2015 Year-end review

  **Click here to read last year's year-end review.

•sailing jargon I think I'm finally learning the terms of sailing {about time, I know}. As far as the actual art of sailing goes, yeah, I still have a lot to learn!! Better watch Captain Ron again! {I'm not kidding}

•it's back to the v-berth Oy, this ought to be interesting! We've been sleeping in the aft cabin ever since we bought the new boat, but hubs swears this v-berth is bigger than our last one. So, we're going to give it a whirl.....to be continued. 

•Houstonion Drivers are the worst! Bless their hearts, they don't know how to drive to save their lives. I figured this out last year, but I thought I better give myself more time, before I judge their ways. All my life, I've heard how the traffic is the worst in Houston and I now know why. A few examples: 

A.) it's not uncommon to have a five mile, bumper-to-bumper backup for a slight curve in the road. Seriously? 

2.) they constantly block intersections...and nothing is ever their fault 

D.) they don't understand the concept of little road yields to big road....it's a free for all, I tell ya! 

These people would never make it in DFW...Never. I could seriously write a whole post on this, but I will spare you any more pain {lucky you}!! 

•easy-bake oven I have finally become more comfortable cooking with my mini-oven. I even know how to light the pilot light and I will now cook even if Joe isn't here....that never happened with our other boat. 

•appreciate the little things our brief stint of being homeless {between boats} greatly reminded me to never take the little things for granted....like an easy-bake oven and everything else! 

•our nameless boat remains unnamed. Our poor boat will start off the new year with no name. It's sad, really! We actually have a name for her, but our graphics guy....well, I've already been on one soap box this post so I'll just leave it at that. 

•Movie reference Did anyone catch the movie reference above? Joe and I might have a small problem....you see, we incorporate movie/tv quotes into our conversations on a daily basis. True dat, Ernesto! See, it just happened again! 

2015 sure has been an interesting year....I  wonder what 2016 will bring for us!!!

Thanks for following along with us {another year} on our life afloat!! Oh, and Happy New Year!!! 

Keeping busy....decorating vs. organizing

There's no reason why you can't decorate when you live on a boat....you just have to be more creative about it! 

Now every female of a liveaboard couple knows, you can't drill any holes in the boat for decorating purposes. {I use a lot of tape and command hooks} Although, if you ask me, I'd say that in a way, hubs was "decorating" the cockpit when he drilled eight holes to hang the lines up in this very organized way.

....but what do I know?! ;) The lines do like nice though, don't they?! 

      FYI: rope is referred to as line once it's brought onto the boat. No, I don't know why normal words all have a new word that means the exact same thing, other than sailors want you to learn a whole new language whilst also learning a whole new hobby. Left is port, right is starboard and rope is line. Why can't it just be left, right and rope?? I don't know, maybe there's a Rosetta Stone somewhere out there that teaches the sailing jargon. I could play it when I go to bed each night and get in some valuable sleep learning time!!

-rant over-

He did allow me a few holes to hang up a spice rack. Which helped clean up the space so much! I went from this bowl of my 'most used' spices....

 

To this neatly organized spice rack!

I think what it really comes down to is, the wording. If I say I want to hang up a pretty picture for decorating purposes, it's a no go on drilling holes. But, if I want to organize the boat in order to keep it neat and tidy looking....that just might me the magic phrase. :)

For the jazzed up galley cabinets above, I used a decorative tape. It's like contact paper, but instead of large sheets, it comes in a small roll {similar to duct tape}. 

 Simply remove the hardware, affix the tape, replace the handles and there you have it!!

I have big plans for the bathroom{head}, if only I can remember where I bought the tape in the first place. Haha! 

Until next time....

Why we decided to sell our house and live on a boat....

Unless, this is your first time reading our blog, you probably know a little about how we came to living on a boat. We don't try to hide the fact that we wanted kids, we love kids!! In fact, we wanted to have children so much so that we spent ten years trying to make that happen, including numerous doctor visits, several procedures and approximately $40,000 out of pocket.  Long story short, life had other plans for us! 

In the 2-4 years prior to us buying our first boat, we had started talking about how cool it would be to live on a boat, when we retired. We looked at boats all the time! I'm talking, online, boat shows, TV/movies/blogs and more online. Joe was definitely more into it than I was, I still had babies on the brain, but the thought of warm air and tropical places kept me interested. The bug had bit us so hard that we started talking about taking a year off and going cruising, mostly because we didn't want to wait until retirement....we are so not the patient kind! But, we were still trying to start a family, so it always slid to the back burner. 

Rewind to a few years earlier and little did I know, my whole world would change when I was 25. My thoughts about life would be forever altered. 

My oldest brother died at the young age of 31 and it wasn't until his funeral that I learned he was actually talking about buying a sailboat. Sure, I knew when we were kids that he loved the outdoors and one summer in South Africa, him and a friend spent every waking hour in a little day racer where he learned everything he could about sailing. But spending his weekends crewing and possibly buying a sailboat?....I had no idea. I talked to my brother, though, apparently not often enough if I didn't even know this. But one thing about my brother that I think everyone knew, is, he lived his life.

