Tales of a Castaway

Last weekend, our town hosted the official ribbon-cutting and grand opening of its marina, which is right in the middle of town, by a park.  It's also, conveniently, a five minute cruise up the bayou from our dock.  Same bayou.  So that was thoughtful of them.  Since Rick doesn't work during the day, most days, he had the opportunity to bring the boat up-bayou for the ceremony.  The result is a lot of pictures of our little dancy butt boat in the media, including a nice one with the (current) mayor: Photo bombing the mayor Cheesing for the ribbon cutting The bigger boat behind us gets much less attention   Pretty girl The whole marina is really nice, although it is a feat to get up on the deck from the low floating docks.  We have a step stool on board (it's blue, and you can barely see it in that last picture above) so that helps. That event was on Friday, and was, sadly, our only boat time on Friday.  Usually we (at least...

One of my biggest complaints - one of my only complaints - about my pretty boat has been the stereo.  While a decent brand (Sony, I think), and while it works fine, it is old.  It didn't have an aux jack.  And there wasn't a 12v outlet near enough for me to get one of those broadcasty thingees so I could broadcast my music  through the sound system.  I have a few portable bluetooth speakers but the sound system and speakers on the boat are on point and I hate to override those with crappy little speakers.  The only option is this - time to buy a new stereo. So I did!  My kid installed it for me last night.  In a few short days (when I'm not at work), there will, FINALLY, be showtunes playing through the system. Or at least not random country.  Which is fine, don't get me wrong.  But we need a little diversity. In other news, a storm is threatening to come up through the gulf this week, but I'm not worried.  For one thing, I th...

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...