Some Travel Possibilities

My lovely wife and I are currently thinking of not replacing the van but getting a larger sailboat instead. Not that we want a huge sailboat, just one somewhat larger than our Oday 19. A 19 foot boat is a tad small for two adults and a dog. Especially since one of those adults, me, is about the size of two normal adults.

Currently we are thinking of picking up a boat somewhere in New England. Boats in the Northeast spend more time out of the water than in it. As long as they were winterized properly, they get a lot less wear than a southern boat.

I plan to single hand the boat down to Florida in the fall. Sometime before Christmas I'd find a safe place to keep the boat and fly home. After the holidays, my lovely wife, the sailor dog, and myself would drive back south. We'd sail southern waters until sometime in the spring. At that point we'd have the boat hauled out and stored for the summer.

There are advantages to not towing a boat. Our economy car uses about a third the fuel a tow vehicle would. It's a heck of a lot easier to drive and park too. In fact, we could decided at some point not to drive at all, but take a plane, bus or train instead. After seeing how crazy the highways were last winter, that's a tempting option.

There are different variations of this basic theme, but that's the general idea. While we'd have the expense of storing a boat, we would not be maintaining a large tow vehicle. Everything has trade offs. I would not mind selling off some of my other toys to make this happen. (Don't tell my lovely wife that.)

-Sixbears