Update!

The eclipse on 8-21-2017 in South Carolina, USA.
Photo copyright Jared Pechan.

Hi to all who are following along. We are updating quick updates on Facebook and Instagram, due to wifi issues. You can find our Facebook account here and our Instagram here.

The quick details: Presently, we are in Georgia on the Florida border. We are waiting for a couple of documents to be overnighted to us before we drive to Miami, where we will board the plane to our new home.
We fly out to move aboard on Tuesday and can't wait! Until then, we are still enjoying the road trip and seeing all we can see. We had a huge scare with Sunshine's paperwork, which needs a blog post dedicated to just that. Hopefully, we can spare someone else the stress by reading what we went through.

So, apologies for lack of details, but I wanted to update everyone. All is well and we are moving forward! =)
~Stef

Buying a Boat Overseas Part 1

Hold on! Things are about to get crazy!

photo from 2012

Originally, when we started our boat shopping mission, we figured we would buy in Croatia. There is a rather large charter industry there and lots of boats for sale. The prices were attractive as well. We even went as far as having a friend who happens to live there take a look at boats for us (thank you so much, Jack!).  Lots of boats, good prices, and who wouldn't want to start out in the Med?

As how stories usually go, this was all too good to be true. Yes, the prices are low, but it is because the commission for the broker is not included. When you figure that cost into it, the prices are comparable with everywhere else. On top of that, the seller requires a deposit be sent directly to them, instead of using an escrow account. THEN, they will only release the boat AFTER the charter season, which is usually around November. For us, that would mean sending an unsecured deposit (hoping the seller didn't run off with the money), wait around for November to conduct the sea trial, haul-out, survey, and then finally take ownership. Wintering in the Med, potentially spending more money down the line, and putting our adventure on hold at the same time? No bueno. Thus, our search for the boat shifted down to the Caribbean, where our broker also happens to live. We have to pause for a sec and give props to him, for his patience with us during this process. He was super supportive of our goal to start in the Med, but also cautioned us against the concerns mentioned above (much love to you, Clive, for putting up with us).

So, we diligently searched online for our new home. We bookmarked a few, kept an eye on the prices, and analyzed the data. We picked out our top three and waited. Not that we didn't want to buy right away, but we had to get the house sold first. Let me tell you, that itself was a whole other process...

 Keeping the house spotless with three kids, a dog, and two cats? This girl was going to lose her damn mind. On top of finishing up a school year with a wiley class of 5th graders with summer on their brains, and packing up my classroom, things were just a teeny bit stressful.
**disclaimer: I love my job and my students, but ask any teacher how they are feeling during the final month of school and you will get an eye roll followed by an earful! ;)

Thankfully, we didn't have to deal with it for long, as we went into escrow on the house days before school let out (insert a huge gigantic sigh of relief here) and it meant we could FINALLY make an offer on a boat! Jared and I made a list to compare our top three. We looked at the condition (best we could based on the photos), inventory list, hours on the engines and generator, system upgrades needed, etc. After making our decision, we spoke with Clive and set things in motion. We offered, received a counter, countered-back, and finally arrived at a number all parties were happy with.

So, at the time of this writing, we have sent our deposit, scheduled the survey/haul-out/sea trial date and are researching plane itineraries.  We are hoping to charter a boat for the duration of our stay in the BVI instead of staying at a hotel, so we can take the kids exploring (hopefully on our exact boat, if we can swing it) and provide a little taste of the cruising life for the kids.

After the survey, we will fly home, pack/ship all of our stuff to Tortola (where our boat is located), and then slowly make our way to Florida, where we will then fly out to move aboard. Our stuff will take about a month to arrive anyway, so we are using up that time by driving across the country on an epic road trip! It will be a lot of fun and we will get to see some of our homeland that we haven't before. All in all, a good way to kick off this traveling adventure.

The next post will update on how things went with the survey, introduce you to our new home, and talk about the intricacies of shipping stuff to an international destination.

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!