On Hold in Naples

Author: Pete

Location: Naples, Florida

 

We found the boat, the cogs are in motion.  We just need time and energy to make all of the machinery work.  It’s a arduous, thankless task, but on the bright side, we are staying in a beautiful house in Naples.  My childhood neighbors serendipitously have a house here that they graciously offered to us while we’re boat hunting.  Such nonchalant generosity is rare and humbling.  We’ve been enjoying the gems of an easy, if bureaucratic life in Naples.

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Waiting around on the paper chase of buying a boat requires patience.  Documents are slow to be exchanged and fruitless insurance leads wind up dragging you down the rabbit hole before terminating.  Between daily trips to the ‘office’ (library, see below) we enjoy our time in Naples.  Citrus grows freely in the trees, fat and juicy from the daily thunderstorms that pummel down rain at some point every day.  We plan, prep, fix, build, research, call, read.  We make lunch, and do it again.  And sometimes we even swim in the pool.  Hard times kiddy.

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RIVERSPLIT

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We are getting our first taste of living off the connection grid.  The Naples house doesn’t have internet, so when we need to be connected, which is daily with all this paper chase, we load up in Big Red and bounce on down to the Naples Public Library, conveniently located a few miles from us.  It’s like going to the office, icy-cold air conditioning and strange ‘regulars’.  We sure do get a lot of research done though.

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Back at the ranch we generally make the phone calls that we couldn’t in the ‘Shhhhh!  Keep your voices down, aside from all the crazy old people who feel free to talk really friggin’ loud because their hearing is going’.  Sorry.  Library.  Then we get a little dinner going.

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We usually unwind with some light reading, research, conjecture, notes, page flipping, text referencing, and highlighting.  Have to get used to being off the grid.  Our newest, fanciest equipment is an iPad mini with Navionics on it.  The 4G iPad version that we got also has a GPS chip in it, so you don’t actually need cell signal, only clear skies.  That’s what everyone says anyway!  The Navionics is quite frankly magic.  It loads maps of the entire Caribbean, Central and South America, and parts of the US.  You can zoom down to see minute detail.  We’ll check it out on the real water.

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Let’s face it.  We’ve been blessed with easy sailing so far and it should be expected that eventually (now) we’re getting some chop. It’s so beautiful in this little house with the canal right in the back yard, but we’re itching to get on our boat and make headway.  It may be slow and frustrating at times.  But one things for sure… even if it feels like w’ere on hold, we’re on our way in Naples.

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Driving South to Florida

Author: Pete

Location: En route from Green Bay, WI, to Naples, FL

 

After our ‘victory lap’ of Lake Michigan to say goodbye to all of our families, we made ready to head south. Miranda and I loaded up the red 1993 Plymouth Voyager minivan with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction all of our worldly belongings and drove towards Florida.

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The Wisconsins rolling hills gave way to (boring) flat corn fields of Indiana, then to the curves of the Smokies. Miranda and I listened to audio books and hoped the Voyager didn’t fall apart. The old girl didn’t put up too much fuss on the long, arduous journey and neither did the van, bwa-hahaha!)

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Clunked twelve hours to Nashville where we stayed with Miranda’s college buddies, Lilly and Brandon. We arrived there a little later than intended due to Trusty Rusty’s approximate top speed of 42 mph. Still got to go out to eat at a fantastic spicy fried chicken place. Finger-lickin’ fan-frickin-tastic!  Took a little tour around the music-rich city. Really great history and a constant supply of great live tunes to be had!

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The next morning we hit the road a little later than anticipated. Some strange time changes put us an hour behind for the second half of the journey. So again on the road we found ourselves!

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Cruised steady throughout the day first passing Atlanta, then finally into the Orange Tree License Plate State: FLORIDA!

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Florida is a funny state. I forget that it’s extremely long! We went over the border at seven and didn’t get into Naples until 1AM! Could’ve been due to heavy rain, navigating in the dark, and a pretty old van. She got us there though! Three cheers for Trusty Rusty!

Hip hip! HUZZAH!

Hip hip! HUZZAH!

Hip hip! HUZZAH!

Boat Hunting in Florida: Day 3

Author:  Miranda

Location:  Fort Lauderdale, Florida
[26°8′N 80°9′W]

After a quick hotel breakfast (man, having real coffee everywhere is fabulous!  I love you Chile, but I will never, ever miss Nescafe), we headed out to meet up with Steve again from the Catamaran company.  Steve had three boats to show us, and he never disappoints in finding us a group of boats in which one as different from the next as possible in the world of catamarans.  It’s so nice to compare many different styles of boats.

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We started at a 4o foot Norseman.  Oh baby, this boat was ginormous!  I started daydreaming about all the storage and all the things we could fit in this cavernous honker, and I had to mentally slap myself in the face.  No!  Living simple and light… that’s the plan!  So, while being a very cool boat, this lady was just too large for us.

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Our second boat was the dark horse of the group.  We had no expectations or previous experience with Fortunas, and this little Island Spirit had a long list of positives.  We especially loved the spacious and open cockpit, as well as a comparatively wide beam for it’s length.  Being 35′ long and 22′ wide, this chunker is almost a square.  While maybe not “the boat,” this was our favorite of the day.  The only point that made us skittish about the boat was the unconventional aspect of having hybrid engines instead of diesels.  This boat is basically a Prius made for water.  Not sure how we’d fix these in remote places, but we would like to research this a little further before we check this as a positive or negative.

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Steve’s last boat was a Jeantot Marine Privilege 39.  She was a little older than we were looking for, when it was customary to have galley down.  We really are looking for a galley up model, though I did like the foredeck layout of the boat.  Felt like a solid craft though.

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Bloody hot.  Got in the car after our time with Steve to 101°F and almost sizzled on the leather seats of the car.  For all the griping we hear about the heat and humidity though, it doesn’t hold a candle to the Cartagena oppression.  We felt like spring chickens even in the sun here comparatively!

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Our last adventure of the day was a quick drive up  to Fort Pierce to see an Fountaine Pajot Athena 38.  She was on the hard, with an interesting superstructure davit built off the back of the boat.  Though the salon is a bit more snug than others, I really like the layout of the boat.  Good size, fairly well equipped, but a touch older than we’d like.

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Drove back to Fort Lauderdale.  Feels like we’ve been living in the car.  But it has A/C in south Florida summer, so that’s just fine!  Stopped at Whole Foods.  Holy crap!  Where has that been all my life!  It’s like we’ve been living on a different continent for seven years.  Seven years…. shit.

The search continues tomorrow.