Well...I'm still here.
The summer was great. I finished the painting on the cabin cruiser enough to take it to the lake a few weekends. I left it in the water from about the middle of May till about the middle of June. Had a couple more weekends in July. I spun the hub on the prop when I hit a sandbar July 4th and currently have my spare prop on it. I need to get another larger prop soon.
I have had a lot going on this summer. I had the ablation and it didn't work. I spent the summer in and out of A-fib and A-flutter. Went back in and had another surgery Sept 28th that seems to be working so far. Hopefully this has me fixed.
Business is good. Things have really picked up this summer and I've had to hire a new crew. That makes 4 crews I have going now...not too shabby in this economy if I do say so myself. I am also picking up new work and have my sights set on another govt agency when I get this one settled in.
This has turned into a post more about my life than about boating, so I think I will stop it here. I will have more to write soon.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
A little progress
Well, I painted on the boat for a half a day Saturday and again a little on Monday evening. I have about half of it painted.
Sunday I went fishing with my friend Earl at West Point Lake. We took his boat out to a couple of our fishing holes and finally found some crappie by the end of the day. We caught about 15-17 in all. Not a real good day for crappie but we had fun anyway.
I'm going to take some pictures of the progress of the boat painting for this blog. It needs some pics to liven it up. I'm changing the side stripe from blue to black with a red stripe and the top to a whiter white. It's sorta light grey now. I think it will look good when I am finished. Then I will need to move to the inside and clean, unpack and straighten everything out and reorganize it for this coming season.
If I can pick up a little more work between now and this summer, I might move the boat to Lake Lanier above Atlanta and move onto and work from the boat for a couple of months. It will give me some live aboard practice. I can start looking for sail boats for sale too.
I really need to sit down and draw a line in the sand for buying a sailboat and cruising for a couple of years. That will be the first step in turning my dream into a reality.
Right now it's just all talk and ideas.
Sunday I went fishing with my friend Earl at West Point Lake. We took his boat out to a couple of our fishing holes and finally found some crappie by the end of the day. We caught about 15-17 in all. Not a real good day for crappie but we had fun anyway.
I'm going to take some pictures of the progress of the boat painting for this blog. It needs some pics to liven it up. I'm changing the side stripe from blue to black with a red stripe and the top to a whiter white. It's sorta light grey now. I think it will look good when I am finished. Then I will need to move to the inside and clean, unpack and straighten everything out and reorganize it for this coming season.
If I can pick up a little more work between now and this summer, I might move the boat to Lake Lanier above Atlanta and move onto and work from the boat for a couple of months. It will give me some live aboard practice. I can start looking for sail boats for sale too.
I really need to sit down and draw a line in the sand for buying a sailboat and cruising for a couple of years. That will be the first step in turning my dream into a reality.
Right now it's just all talk and ideas.
Dependancy
Well…I’m sitting here waiting on my Internet connection to come back up. In the mean time, I’m typing this on my word processor to transfer to this blog when it comes back on.
It’s amazing how dependant we have all come to be on things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. I mean that I am feeling genuine frustration and anxiety because my net server is down. What does it really matter? Have we come to be a society that has to have instant gratification constantly? The I want it, and I want it now! type of mentality. At least... I do.... when I want my Internet up.
Living on a boat will do me good in this sense. Maybe I can slow down and smell the roses as they say. Surely the stress that is transferred to my body over such matters is hurting me to some extent. Reducing stress will be a main goal in this grand experiment of mine. I will just have to learn to live without some things, or at least to cut back on them to a reasonable level.
It’s 6:00 am on a Saturday morning and I’ve been up for over an hour now. I don’t sleep well here lately. I find myself getting up during the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep. I did have a bad sinus infection a couple of weeks ago that messed up my sleeping pattern. Maybe I just haven’t gotten back into my normal rhythm yet.
On the bright side…it’s supposed to be a nice warm weekend. I think I am going to get some paint today to paint the topside on my cabin cruiser. It’s needed it for a while. Last week was sunny and windy. I bet the sailboat guys were enjoying it. It made me wish that I already had mine.
