Changing Course, Of Course

I planned to use this blog to track the progress we made fixing up our boat.  The problem is, we spent all summer just trying to get the motor to work.  Oops.  And with the boat winterized, there won't be much progress to report.  Of course, we did get some things done with the boat this spring and summer.  George and I both took sailing lessons (from Strictly Sail in Cincinnati).  We did a three-hour classroom session and a three-hour hands-on session.  The classroom session mostly terrified me, partly because I couldn't really visualize how everything was supposed to work, and partly because they put particular emphasis on how to execute a rescue if someone falls overboard, which involved an absurd number of sail and rudder configuration changes in order to come around quickly and safely.  I told George he better know how to swim.  Once they actually took us out on the water, I was much more comfortable.

George got a pressure washer and cleaned the boat:

See?  Much better.

We also installed new windows, threw away a lot of junk, and tore out old, moldy carpeting:

 Me tearing out all of the gross foam underneath the gross carpet

Cutting new carpeting- the fancy car is not ours.  If it were, we'd have a very different boat.

We also bought and cut new floorboards, from what we thought was mold-resistant bamboo.  We laid them down, then left them sit for a few weeks because George had to re-cut a couple of the boards before we glued everything down.  We came back, and there was mold under all of the boards.  Crap.  We haven't quite decided what to do about that yet.

So anyhow, we're making progress.  I'll post about the motor sometime soon, as well as our attempts to actually sail the boat.  I will probably also use this blog to post odds and ends about life - big (and probably small) events, my own thoughts on the happenings of the world, my adventures in cooking, stories about our ridiculous dog, whatever.  I will leave you with this picture of our Sailor Puppy:

Kona

Uh, we bought a boat.

So we bought a boat.  A sailboat.  A 1979 Hunter 30 to be exact.  Now keep in mind, neither my husband nor I know how to sail.  In fact, neither of us have ever been sailing.  You may then be wondering why we bought a thirty-foot sailboat.  You'd have to ask my husband.  All I know is that for as long as I've known him, George has talked incessantly about having a boat, and that one night while working the late shift he got very bored and started searching for sailboats for sale.  Apparently that's what you do when you're bored at work at 2am and you think sailing around the world sounds like a really great idea.  At any rate, he found this beauty on a lake about an hour and a half away:

It was priced well, and it was nearby, so George went to check it out, I think half-expecting there to be a gaping hole in the side of the boat.  Instead, he found a boat with a good hull, new sails, a motor that supposedly ran... and a cabin full of mold and mildew and old margarita buckets catching the water dripping off of the windows.

Long story short, George convinced me this would be a fun adventure, and also that we could get the boat for less than asking price.  After conspiring with his boss, George put in a ridiculously low bid, expecting it to be rejected.  Apparently, the guy really wanted to get this boat off of his hands, because he came back with only a slightly higher counteroffer, and we accepted.  And that is the story of how we bought a thirty-foot sailboat for approximately salvage value.

We're going to be putting quite a bit of work into this baby for the next few months (maybe years), so I figured I'd start this blog to track our progress, and to share our adventure with anyone who may be interested.  Enjoy!