to s/v Sunshine Daydream.


John and I are beyond excited about our upcoming adventure.  These few days leading up to our journey have been a blur of activity... getting packed, making arrangements for lawn care and for the house to be closed up for a month.  We've shipped boxes of things we think we will need once we arrive.  I've made lists after lists of things to do, to buy, to pack, to sort out.  John has been hard at work on mapping out our route, studying charts, reading up on destinations.

We decided that we would make an attempt at blogging about our trip so that our family and friends could keep up with our shenanigans!  Both Capt'n Jack (aka John) and I will be contributing and will upload new entries into our blog when we have access to wifi.  I'm sure we'll have posts on Facebook too (addicts that we are) and we should have cellular service most of the time (we hope!).

For now, we are ready to cast off the lines and make memories...