I also find myself starting to get the fever and wanting to go fishing and boating. Spring is coming and I can feel it. A friend of mine (Dana) and I are going to take the cruiser out one day next week and do an overnight fishing trip. I’ll have to buy a Mr. Buddy heater to take with us because the temps are sill going down into the low 30’s at night and I’m going today to get a new anchor with line and chain to replace the one that my son lost last summer. This one will be tied to something on the inside of the locker…. Lesson learned.
I have a few things to do to it to get it ready for this season. I want to put a large igloo cooler, with the cushion, to double for an extra cockpit seat and I think that I am going to get creative and pull the guts out of my pressurized alcohol stove and convert it with a cheap propane stove guts. I have to order a new set of bellows for my toilet and I think I am going to order a larger holding tank too. I really need to replace the house batteries this year and change over to LED lights in the cabin. I have a leaky riser that needs to be replaced. I need to get the levelers back in working order and I want to somehow mount an air conditioner so that I can use the boat in the middle of the summer when the temps are 100 with 95% humidity. The list never ends with a boat.
Oh well, time to get up and get started.
It’s amazing how dependant we have all come to be on things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. I mean that I am feeling genuine frustration and anxiety because my net server is down. What does it really matter? Have we come to be a society that has to have instant gratification constantly? The I want it, and I want it now! type of mentality. At least... I do.... when I want my Internet up.
Living on a boat will do me good in this sense. Maybe I can slow down and smell the roses as they say. Surely the stress that is transferred to my body over such matters is hurting me to some extent. Reducing stress will be a main goal in this grand experiment of mine. I will just have to learn to live without some things, or at least to cut back on them to a reasonable level.
It’s 6:00 am on a Saturday morning and I’ve been up for over an hour now. I don’t sleep well here lately. I find myself getting up during the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep. I did have a bad sinus infection a couple of weeks ago that messed up my sleeping pattern. Maybe I just haven’t gotten back into my normal rhythm yet.
On the bright side…it’s supposed to be a nice warm weekend. I think I am going to get some paint today to paint the topside on my cabin cruiser. It’s needed it for a while. Last week was sunny and windy. I bet the sailboat guys were enjoying it. It made me wish that I already had mine.
I also find myself starting to get the fever and wanting to go fishing and boating. Spring is coming and I can feel it. A friend of mine (Dana) and I are going to take the cruiser out one day next week and do an overnight fishing trip. I’ll have to buy a Mr. Buddy heater to take with us because the temps are sill going down into the low 30’s at night and I’m going today to get a new anchor with line and chain to replace the one that my son lost last summer. This one will be tied to something on the inside of the locker…. Lesson learned.
I have a few things to do to it to get it ready for this season. I want to put a large igloo cooler, with the cushion, to double for an extra cockpit seat and I think that I am going to get creative and pull the guts out of my pressurized alcohol stove and convert it with a cheap propane stove guts. I have to order a new set of bellows for my toilet and I think I am going to order a larger holding tank too. I really need to replace the house batteries this year and change over to LED lights in the cabin. I have a leaky riser that needs to be replaced. I need to get the levelers back in working order and I want to somehow mount an air conditioner so that I can use the boat in the middle of the summer when the temps are 100 with 95% humidity. The list never ends with a boat.
Oh well, time to get up and get started.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
There has to be something better.
There has to be something better.
Do you ever sit around thinking that there has to be something better than this?
I find myself feeling this way lately. Especially today. I mean...I have a fairly successful business. We are not overloaded with work but we have had enough that I haven't had to lay anyone off. We're not getting rich but the bills are being paid and we have food on the table. Almost everyone else I know that does renovation or remodeling work, has gone out of business or has nothing to do since the housing bubble burst and the recession started. I've had people call be lately looking for work that I used to work for in the past.... with business's far larger and more established than mine.
But lately I am starting to wonder if it's all worth it.
