Tales of a Castaway

We have spent the norm amount of time around the Castaway for the last few weeks. Which is to say, we have been there at least once a day (for the Captain) and I have been over at least five days a week.  This is the beauty of having the boat docked five minutes from home.  And having the boat stocked with decent red wine. During the last few weeks, the following happened: Last weekend, we stayed on board on Friday night.  It was a fun, laid-back evening.  Drinks on the deck (technically, I brought a daiquiri on board after work and sat on the forward deck for hours and hours, knitting and drinking and listening to an audio book.  Because I am a nerd.  But, I am a nerd that owns a boat.) and then dinner and then we hunkered down for television before we passed out cold in the beds. Daiquiris on the fore deck toes. In the morning on Saturday, Rick suggested we enjoy our coffee while we rode up and down the bayou.  Great idea, so we did that...

On Friday, the First Mate had an overnight sleep over party to attend.  That left the captain and I free of responsibilities.  We had planned on spending Saturday doing boat work, anyway, and I set about cleaning some of the carpets onboard. Side note:  to hell with anyone who puts carpet in a boat. Ahem. Anyway, the captain joined me on board around 5:15 pm and we decided, spontaneously, that we would take her for an overnight cruise.  We got through the first bridge into alligator territory before we had a red wine spill (note:  red wine on white fiberglass constitutes an emergency.  Immediate deck swabbing had to happen, and did happen, by the admiral , no less, since the captain was driving.) We got that all situated and we continued our trip, out into the lake, where we had to wait a minute for the train bridge.  This ended up with us navigating the end of our trip in the dark, which was awesome.  Our nav lights work great. ...

Last Friday, we spent another night on board.  We also took her for a little spin up and down the bayou where she is slipped, since the First Mate had yet to be onboard while she was underway.  He liked it.  He got to drive. Back at the dock, Jessica and Steven and Stella (our people neighbors, and their foster bulldog) and Ben (who's nine) came onboard to hang out for a while.  Much laughing and drinking ensued and it was a good time.  We slept great that night. Buzzy humans settling in for the night. We woke up to tornado watches on Saturday and decided to go onshore so we could avoid a "wet ass," as the captain called it.  Went to Waffle House and watched the skies swirl right over where she is docked.  She was fine, though it was hard to get to her because of downed trees and flooding in the streets nearby. We finally bought some of the things we have been needing for her.  We bought some dock fenders, the kind you put on the piling...

Weekend one is in the bag.  Since we are also in a band, we had two gigs this weekend but that didn't stop us from being onboard as much as possible.  We had to move her from her previous marina to our slip, about a 30 mile trip, and the weather was not in our favor, so that was the adventure of the day on Friday.  Since I had to work until noon, the Captain solo'ed her over from Mandeville to Slidell, where he picked me (and my dad) up for the ride up the bayou to our slip.  I knew he was getting close to the Hwy 11 bridge so I took that route home from work.  Much to my delight and surprise, I was stopped for the drawbridge...  for my own boat.  Nice to see her from this angle, though. She was hauling ass. In Slidell, I took this picture of her coming in to the dock.  Isn't she beautiful? Oh, hi, gorgeous. After we got her situated at home, all plugged in, etc., we went and ate supper and fetched up the Captain's car from Mandeville...

We closed on the purchase of m/v Castaway on Tuesday afternoon.  This followed six abhorrent weeks of trying to get a survey, get insurance, do this, do that blah blah blah that was among the worst six weeks of my life. During the time we were under contract, the seller gave us permission to crawl all over her and fool with whatever we wanted, pretty much.  We cleaned a lot (not enough) and discovered all of the broken things.  We found immediately that we needed to replace the gaskets around the windows, which we haven't done yet.  Then we found out that the davit for the dinghy doesn't work, the anchor windlass didn't work, the macerator pump didn't work and our engines wouldn't start. Fixed all of that except the dingy.  Mostly, stuff was just frozen up for having not been used in forever and a day.  We had a bunch of snap holes (I don't even know why) all over the fore deck and we put some crap in those, and the leaks seemed to have stopped.  T...

On April 3, 2018, we officially purchased a 1990 Chris Craft Catalina 372.  This vessel is an aft-cabin motor yacht, primarily to be used as a floating condo but we do intend to do some traveling on her as well. Our journey to find her started five years ago as an idea for "the future."  About a year ago, we started half-assed looking to find a houseboat.  We decided, after looking at a number of houseboats, that we would be too constrained by a houseboat and its inability to go out into blue water.  We live in South Louisiana and have easy and local access to the Mississippi Sound, including the fun-ish islands of Cat, Ship, etc. and we would like to be able to weekend out there occasionally. We called a listed broker about a Viking something-or-another about six weeks ago.  The broker said, "that is a project boat, but we have this Chris Craft you should see."  We knew she was the right boat for us the minute we saw her.  She was retrofitted with...