Today is our first day.  Living aboard.

Sorta.  Had some big plans to get over here, get some stuff on the ship, JoAnne was going to arrange a few things, I was going to get the jib set up, finish working on the water pump and do a few other little jobs – but I digress since I haven’t mentioned the hell we’ve been through the last few days!

A few days ago, everything started going wrong.

We discovered bad house batteries, a bad starter battery, the water system was hosed up, the high pressure washer connections were very, very corroded, to the point of breaking parts off of them.

We met with the former own a few nights ago.  A very nice man, very helpful and sad to see his boat go – but happy I think, that we have her.

So over the last few days, I’ve been repairing this and that.  Our plan was to move aboard today.  We checked out of the hotel in Newburg and stopped at Walmart to get a starter battery, we had breakfast and were coming down here to  unload a few things.

We were excited.  As usual, I was moving too fast for JoAnne and she ended up tripping on the dock.  She landed pretty hard on the concrete and got some scrapes but the worst part was her glasses.  I couldn’t catch them and they went KERPLUNK next to the dock in three feet of murky water and a foot of mud and two feet of grasses.  I hunted for them for an hour but never got in the water.  I used a boat hook.  I was afraid I’d never get out of the muck again.

So we went to a mall over in Nyack and spent the next 4 hours (they said “Oh, just an hour!”) waiting on glasses.

Great.  We decided it was lunch time. We went to Joe’s Crab Shack.

The young lady waiting on us was Deborah.  A sweet girl with a New York accent.  We ordered our food and I asked for a substitute of cole slaw instead of fries.

I got my slaw with a side of rubber glove.  Gross.  Yuk.  Crap.  Appetite went out the door.

Deborah came over and I tried not to complain or anything, but I wanted her to let someone know.  I figured a manager would come out.  Nope.  Never did.  And in fact the young lady went to bat and ended up getting both our meals and the two beers comped.

We did, finally get JoAnne’s glasses and got back to the boat about 6pm.    I brought her to the bathroom since ours aren’t really working just yet and then we went out to dinner (since it was now several hours after the lunch fiasco.

Once we came back from dinner – no, our stove isn’t working yet, either, or more accurately, it’s not been completely checked out and isn’t yet safe to use so no cooking for us yet – we had to go out….. anyway, finally I brought down our back packs, pillows, a blanket or two, guitar and a few small things.

So, as I write this, it’s almost ten PM and she is laying on the couch area reading facebook.  I’m writing this at the table.  Below decks is a disaster.  We don’t have a bath room complete functional.  A storm is supposed to blow through tonight so I had to add an extra line to the boat and retie the dinghy off.

And we’re both physically and mentally exhausted.

But, we’re happy.  We finally, finally, seven years after thinking it up, spending those seven years planning, practicing, going through cancer for her, heart attack for me, and tripping and falling all over ourselves in everything we’ve done and tried to do – we made it.

We’re really, truly, here on OUR ship, Adventure, rocking to the waves coming in from the Hudson River, listening to some rigging making noises in the wind.

We’re here.

Tomorrow will be a new day, plenty of stuff to do, cleaning, repairs, and did I mention cleaning and repairs?

We’re supposed to leave here on the 15th sometime.  High Tide won’t be until early afternoon, so I’m not sure how that will work out.  I don’t think the marina manager wants us here for reasons I won’t go into details about right now, but we can ONLY leave at high tide and we are ONLY leaving on our terms, not theirs.  A sailboat (something they admit they know nothing about) doesn’t work like a power boat (most of what they have in this marina) so life is rough but we’re going to do this our way and the right way and not be pressured by someone who doesn’t know anything about sailboats.

Time to go topside and see what is slapping in the rigging.  I think it is the main halyard.  Gotta fix it.

Funny… it wasn’t OUR boat.  It was the rickety docks making the racket.  The wind is up about 15 mph or so, so everything is rattling in the marina.  We are the only sailboat here, riding the high tide right now and rocking like a horse ready to get out of here.  I think she wants to GO somewhere, anywhere.

Soon, very soon, we will.