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| Special thanks to Sally for her awesome sparkler photo |
It’s the start of a new year, a time of longer days and new
beginnings, and Vlad and I have decided to take the plunge and go cruising
earlier than we had planned. Originally, we were going to take a year and a
half to get everything ready and build up a cruising kitty with the intention
of heading out at the start of 2013. But as luck would have it, we think we can
head out into the wild blue yonder several months earlier.
This is not the standard for most cruising plans. In fact,
those plans often get pushed back a few months or even a few years because
either the boat’s not ready or the money, which said it was only going on a
quick trip to West Marine, has strangely vanished. But we think we have a boat
that’s pretty darn close to ready and enough money for a couple of years of
cruising on a serious budget.
Of course, we still have a ginormous to-do list, and many,
many, many things to consider. Should we get a new mainsail? Do we need to
replace all the rigging? How do we go about fixing the corrosion on the
aluminum toerail? What about the octopus clogging up our water intake thru-hull? These were questions we were going to slowly consider over the course of
a year (Except for the octopus. He needs to move on.), but now we’ve got three
months. Can we get everything fixed up and ready to sail in such a short amount
of time? I think we’re up to the challenge. Vlad is dubious, but we both can't wait to wake up to scenes like the one below every day.
Yes you can!!! Like Captain Ron said "If anything is going to happen, it's going to happen out there." Happy New Year and congrats on your decision to go now!
ReplyDeleteSo excited for you guys! Yes, you can do it! If you decide you need a new main sail, you can actually have it shipped to you any where in the world. You can also buy rigging in the Carribean, or Mexico or just about anywhere you decide to go.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement! We are going to need it to get everything done! I think we're going to get a couple of opinions from folks around here, and then price everything out. One of our neighbors got a new main from South Africa for pretty cheap, so we might look into that.
ReplyDeleteIf you are looking for sturdy, durable and inexpensive as opposed to the latest and greatest aerodynamically designed crafted from space age polymers ;) check out http://www.rollytasker.com/en/home.aspx
ReplyDeleteand http://www.fxsails.com/ . Though from the second hand opinions I've heard while researching, Rolly asker gets the edge.
That's really funny! I was just talking to one of our neighbors, and he mentioned that guy. I'll have to check him out!
ReplyDeleteYes! You can do it! Absolutely yes!
ReplyDelete