As I've mentioned before, it takes me so long to get this blog updated. So, I think many of you already know, but.....
WE GOT A NEW BOAT!!!!! Well, new to us anyway! Our friends and boat brokers, Dale and Gail came up with a brilliant idea. We thought a bigger boat would be fun as we continued our travels and they decided that they wanted a smaller boat that would allow them to more easily explore the East Coast of the US. We both owned the same brand of boat (Cabo Rico in case you didn't know) and loved the quality and style of these boats. So, we traded boats. They are now the proud owners of our beloved Cabo Rico 42 and we are the blissful owners of their Cabo Rico 56! Because it just fits and we like our name, we're keeping Whatever She Wants (I don't know if they have picked out a new name for the 42 yet)! After all of the paperwork was completed, we've went to work and spent that last several months doing a few boat repairs and several upgrades that we wanted.
Now, since it's been almost a year and my blogs are already long enough, I thought I'd just highlight our year so to keep the blog updated.
Since our cruise ship dropped us off in Ft. Lauderdale, we rented a car and drove back to Cocoa where we have a rental house that we turned into an Airbnb short-term rental. As we anticipated staying around for at least a few months, our first line of business was to get a car with our second being driving to Louisville to check on our families whom we'd not seen in months. As is always the case, the holidays flew by but we managed to get as much fun as possible out of them. We wrangled an invitation to Roberto and Polya's for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner and then again to their restaurant for a huge and amazing Christmas dinner where Roberto put Pedro to work in the kitchen while I was busy supervising and taste testing! With the help of Larry and Michelle, we toasted in the New Year with a wonderful party and boat ride the next day.
Settling in to our temporary land life, we spent our time working on the rental house with Pedro building us a "Little Free Library," servicing our bicycles and rebuilding our worn our fence. We talked Fred and Beth into stopping by for few days, so I put Beth to work helping me build a pathway in the back yard with leftover pavers from another property.
Now, for a funny story (well I thought so but Pedro wasn't amused when I first came home). So, I went to a lady's house to buy a really cute chair that I saw on FB Marketplace where I met Mary and her dog Sherman. Well, long story short, Mary rescued Sherman but couldn't keep him. I'm sure you can imagine Pedro's surprise when I left to get a chair and came back with not only said chair but also a dog. The ending of the story is good though. I got to love on the rascal for a month or so and then found him a great home with Bob and Mary Louise (aunt and uncle to my Brother-in-Law Jeff). They are completely in love and he's spoiled rotten!
Even though we were still technically boatless with our "old" boat still in Maryland, we managed to get quite a bit of time on the water thanks to our amazing friends. We finagled an afternoon boat ride complete with lunch from our marina neighbors Art and Patty. Borrowing our friend Doug's boat several times, Pedro took Roberto fishing as well as afternoon's of boating with Tina and Roland, Frenchie and Pery, and Fred and Beth.
In keeping up with the boating theme, Larry and Michelle loaded us, along with Barbara and Blaise, up in their boat and we had a wonderful 5-hour cruise from Cocoa Beach up to New Smyrna Beach where we met up with Doug and Sandy for the weekend at a local BnB. Another set of dear friends, Doug and Beth, whom we seldom get to see these days, moved to NSB several years ago. When we called them to let us know that we were in town and hoped to get together, they insisted that we not only borrow both of their golf carts for the weekend but invited us over for happy hour in their gorgeous penthouse condo overlooking the water. What a blast we had riding the carts all over town and along the beach and the happy hour only made us love and miss them even more. Between the friends, the fun and the weather, it was a completely perfect weekend.
Next, as we'd excitedly agreed to babysit our wonderful neighbor's dogs while they were away on a Mediterranean cruise and then realized that this would have us in Cocoa on the first Saturday of May, we decided that we had to have a Derby party. Pedro's parents again came down from KY and our most wonderful friends all joined us so we could show off the work we did at our AirBnB house as well as the adorable dogs!
Alas, our landlubbing life was coming to an end as we were nearing the closing date for the new boat and needed to get to Maryland. However, as is our modus operandi, we took the long way get there. Our first stop was Louisville for another visit with our families where, in keeping up with the horse racing theme, we went to Churchill Downs with my niece Brooke where we got to watch her neighbor Hannah as she exercised a horse she trains.
