Courtesy Flags and Progress Update

A lot has happened since the last post. We ordered and received our courtesy flags for about 60 countries, officially put our house on the market, and have progressed a few steps toward purchasing our boat! We are perpetually exhausted, but know that it will be short-lived as we are seeing the light at the end of this tunnel.

Courtesy Flags: These are hoisted up next to the quarantine flag when coming into port. A sign of courtesy and respect, it is something that most sailing vessels follow. You don't necessarily need to purchase the flags, as you can sew your own. Being that I knew I would not want to sew so many flags, we ordered these from Amazonand called it a day. For about $40, we were set. There are other sites that have you purchase larger sized flags that are about $15 for EACH flag. That quickly adds up to hundreds of dollars! After researching, we realized that the flags we bought were just fine and many other sailors use them. Saving all that money made us very happy!
I know that in the future, I may need to break out those sewing skills if we decide to visit a country not already on our route, but we will cross that bridge when we arrive.  These photos show how they arrive in the package. I hand wrote the name of each country on the white border and then cut off the white strings. I will then add the grommets once I get a moment to actually do so. Shout-out to this blog for the inspiration.


The House: We are finally DONE with all of the construction, remodeling, painting (I am so tired of painting, my friends know to not even joke about it anymore), and all the other projects we had on our list. No sooner than the fresh sod was put down, we had our realtor over to take photos and list it on the market. This was around 8:30pm on a Sunday evening.  In less than 2 hours, it had over 200 views and the following day we had showings. Throughout this past week, we have had multiple showings, a huge broker tour (a few actually brought buyers to this), followed by the actual open house weekend. What a whirlwind!

Plans are written in the sand at low tide...

The Boat: We have had a few changes regarding our new floating home. After visiting the BVI and Florida to walk on all sorts of catamarans, we had settled on the Lagoon 440. We LOVE this boat and the space it has. Stepping aboard just felt like home. Well, after further research, we learned that the Lagoon 440 model has bulkhead issues, which means cracks (Jared starts talking about all the actual technical stuff and I just zone out) and tens of thousands of dollars in repairs. We had a friend, Jack, who lives in Croatia touring boats for us up and down the coastline and each of those boats had the bulkhead issues! Ugh! Talk about frustrating!

Another of our plans, to start sailing in The Med, has gone to bust. Why? It is now charter season over there and NO ONE is selling their boats until after the season. If they are listing it for sale, they require a large deposit and will "hold" the boat for you until after it has completed the charter season.
We liked the prices over there, but after hours upon hours of research, phone calls, and emails, it just is not the best decision to buy there for our situation. We need to move aboard in June or July, and don't really want to wait until October.
So, what are the plans now? We are off to the Caribbean to purchase our boat. We have two we are looking at right now. They are Leopard 46s and seem similar to the Lagoon in many ways, have more storage, and are an overall faster and sturdier boat. The major plus, is that the Leopards have not had any of the issues the Lagoons have had. Definitely don't want to be worrying your boat is going to come apart while out at sea!

The new route: For now, (refer to the previous quote above) we will set sail from the Caribbean up through the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Azores, and into The Med. After touring Europe until about December, we will cross the Atlantic once again to the Caribbean. From there, we will transit the Panama Canal and head off towards the Galapagos, South Pacific, New Zealand, Australia, Hawaii, and then back to Monterey.

So what are the next steps? First is to get this house sold and buy that boat! School ends on June 2nd, so we are free to leave as soon as then (and when the escrow closes). We have a couple of yard sales left (huge shout out to my awesome gal pal, Krista, for letting us store all of our stuff in her garage) and will donate whatever doesn't sell on the May 27th sale. Our house is pretty much empty of furniture, except for our beds, the kitchen table, and a couple of bookcases. We are selling those as soon as we are in escrow on the house. So, for now, it is to take it day by day and know that we are so close to achieving our goal!