It's been 6 months since my last post, what have we been up to to?

Our update......
Back in May we sold our home in Massachusetts packed everything up, after some extensive down sizing and headed south via moving truck.  Once everything was moved into storage the house hunt began, SweetPea had already been moved to Barefoot Resort in SC months in advance so we were home.  While some of our boating friends thought we would become true full time cruisers we wanted to put the money from the sale of our home into something a bit more grounded.
We purchased a house in Little River SC in September and after some updating we moved in a month later.

A couple weeks after moving our stuff in, we packed up the Jeep and headed to Austin Tx to visit our daughter, who moved there after we sold the house in Massachusetts.  It was a bit of a loop we spent time in Memphis, Nashville before hitting Austin for a week, on the way back to SC we hit New Orleans for a few days.  While on this road trip we decided that we wanted to feather our nest in SC for the winter, so these snowbirds have gone as far south as they are going this year.
So what's up for us as far as SweetPea and cruising?  All we know for sure is the boat needs to come out of the water before June for an insurance survey and we will have the bottom done and Jim needs to replace at least one of the holding tanks, I am sure other things will come up but for now SweetPea is still at Barefoot and time will tell where we will head from there.  In the meantime Jim has a deck to build and golfing skills to improve.
For those of you who have us on your email contact list our email address has changed you can find it on AGLCA membership list or leave a comment and I will send it to you.  Its always nice to hear what everyone is up to be it by land or sea.
Merry Christmas everyone wherever you find yourself this year and all the best for a happy, healthy and safe New Year!

Finally home back aboard SweetPea!

The last week in Massachusetts, has been a busy one, actually the last 2 months have been busy but the great push hit us the sunday before last.  On my last post I had mentioned we found a home for our 12 year old cockerpoo Barkley well it was not the best fit (3 children was more than he could handle).  He is now in NH and what a lucky dog,  he's on a farm with another older dog, 7 cats, chickens and lots of room to run.  I doubt he will be bored there, and his new family have done cocker rescue and are happy to have a cocker in the home again.

We managed to get our house packed and loaded the night before the closing, quite a task to get a 1800sq ft house packed on a 17ft box truck.  Some major down sizing but we did it.  We closed at 4pm on a Tuesday Jim drove the truck and Ashley and I drove the Escape aptly named, as we headed south spending what was left of Tuesday in NJ together before splitting up into different directions.

  
Jims mission, to get the truck to Myrtle Beach and unload it into storage.  Ashley and I drove to Austin Tx nearly a 2000 mile trek, we arrived there 3 days later.  Ashley safely delivered into the arms of her boyfriend, I spent a couple days and then flew back to Jim aboard SweetPea in SC.

  Alot of changes in a short period of time for this family and we are now spread all over.

SO, there it is, mission complete, at least that part of it.  Now aboard the boat after nearly a year away, the cleaning and re organizing begins again.  At this point we are unsure as to what our plans are for boating this summer,  we will more than likely, stay in the Carolinas have some work done on the boat (maintenance and updating) and begin our search for our land based home.  But in boating, plans can change at a moments notice.

Update
When Jim had met me at the airport he had rented a car for a week so we could tool around and get a better feel for the areas in which we thought we were most interested.  Well having a car was too good, since we sold our cars back in 2010.  So as Memorial Day weekend was upon us and the dealer ships had special pricing we bought a car!  Yes it is great to have wheels again.  We have seen more of The Myrtle Beach area in a week than we have in all our past visits put together.

Finally off to Myrtle Beach?

Yesterday Jim left Ma.heading back to SweetPea, and once again I am left behind.  As luck would have it 2 days before we were planning our trip back to the boat our realtor said an offer was coming in on the house and asked us to stay for a few more days.  On Friday the house went under contract, on Saturday Jim rented a car and Sunday he was gone, he should be back aboard by noon today.
He is on a mission, clean and air out the boat and move it to another slip, he will be back here again by Sunday.
The house was on the market for exactly 3 weeks and we now have just over 3 weeks to pack it all up!
So what now?  We still are not sure where we want to land NC, SC, GA or somewhere else?  Until then SweetPea will be our home, not a bad thing.
Our daughter Ashley is excited to be moving to Austin Texas and begin a new chapter in her life.  She may leave earlier than us once she works out her 2 week notice with her employers.
The times they are a changin, what do we do about an address for mail?  What do we do with all our stuff?  I guess it all goes into storage for now more thinning out needs to happen first, what to sell what to keep!  What about the dog?  Jim fears he will become shark food, I fear Jim will become shark food!
By the time all the dust settles we will be full time live aboards and no longer dirt dwellers?  I cannot believe that it has been almost a year since I have been on SweetPea more than a day or 2, time sure flys.
Times a tickin, stay tuned...........

Its with mixed emotions....

