Dressed in overalls

The first morning we woke up on the boat after we moved out of the house was exhilarating! Though we'd awakened on Second Wind countless times before and she already felt like home, now she was all we had--our only home, our "real" home. Though we won't be vagabonds forever, it truly felt like the first day of the rest of our lives.
Reality hit soon, however.

One of my favorite quotes is that most people don't recognize opportunity when it knocks, because it shows up at the door dressed in overalls and looking like work.

As soon as the milestone of shedding house/cars/possessions was completed, we had to get right back to work--this time on boat projects. The sale of the house enabled us to purchase the big-ticket items we needed (or at least wanted) for a journey of this magnitude: a Hydrovane wind steering system, a watermaker, a new SSB (single sideband) radio, an AIS (described in a later post), a more dependable radar, plus plenty of "smaller" items (e.g. a handheld floating VHF radio). Of course, all of those toys had to be installed--in addition to many other maintenance projects (new batteries, transmission issues, creating safe storage space for a large array of tools, etc.).

Murphy moved on to the boat with us, and everything--everything--had significant obstacles to completion. We overspent our prep budget by a large amount (which we think we can compensate for by living nearly free on the ocean and at anchor)--but even more disturbing was that we were up against a deadline. We needed to head out the Strait of Juan de Fuca by early September at the latest, or else face potentially severe weather off the Washington and Oregon coasts.

Though the stress levels got quite high, it's good to note that we never took our anxieties out on each other. Instead, we couldn't have pulled this off if we weren't such good friends and helped each other out of the lowest times. No wonder most people don't ever actually leave the dock for good!

Art & Derek installing the new radar

Transmission repair