As we still had a bit of time and we really wanted to visit, Roger and Terri invited us to Blue Ridge, GA to see their new amazing house and meet my latest absolute favorite dog Murphy. The house is situated adjacent to a wonderfully rambling creek and we spent a blissful long weekend fishing, wading in or simply relaxing on the shore enjoying the sound. Terri's son Zach and his fiancé' Mary joined us to make a party out of the weekend.
At last the time came to actually take ownership of our new boat. We drove to Maryland and signed away all of our free time for the foreseeable future in exchange for a beautiful boat that promises to reward us by allowing us to spend not only every free minute but the vast majority of our savings on her maintenance! To address both the few items were discovered during the boat survey/inspection and the few other items that we knew we wanted, we almost immediately had the boat hauled out of the water .... and we waited! Since we had some free time while waiting on the tradespeople to get to us and we couldn't run our air conditioner with the boat out of the water, we arranged a few pet sitting gigs in both Arlington, VA and Silver Spring, MD so we could play with the animals, visit DC and sleep in comfort.
Since we still did not have an operational boat and Pedro's nephew Aaron and his wife Emily arranged child sitting for a long weekend, we all decided to visit Canada. While they flew into Montreal, we had a little extra time and decided to drive up. We made our first stop in Philadelphia where we wondered around the monuments and did our own taste testing of the two local rival Philly cheesesteak restaurants. Both were delicious but we agreed with Dan and Alison that Geno's was better. For our next stop, we headed to Saratoga Springs, NY where we spent the night and enjoyed wandering around the adorable town. The next day, we picked up Aaron and Emily at the Montreal airport and decided to drive first to Quebec City and explore Montreal on our way back. We had the best weekend with these two enjoying both the big cities, the adorable little town of Magog and even managed to get in some beautiful hiking.
On a sad note, my 94 year-old father died and we went back to Louisville for his memorial and some wonderful healing family time. While, he'd been slowly getting weaker and weaker for the last 4 years since my mother died, his death was nonetheless a huge loss to our entire family. Amongst a million other wonderful things in my life, he was also the one who introduced me to sailing when I was 12. Although, his death was tough on all of us, I must say, however, that the memorial we held for tons of family and friends followed by a family-only gathering with all of the grand and great-grandchildren at our family river house would have made both of my parents very happy.
Pedro and I headed back to Maryland to continue with the boat work. As most of the work was being done by Pedro and other people (he's extremely helpful - me, not so much), I talked my sister Cathy into visiting me for a long weekend. She flew into DC where we spent a day enjoying the sights and food! With the boat was still out of the water, Cathy and I decided that road trips were in order. In the 4 days she was there, we visited several nearby small towns but our favorites were Saint Michaels and Annapolis. Sadly, the day she was set to leave was the day they "splashed" (put her back in the water) our boat.
Continuing with the theme of more boat work, as soon as we gotten the boat back in the water, we took her up to Annapolis to have our mast pulled and our rigging (the wires that keep said mast upright) replaced. Since this made the boat mostly out of commission (we couldn't sail her anyway) for a few weeks while the rigging was being done, we also scheduled the upgrade of our battery system with lithium. Well, as you can imagine, this rendered the boat completely unusable, so Cathy again came to my rescue by letting me invite us to her house in NC for a few days where we enjoyed hiking, biking and white water rafting! It was perfect. Pedro headed back to the boat but since I was only going to be in the way, I decided to go back with Cathy to Louisville for a few more days of sister fun including celebrating Julie's birthday with a day trip to Madison, IN and a party with Pedro's siblings as he came back to Louisville to pick me up. I so love my family!
At last, we've finally gotten our boat back and, while Pedro still has a long boat "honey do" list, all of the major items have been addressed and we're in love with the new boat. As I type this, we've just left our marina and are slowly making our way towards Florida where we're planning to hang out for the winter getting to better know the boat and planning our next adventures. But, we'll fill you in on those next time.
Until next post!
