Our ticket to ride is official

 

Woot! It’s a day of celebration at Port Sundown. We made our final boat payment! Sundown is all ours. Well actually, we’ve had Sundown’s title since we bought her. We took out a loan against one of our 401k retirement accounts and paid for her in full, so the monthly payments with interest we’ve been making have been to ourselves. Still, it feels great knowing we’re finished paying off that loan, because now we have that much more money each month to invest in refurbishing Sundown and getting her ready for our cruising adventure. Our ticket to ride–or sail–feels that much more real. Yea!

 

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Lessons learned from being stranded

Late last night, I posted this on Facebook:

Wow! Exciting night, but not what I planned. Dark, cold solitude. An angel disguised as a CSU freshman boy. A tow truck that never showed up. A son who did. Another tow truck that finally showed up. Home now. Just ate. Going to sleep.

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Prairie dogs and rabbits and snakes, oh my!

Snakes - a danger of boating?

If you haven’t read our blogs from the beginning, then you probably don’t know our beautiful, new-to-us 1982 Hans Christian 33t, Sundown, was hauled from the Great Lake Superior to Fort Collins, Colorado, where she’s up on jack stands in the middle of a prairie dog field.

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Lessons from a sailor laid to rest

Anne Chaisson, January 6, 1953-July 31, 2011

Unfortunately, I attended the memorial service of a sweet friend and colleague this afternoon who died unexpectedly last Sunday at the young age of 58–only 10 years older than myself. She was a social worker at our county’s health department and devoted to serving others.

My friend grew up in Maryland and lived much of her early life either in or on the water. She was a competitive swimmer for her local YMCA and, as her obituary states, “…was a remarkably daring and graceful diver…Her love of the water brought her to work as the director of swimming and waterfront activities and safety at YMCA Camp Tockwogh on the Chesapeake.” At today’s service, her brother said she also was in charge of the girls sailing camp.

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