Life and loss kept going, in the next few years, we had two miscarriages, my cousin died and my Mamaw passed away. Joe lost a couple family members and we both were given the harsh reality that life is short! No one knows how much time they have and yet so many people are perfectly happy living their life with the expected normalcy that we grow up with. Two cars, a house working corporate jobs and waiting for retirement before possibly doing any big traveling. Although now, most people have to go back to work, because their retirement isn't enough to really live on. 

One day, I walked out of my home office and looked into our spare bedroom, the room where I had many times, envisioned a nursery and beautiful baby(ies). I always thought {and dreamed, prayed, hoped and wished} that I would be a mother. Try as I might, that wasn't happening and in that instant I knew that if I couldn't fill up my home with babies & children, then I didn't want to live a so called "normal" life, in a house where every time I walked past that room, I saw failed attempts and sadness. I remember it as clear as anything, I walked into the living room and told hubs, 'forget about waiting, let's just buy a boat and move aboard'. 

Obviously, I didn't have to tell him twice. We rented out our house, lived in a rental for about a year, bought a boat and moved to the coast! Our life may not have been what I had originally envisioned, but I am thankful that we are living life and hopefully honoring my brother in some small way! 

Nobody puts baby in the corner.....or me in the v-berth!

We had been on the new boat for only a week when we noticed we were getting a lot of moisture in the aft cabin, partly due to all the rain we've had lately, I'm sure. 

We pulled everything out of the aft cabin, so it could air out. I put a few moisture absorbent contraptions in there and left the fan on to help circulate the air better! Since we had the berth all cleared out, we decided to bite the bullet and go ahead & order the not so cheap, Hypervent Marine product to put under the cushions. 

In the meantime, that meant we had to sleep elsewhere. Hubs asked if I wanted to sleep in the the v-berth & my answer was, "Nobody puts baby in the corner!" {I was actually quite proud of myself, because I am the type of person that normally needs about a day to come up with the perfect rebuttal}. So, we decided to make up the bed in the salon, it was comfortable enough, but it would've been better if it was about a foot longer. Because both of us are pretty tall, we couldn't quite stretch out all the way, unless you slept diagonally, and then the other person was really squished!!

The Hypervent arrived!! And now it was time to measure & cut it to fit these weird bed shapes. 

I bet you didn't think our bed was so big, but here's hubs measuring the foot of the bed....while all you see are his feet and legs....he may have also been checking the engine as well, got to make the most out of your bed being torn apart! 

Here it is in place under the cushions! Of course I forgot to get pictures of the measuring, cutting & installing because that was a two person job and I was busy being the 2nd person, but it's not rocket science, just measure, cut & install. :) 

This is what it looks like on the underneath side. That white plastic-type stuff helps to keep the air flowing & cut out the moisture under the cushons to avoid mold from growing. 

Lastly, here's what it looks like close up! Keep in mind it will raise the height of your cushions, but not by all that much. 

We had just enough to do both cabins and we have already noticed a huge difference in our war on moisture! 

Fixing things already!

Every boat owner knows, there's always something that needs fixing! The fix list over this past weekend was replace the shower sump and buy a new head, because apparently this one is shot. And, because it wouldn't be true boat life if only one thing needed to be fixed, our refrigerator also decided to crap out on us {pun intended}. No refrigeration and no head....two pretty major items for full time liveaboards and yet, I don't know how they both went unnoticed in the survey that was just done. 

Poor hubs had to work on the head on his day off. It was already a crappy day {no pun intended} because we couldn't go out sailing, again. We've had the boat 3 weekends now and every time he has a day off, it rains. It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!! 

So we, ahem, he replaced the shower sump pump and worked on the head while I focused all my energy on not throwing up....I don't do well with smells and let me tell you, a t-shirt folded up into 16 layers and I was still struggling. Oofta may!!! 

{the smell is all gone now, thank goodness!} 

After all that, I noticed the refrigerator didn't seem as cool as it normally does, so hubs started to diagnose the problem as I tearfully threw out all the food {buh-bye  +/- $30, it was nice knowing you for a brief moment}. Joe figured out that the control module had stopped working. So because the brain isn't telling the arm what to do....it has no choice but to do nothing. And of course you can't just go buy that part, oh no, they want you to buy a brand new unit {um, I don't think so, why replace the whole thing when all we need is a new brain}. However, now we have to find & order it online, so I'm back to not cooking again. Ugh! 

{ding-ding} Order up! .....wish I could show a more glamorous brunch than pb&j on a paper plate, but this is what we eat, sometimes. I've been dreaming of my oven nachos again! Oh how I love them, though I usually make those before we take someone out sailing for a pre-sail snack, I might have to make an exception. Of course I'll probably need to wait until we get the fridge fixed and I actually have food to cook with.....yep, that would probably be smart!! ;)

Until next time....