We've done it again

We sold our boat, again!!

Signing papers at closing....

You may remember last time our boat sold in eight hours and we had to be off of it a week later. Well, this time we thought we had wised up a bit by waiting until the end of boating season, to list it. After all, it was mid-November and just a couple days before Thanksgiving, so we thought maybe, just maybe we could buy a little time and maybe we could have it in the 'for sale' column just a teensy bit longer, while we look for the next boat. Nope, that didn't happen! About two hours after we had listed Irie, we had it under contract....and no, we didn't list it too cheap..We're actually making money off of it! Albeit, not a whole lot, but it's always better to be on this end rather than to be losing money on the deal! The first couple that saw it, put in an offer...that we accepted. The crazy thing {well, one of the crazy things} is, is that our boat listing didn't even populate to the broker's website!! All my staging & photography skills used up and I didn't even get to see the final result.

Needless to say, the search is on to find our next boat!! I have stopped referring to it as our "forever boat" though and am just saying, "our next boat". Our pier at the marina is starting to look more like the 'Bricker Brokerage Pier'  with all our old boats lined up! Haha :)

In the meantime, we have become pros at being squatters!!! I wish I could say I was joking about that, but that's the downside to selling your boat in a couple of hours, during the holidays. Everyplace is either already booked or extremely over priced because of the time of year. The upside however, is the friends we have made at our marina have been outstanding to us in our current situation! We have had many, many offers for us to use their boats, come do laundry at their house or stay in their spare bedroom!! I've said it before, but it bears repeating, our marina friends & neighbors are without a doubt some of the best people and we are so incredibly grateful for their hospitality!!!

I'm hoping by the time I type up my next post, I'll have something to tell you (or show you) on our next boat, but until then, I'm keeping it hush hush on the blog, so nothing is jinxed! ;)

Here's hoping we aren't homeless for too much longer...until next time!

Saturday Sail

A few weeks ago, we did a weekend trip with a few other friends at our marina! We hadn't really planned too much, other than to get away from the dock for a night or two. Friday afternoon we pulled out of our slip and went towards Redfish Island. This was our gorgeous view of the sun setting over Kemah!!

We arrived just after sunset and decided to anchor for the night. There were three other boats there with us, for the night. We all took our dinghy's over to Tom's boat and ate & hung out before heading back to our own boats to go to sleep. 

There's something great about being anchored and feeling the boat move with the water versus feeling little to no movement while being tied to the dock. I miss this more than I can say (at least in the daytime, when I can clearly see that we are not going to hit anything). 

There were no bugs out and the weather was cool, but not too cold, so hubs and I decided to sleep in the cockpit. Around 3:37am the wind picked up more than what was forecasted and at this point I was awake. Mostly, because of the headache that woke me up, but also because I'm always too worried that we we are going to drag anchor, I'm sitting up every few minutes and making sure we are not closer to the surrounding boats and so I can't really get any good sleep. It's like whenever I take a roadtrip with anyone. I cannot fall asleep for nothing, even when I've been awake for thirty-six straight hours, I just can't do it. I feel like I have to be the lookout person, at all times. About three hours later though, I decided Joe could be the lookout person for awhile and I went down below to catch some Zzz's before our day sail! 

We slept in a little bit and then I whipped us up some oven French toast!!! Yum :)

I felt like a real-live cruiser, complete with my collapsible tea kettle, heating the water for my coffee in a pour-over coffee maker and the toast about to go in the propane oven. I think I'm getting the hang of this no electricity needed, way of life!! 

After breakfast and a quick cleanup, we pulled up anchor and radioed over to our friends about the day's plan. We were going to go with one of the boats, that had anchored with us the night before and sail to Galveston for the day, but they decided they wanted to hang out in the bay instead. It's all good, we thought, were still gonna go, because we could, so we did! :)

We stayed just outside the ship channel and sailed all the way down to where the cruise ships come in and out of port. We kept seeing flares shooting up into the sky, followed by a thick cloud of orange smoke.

There were no distress calls heard over the radio, so we figured it had to be some sort of a training or an authorized removal of expired flares. Sure enough, we later realized, that was being done at the Coast Guard Auxillary Station and all was well. 

We cruised around a bit and got up close and personal with World War II history! Seawolf Park is a memorial to USS Seawolf, a United States Navy Sargo-class submarine mistakenly sunk by U.S. Navy forces in 1944 during World War II. It is located on Pelican Island, (29°20′03″N 94°46′45″W) just north of Galveston. You can read more about the submarine and ship here. 

We then sailed back to Kemah...

We went no where in particular and it took us all day to get there and back, but that's just one more thing we can say we did on our boat. Plus, you gain experience each time you take your boat out. And well, isn't that what everyone should do?