Spring Plans

It’s nice to be healing well enough to be off pain meds. There’s some discomfort but nothing that can’t be ignored. Frankly, it’s nice to be able to think more clearly. Those pain meds did the job, but they certainly fogged my brain.

So the question is, what are we going to do next winter? I’m not going to spend it snowed it again. Of course I have to get and stay healthy to make that happen. Believe me, avoiding cold and shoveling is plenty of incentive.

My lovely wife and I talked over our options. With out budget we could probably afford either a tow vehicle for the Oday 19 or to purchase a bigger boat. Both of those items can be had fairly cheaply. I don’t care if the vehicle is 20 years old, as long as the power train and brakes are good. As for used boats, there are a lot of bargains.

One of the reasons there are so many bargains are that it costs money to upkeep a boat. A lot of money can be saved if you do your own work, but some things you just have to pay for. Haul outs are a big one. At some point a boat yard needs to remove the boat from the water. It could be for a short while to redo the bottom paint or it could be put up on blocks for the season. A boat on the hard will cost money every month. Ironically, it’s often cheaper to keep it sailing rather than parked.

While we could afford a boat and normal upkeep, boat yard fees could really stretch the budget. We should be in a better financial position in a year or two. Getting a larger boat would make more sense at that point.

So the idea is that we could tow the Oday 19 south. The Oday is small, but we could easily live on it for a few weeks. We could do a mix of boating and camping. There are a lot of coastal areas we’d love to get back to. Then there are areas we’d never been that look interesting, like Florida’s St. John river.

One thing we probably should not do with our little boat is cross over to the Bahamas. While it’s possible to do so, it wouldn’t be very comfortable. That will have to wait until we can get that larger boat.

Now we’ve got the bare bones of a plan to work towards. There’s a lot that has to happen between now and next winter, but it give us something to shoot for.

-Sixbears