Oh! This is real!

Last weekend we kicked into high gear on prepping our lovely home for sale. As you know we have taken our realtor's advice and tiled 4 bathrooms, dry walled and painted the stairwell to the basement, cleaned out the basement and are removing as much of our personal belongings as possible. This past weekend our daughter, Tina, came to help Brenda staging the house. This wasn't easily done as our house is one big honkin' mess right now. Toilets stacked in the showers, boxes of stuff everywhere, furniture in the hallways and just general chaos.

Tina did a nice job getting the main areas to look uncluttered and attractive. Poor Brenda just keeps watching all her stuff go on one of three piles. Junk pile, garage sale pile and storage pile. Just as Brenda was getting settled in the process our good friends Jim and Joni came along to push the project along. At one time there were three women in Brenda's kitchen cupboards sorting, cleaning and mostly tossing all the contents. Brenda looked sort of shell shocked for a while. There was a constant stream of boxes going from the house to our big garage creating what can only be described as a mountain of garage sale items. Two people with three kids sure do accumulate a lot of stuff over the years.

I took everyone out to a Mexican restaurant that had outdoor seating and a big cold margarita for Brenda. I think Brenda relaxed a little and adjusted to the idea that this clean out is necessary if we want to pursue our dream. Seeing all her treasures dumped on a pile for sale made the process very real to her. We aren't just talking about a dream, we are doing it.

Happy anniversary Brenda. 32 years sure have gone by quickly. I love you and I can't wait to begin this new adventure with you.

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Which Boat?

If you have looked at our Short List page you know we have a fondness for heavy displacement vessels with full or modified full keels. We would love to be looking at 40 - 45 foot sailboats, but we won't be able to afford to purchase or maintain one of that size. That is why we listed several sailboats in the 27 - 34 foot range that provide most of the must-haves on our list.

Island Packet

Headroom: Mike is 6'3" so headroom is his top requirement. Brenda at 5'5" probably isn't too worried about headroom.

Heavy Displacement: We sail with wrinkles in our sails. Speed is not a top priority.

Low Draft: We plan on sailing the west coast of Florida, Orange Beach/Gulf Shores and Key West to start which means a 4' draft would be ideal.

Classic Lines: Our common sense tells us to stick with a simple, tried and true production run cruiser such as the Island Packet 31 / 32. Simple systems, much less bright work to maintain, readily available and completely suitable to our intended cruise.

Our eyes and hearts are drawn to the beautiful classic lines of the Baba 30 / 35. Older boats, older systems, much more bright work, fewer available and yet perfect for our intended cruise. If you aren't familiar with the Baba line, check them out. Look at the pictures and tell me your heart doesn't go pitter-patter.

 

Baba

 

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Met with the realtor

Well....we did it...we met with a realtor. Fortunately a long-time friend of ours is a realtor and someone we trust whole-heartedly. He came out, took a tour and then we talked. He recommended that we put ceramic tile in all the bathrooms. We already had this on our to-do list. He wants us to put "realtor beige" carpeting throughout the rest of the house. We had hoped to put in a carpet allowance so that the new owners could pick the color and type that they wanted. We are talking about LOTS of square feet. But no, buyers in this price range want it already done when they visit. Fortunately he said that we did not need to worry about the roof. Although it is 15 years old, it is still in very good shape! There were a few other little things. He said the main goal was to have all positives on their walk-throughs and nothing that they could put on the negative side.

So...we parked the boat under her awning, picked out tile and carpet, and set to work. Mike has all the bathrooms tiled and Brenda has grouted them. While Mike was working on the tile, Brenda worked on cleaning out closets. Do you know how much "stuff" can be stuffed into a closet after 15 years? Too much!

We are also getting some excess stuff out for sale on Craigslist and eBay. Got to pay for all these new upgrades somehow.

 

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