What a great few days we have been having. We are here in St. Petersburg, FL. and have just completed the first portion of our Fast Track to Cruising course. Both Rebecca and I now have passed our Basic Keelboat course and have US Sailing certification (whatever that means). It was a great course though and culminated with us and our two other classmates taking our 26' boat out for a "test" sail, sans instructor. Although the wind was scarce…
It was several months ago that we signed on for Offshore Sailing's "Fast Track to Cruising" course. As the course approached and we reviewed (and studied) the course material we grew skeptical of how all of it could be covered in just 8 days. Here we are now though sitting in the Tampa Bay airport on our way home 1 day after successfully captaining/crewing a 49 foot sailing yacht on an overnight voyage! Rebecca and I along with one other…
With our commitment to go cruising solidified we have begun sharing our plans with close friends and family members. Tomorrow we will be meeting with our real estate agent to discuss placing our house on the market. The countdown timer on my computer shows only 293 days remaining. We are both confident that this year will fly by!
If we had all the answers today it wouldn't be such an adventure, would it? Yes, mixed emotions. Not from us of course, as we are completely stoked about our plans, but from the close friends and family members who we have had the chance to share our news with. We know that the people closest to us are (or will be) happy for us. We also understand though that some people have a difficult time understanding why we would…
Although we have only just listed our house for sale we have had several showings to prospective buyers, and others already scheduled. It's great that we are having this much interest. Keeping the place spotless does involve a fair amount of work though! I just keep reminding myself that all of the scrubbing and cleaning we are doing will get us primed for keeping our new boat "shipshape" and looking pretty.
We are alternating our time between reading (dreaming?) of available boats on the web and in magazines, and actual research. Check out the variety of topics in our latest book order! This is much easier reading:)