My largest account called today and told me to pull off all of their jobs just because the owner was having a bad day. Nothing I had done wrong, just his bad hair day. I have went out of my way, far and above expectations, to please this company in the past. With the market flooded with people looking for work, I guess they just think that they can treat people anyway they want too. Which I guess they basically can. Loyalty and remembering everything we did for them in the past, all the binds that we pulled them out of, all of the freebies we gave them, none of it means anything in this job market and that is a reality that I am having to face. He called back after he had calmed down (which I knew he would) and said to start back on everything and he even sent me a check for a materials draw, but it made me realize just how easily everything can be lost.
It should have freaked me out.
It didn't.
I'm getting to the point that I don't care about stuff. This new attitude of mine will make it easier to sell everything and move onto a boat....which is what I want to do anyway. A part of me is glad that he called back, but another part of me wishes he hadn't... to give me an excuse to start now. I know that I am not financially ready at this point, but everything I read about people that have done this, is that if you wait until you have enough money, you will never end up going. I don't want to get stuck in that rut. I'm smart enough and have enough skills to find work doing what ever or where ever. I'm planning on taking a year or two off, but I know that I will have to work if I want to continue cruising after that point.
I know that I can't go yet, I have to wait until I have my cardiac surgery, which is coming up in the next few weeks but once it is over and I have recouped a little, all bets are off. I do have a power cruiser that I could move onto now and wait untill I learn how to sail and purchase a sailing vessel. It would probably be easier that way instead of having to commute to the marina for sailing lessons weekly. I pick up on things pretty fast and I love reading and leaning from books but that will only take me so far. I can learn more in one days hands on experience than I can from a stack of books.
I'm looking at a few boats now on Yachtworld...maybe I should just dive in head first and buy one.
Do you ever sit around thinking that there has to be something better than this?
I find myself feeling this way lately. Especially today. I mean...I have a fairly successful business. We are not overloaded with work but we have had enough that I haven't had to lay anyone off. We're not getting rich but the bills are being paid and we have food on the table. Almost everyone else I know that does renovation or remodeling work, has gone out of business or has nothing to do since the housing bubble burst and the recession started. I've had people call be lately looking for work that I used to work for in the past.... with business's far larger and more established than mine.
But lately I am starting to wonder if it's all worth it.
My largest account called today and told me to pull off all of their jobs just because the owner was having a bad day. Nothing I had done wrong, just his bad hair day. I have went out of my way, far and above expectations, to please this company in the past. With the market flooded with people looking for work, I guess they just think that they can treat people anyway they want too. Which I guess they basically can. Loyalty and remembering everything we did for them in the past, all the binds that we pulled them out of, all of the freebies we gave them, none of it means anything in this job market and that is a reality that I am having to face. He called back after he had calmed down (which I knew he would) and said to start back on everything and he even sent me a check for a materials draw, but it made me realize just how easily everything can be lost.
It should have freaked me out.
It didn't.
I'm getting to the point that I don't care about stuff. This new attitude of mine will make it easier to sell everything and move onto a boat....which is what I want to do anyway. A part of me is glad that he called back, but another part of me wishes he hadn't... to give me an excuse to start now. I know that I am not financially ready at this point, but everything I read about people that have done this, is that if you wait until you have enough money, you will never end up going. I don't want to get stuck in that rut. I'm smart enough and have enough skills to find work doing what ever or where ever. I'm planning on taking a year or two off, but I know that I will have to work if I want to continue cruising after that point.
I know that I can't go yet, I have to wait until I have my cardiac surgery, which is coming up in the next few weeks but once it is over and I have recouped a little, all bets are off. I do have a power cruiser that I could move onto now and wait untill I learn how to sail and purchase a sailing vessel. It would probably be easier that way instead of having to commute to the marina for sailing lessons weekly. I pick up on things pretty fast and I love reading and leaning from books but that will only take me so far. I can learn more in one days hands on experience than I can from a stack of books.
I'm looking at a few boats now on Yachtworld...maybe I should just dive in head first and buy one.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Where do I start?
This is where I'm going to write about my love of boating....past, present, and future. I don't really know why i started this page. Maybe it's to get my ideas and my direction organized. Things always seem clearer when they are written down.
