There's no easy or short way to tell all of our friends that we've sold the boat ..... but that's what we did. I'll start by explaining this past summer. We found a great marina to leave the boat at so we could take a long overdue trip back to the West Coast (for some the left coast or the wrong coast) to visit with family and friends. Port Royal Landing Marina in beautiful Beaufort, South Carolina was a wonderful spot, although we weren't there much. We did manage to see the mansion that The Big Chill and the Great Santini were filmed in as well as have some of the best BBQ we've ever had.
I had been planning a long road trip to last from June thru August or September just to get off the boat. We were going to spent time with friends along the way and then spend time with family in Washington and Oregon. We made mooching along the way a new past time and really want to give a big thanks to: Bill and Terri McHenry, Pat & Cheryl Dietrich and Steve and Helen Bastek, all Coast Guard couples we were stationed with in our CG life.
We made it to Washington and spent time with David's mother, who is 87 and lives in Puyallup, Washington (south of Tacoma) and then mooched, I mean moved, onto Steve and Kathy Penn in Port Orchard, Washington. This is where our "moving back" conversation started. We both fell in love with Gig Harbor, Washington, which is a little harbor town across from Seattle so knew we had a place to look at.
I'm not sure how many people knew how unhappy I was with the cruising life. I will admit it was a lot harder than what I anticipated and for a lot of reasons I was ready to move back to the beach. When David and I started living on the boat we both committed to cruising for one year. At the end of the year if one of us wasn't happy we promised to tell the other. I can see people shaking their heads now especially if they know David would sail forever. So, after much discussion, we worked out at a plan to put the boat on the market, if it sold quickly, great, if it didn't sell we would take it to Florida and either cruise the Keys or go back to the Bahamas for one more year.
I wasn't super excited about going back to the Bahamas but was glad I'd be able to see the friends we had made: Tom and Liz, Francie and Bobby, Skip and Carol and Randy and Jeanne, I even had
my COSTCO list ready to go since I knew it was "just one more year" and we'd be moving back to the West Coast.
You can imagine the shock when we called our broker and he told us he had about 5 people who would be interested in our boat right away. Long story short....we got back from the road trip in early September, only showed the boat twice. The last showing lead to the sale and we signed the papers to sell her at the end of October. When you sell a boat you are required to do a survey, similar to a home inspection, to see if there are any problems. We had a major problem with a crack at the top of our boom. To properly repair it would involve taking the mast and all the rigging down (it's called stepping the mast) to the estimated cost of $10,000.00. OUCH....it was time to move on.
Once the boat was emptied we went back to Williamsburg and really mooched off of Bill and Terri McHenry in Kiln Creek for almost a month. Again, another wonderful Coast Guard couple. We also go to say goodbye to Tom and Terri Hessler in Williamsburg, The Hessler's lived across the street from us and our girls grew up together. Leaving Williamsburg was harder than I thought but I knew we were going back to a place we both loved.
We loaded up a 17' UHaul, complete with car trailer, and headed west, again!!
We are now housesitting for #1 son, James, and his wife, Jennifer, who are both deployed for the next 6 months. They have a beautiful house on Penn Cove in Oak Harbor, Whidbey Island, Washington. Here's the view from the front window...can't seem to get away from the water!!
We've loaded the garage with all of our worldly belongings that we had stuffed into a 10' x 10' storage unit in Williamsburg. David is actively looking for an IPA ... no, not beer, but an income producing activity somewhere around the Seattle area. We don't know where we'll end up but until then we
have a chance to get back into being beached.
We also connected with David's brothers in Oregon and got to spend time with Zach in Montana, where he is now a full time bread baker at the Park Avenue Bakery. He's also turned into an avid fly fisherman which suits David just fine since he also love being on the river.
We're not sure what the next chapter of our life will be. Just know we appreciate all the friends we have made along the way. If anyone is interested in staying in touch our email address is:
cgkings79@gmail.com We'd love hearing from you.
