On Tuesday, 13 January 2015 we closed on our new boat.  Her old name was Duna.

Her new name:  “Adventure”

We opted to change the name immediately and started the US Coast Guard documentation paperwork as part of the closing (obviously you have to do that anyway).  So, rather than wait until we’re at the boat ourselves we decided to do all the government paperwork immediately and change everything then and there.

On Friday I received the old title in the mail.  We’re registering the boat in Delaware for now, but we’re considering making Florida our permanent home in the next couple of years – but we’ll cross that bridge and registration and documentation when we come to it.

The pages in this section will cover the boat, and I’ll upload some images of the interior, exterior along with the old ad data from when she was being sold.

At this point we have a few things to do before we can travel to the boat.  We need to sell the house, the RV and then most likely JoAnne’s Jeep.  We will offer that to our kids first or perhaps get one of them to store it for us so we have a vehicle we can use when in town.  However, that’s not a hard decision yet.

We have decided that once we sell the house, we will be using my ancient Ford F-150 (actually, now that I think about it, it’s newer than the boat!) to get us across country.  We’re starting today to look through our stored tubs in the garage and basement to determine for the last time what we really MUST keep and what we WANT to keep.  There’s a lot in there we want to keep but we’re going to get rid of.  Everything has to have a use on the boat.

Mostly I have radio equipment, our musical instruments (mine a guitar, her’s a keyboard) and then there’s the pots, pans, dishes we want to keep, coffee cups, eating utensils and so on.  The biggest pile of stuff is tools, and the second biggest is books.

When we started on this trek a few years ago, we emptied our library of just over 10,000 books, hard covers and paperbacks.  JoAnne and I are book fanatics and that was the most difficult thing for us to do. But we kept books on cooking, boating, navigation, weather and other technical books that we will continue to keep until we decide we have no need of them.  Probably that will happen at the dock, when “just one more book” will sink the vessel.  We’ll keep a close eye on the water line though.

We have a list of work to do when we arrive, not the least of which is go through the boxes the former owner left us in a storage locker.  Apparently he had quite a stash of parts and things for the boat.  The broker told me it will be “Just like Christmas all over”.  I’m not sure about that, but honestly anything he left us that will help us on our way is great and we’re appreciative to him for doing so.

We do have to do some cleaning (though the boat is pretty clean inside and out) the bilge requires a good wash out, and then the standard engine and oil checks, fuel, filters, and so on.  When we commission the boat our goal is to spend about a week, two at MOST at a slip getting familiarized with all the systems, lines and running rigging as this boat is slightly different from most we’ve sailed so far.  Then we go.  The plan is to head down the ICW to Florida over the summer if possible and arrive in time for fall to plan our trip to the Bahamas.

We will stop long enough to visit JoAnne’s brother, Paul and his wife for a couple of days, provision and go.  We’ll do any necessary fit-outs prior to crossing the Gulf Stream (we hope to work out some problems on the way down the ICW).

Right now, we’re awaiting some charts and cruising guides, we have to get the house ready to sell and prepare the final move.

Spring time is nine weeks away.  Plenty of time to save a bit of cash, get the house sold, sell the RV, go through a few boxes and make a final inventory of what we will take.