I would like to end up in a sailboat... cruising the Caribbean for a few years, in the near future. I will use this page to help me mark my progress towards this goal.
I've owned Jon boats, bass boats, ski boats, and a power cabin cruiser but I have never owned a sailboat before.
Right now I have a 16 1/2' Hydra sports bass boat with a 115 Mercury on it. It is small, easy to load and unload by myself,and it will haul butt. With me by myself, I can hit about 62 mph in it.
I also have a 28' Chaparral 278XL cabin cruiser. It sleeps 6, has a full galley, toilet and shower, hot water heater, and all the other goodies. I really like this boat but it gets expensive to fill up the 140 gallon fuel tank. the last time I filled it up gas was about $2.50 a gallon. That was about $350 a fill up. Gas at the marinas now is going about $3.00- $3.25 a gallon this year pushing a fill up to around $450. You might think that 140 gallons would last awhile , but it doesn't really. Don't get me wrong, at a typical cruising speed of 3000 rpms, it's turning a fairly quick 27 mph while it is burning about 8 gallons per hour. That comes out to about a little over 3 miles per gallon. That's the nautical equivalent of a Honda Accord for a boat of this size.
We carried the cruiser 300 miles down the Chattahoochee River and the inter coastal waterway to Panama City, Fl last year. I have a separate detailed blog for this trip with pictures. If you are interested, it is at http://downthehooch.blogspot.com
I like the power cruiser but the gas is expensive and to take an extended cruise of the islands for a couple of years, a person would have to be very well off financially. Unfortunately I'm not.
That is what got me started thinking about sailboats to begin with. I've read countless books, forums, and magazines on sailing and they have captured my imagination. I looked at a sailboat before I bought the cruiser. The guy selling the boat actually took me out on it for a few hours and it was great. It was an old fixxer upper and nothing really special but it was almost magical when he shut down the motor and lifted the sails and the boat began moving under the power of the wind alone. I have to tell you, I'm hooked. A sailboat is definitely in my future.
I would like to end up in a sailboat... cruising the Caribbean for a few years, in the near future. I will use this page to help me mark my progress towards this goal.
I've owned Jon boats, bass boats, ski boats, and a power cabin cruiser but I have never owned a sailboat before.
Right now I have a 16 1/2' Hydra sports bass boat with a 115 Mercury on it. It is small, easy to load and unload by myself,and it will haul butt. With me by myself, I can hit about 62 mph in it.
I also have a 28' Chaparral 278XL cabin cruiser. It sleeps 6, has a full galley, toilet and shower, hot water heater, and all the other goodies. I really like this boat but it gets expensive to fill up the 140 gallon fuel tank. the last time I filled it up gas was about $2.50 a gallon. That was about $350 a fill up. Gas at the marinas now is going about $3.00- $3.25 a gallon this year pushing a fill up to around $450. You might think that 140 gallons would last awhile , but it doesn't really. Don't get me wrong, at a typical cruising speed of 3000 rpms, it's turning a fairly quick 27 mph while it is burning about 8 gallons per hour. That comes out to about a little over 3 miles per gallon. That's the nautical equivalent of a Honda Accord for a boat of this size.
We carried the cruiser 300 miles down the Chattahoochee River and the inter coastal waterway to Panama City, Fl last year. I have a separate detailed blog for this trip with pictures. If you are interested, it is at http://downthehooch.blogspot.com
I like the power cruiser but the gas is expensive and to take an extended cruise of the islands for a couple of years, a person would have to be very well off financially. Unfortunately I'm not.
That is what got me started thinking about sailboats to begin with. I've read countless books, forums, and magazines on sailing and they have captured my imagination. I looked at a sailboat before I bought the cruiser. The guy selling the boat actually took me out on it for a few hours and it was great. It was an old fixxer upper and nothing really special but it was almost magical when he shut down the motor and lifted the sails and the boat began moving under the power of the wind alone. I have to tell you, I'm hooked. A sailboat is definitely in my future.
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