Yes, we are still in Massachusetts, YES the house is NOW on the market and SweetPea is still in South Carolina, so what's happening with us?
To begin I guess to best understand is to state the fact that Jim and I are creatures of great extremes.  When we purchased SweetPea we moved aboard and were all in, less than a year before we did not even know such a purchase would take place.  We had owned a 17 foot bass boat for 20 years and thought of purchasing something larger but at that time we were thinking 20 foot maybe.  The year before we bought a camper which we moved to a lake in RI to spend summers fishing and have a summer getaway.  It was a plan, a good plan, but little did I know what was to come next.  About a month after we closed up the camper for the winter Jim told me about the boating blogs he had been reading and about this boat trip you could make that was 6000 miles ( the great American loop).  Jim is the big dreamer, me, not so much, I rolled my eyes and tried to make it look like I wasn't really interested but wow how cool was that!  I started to read the blogs and was really fascinated, it had all my favorite things boats, water, travel and the stories were amazing, the pictures incredible.  Could we really do this?  Well 6 months later we were looking at our next boat and it was a bit larger than the 20 foot fishing (lake boat).  It started out 32-34 feet, actually we were thinking maybe a Mainship, hey it doesn't cost to look?  Right?  As the dream grew so did the boat, 34' to 40, we travel down to Myrtle beach to look at some boats and ended up at the AGLCA rendezvous.  OK, I was sold ! after actually talking to these people who were doing and " living the life", 2 months later we had found and purchased our new to us boat that had grown once again to 44 feet and it was located only 20 mins from our home.  We moved aboard and visited our home a few times over the summer and that fall 2010 we dropped our lines and headed south!  "Holy crap I think we have more balls than brains"  this is what Jim said as we were heading out of the safety of our harbor with not much more than 15 hours of experience with a boat of this size..........
We returned 18 months later back to our home port to sell the house, that was May 30th 2012 after 8800 miles of boat travel.  It's all here on the blog if you want to read about it.

Back to present day,
The house went on the market 2weeks ago and I haven't been back aboard Sweetpea since the day Jim left heading to South Carolina in September 2012.

Selling the house is more emotional than I had anticipated,  I love this house and we have spent 10 of the 12 years we have owned it, updating, to get just the way we wanted, only to sell it.  If I could move it I would, but its not a boat.
Tomorrow we have an OPEN HOUSE, and tonight we pick up our daughter (SweetPea) who has found herself a new love in Austin Texas where she is planning to move.  So it's one day at a time for  all of us. We do have to get back to South Carolina in the next few days (week) to move the boat to a different marina, that is set in stone, where?  We have not decided yet.

Heading South?

We are still at home in Massachusetts but we plan to return to Myrtle Beach sometime the first week of April.  Once we clean up restock etc. we will head south to Port Royal SC more on that later.......

Happy Thanksgiving from Massachusetts

 Jim arrived back in Ma. from Myrtle Beach Sunday leaving SweetPea under the watchful eyes of some fellow loopers and an attentive dock master.  We will remain home through the holiday's and hope to return back to SC at the end of the year or the beginning of next..  It will be a bit of a challenge sharing 1 car among 3 people but then again, we have spent the last 2 years without any car at all!

This year we are spending the holiday's at our home in Massachusetts for the first time in 2 years. Well actually, we will be spending Thanksgiving with my sister and brother-in law at their home in Barrington RI, along with their big Portuguese - Italian family, always a fun and lively group.

Friday we will celebrate Thanksgiving a second time at our BFF Pats home for what she calls her mini Thanksgiving.

Also, since we are home in the next few days I will have the chance to deck the halls which will be fun and its always nice having a large fully equipped  kitchen for cooking and baking.  It is not nice however to be donning coats, sweaters etc. but hopefully this will be the last winter we will be doing this, at least the heavy wool coats.

While Jim was in MB, SC he rented a car on the weekends to check out the area a bit better to figure out where in the area we may want to purchase our new home, he found a couple of areas he liked but we have decided to extend our search a little further south to include the Beaufort - Port Royal and Hilton Head area as well.  So our options are still open right now, time will tell.  I guess even though we are living on land at the moment, we will maintain our boat schedule which means " our plans are written in the sand."

To our looping friends ........

I am following your blogs, keep them coming, it's nice reliving the loop through you, though many of you will be completing it in the next few months.  We hope to see you at some point on the east coast as you pass by.

To our looped friends.......

Whether your still on your boats or on land we know we will see some of you in the up coming months have fun and enjoy, we wish we were there with you, especially those of you in the Keys and the Bahamas!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

Thanksgiving with loopers 2011 in Alabama

Baby its cold outside!

Jim is in SC with SweetPea and I am STILL in Massachusetts its 32degrees here this morning, Dam its cold!  In Myrtle Beach the low temps there will be our high for the day.  ARGGG!  I hope to be heading down that way in the next week or so. 

We need a new dinghy!  When Jim left Ma. he left without our dinghy I was not happy about him being without a dink especially since he had planned to anchor out along the way, but there just was not enough time to address the problem, so we are now looking into some different options.  We have had SweetPea for 2 1/2 years and have now been through 2 dinks, I guess we are not meant to own an inflatable so our options are......

We have been looking at something or anything that does not deflate so far we are very interested in a bullfrog which looks like a RIB but is a hard surfaced but foam based, the problem we are having with this is the cost of shipping it from the west coast.  There are other manufacturers of this type of boat but they are either lower quality and not UV protected or outrageously expensive or both.  Then there is a Boston Whaler, which we have dreamed of but, it will mean changing our davit system which is another added expense plus we are limited to size and weight of course.  So the search is on for an 11 foot Whaler without a console not an easy task I will add.  Yes there are other options, but these are the 2 we are looking into now.  After all, when you are a long term cruiser your dink IS the family car.  If you or someone you know has an 11 foot Boston Whaler and would like to sell it let us know.  FYI it needs to be an older model as the newer ones are much heavier.  And a 9 footer is too small for us and a 13 footer is too big for SweetPea.

Thank You to Terry and Charlene for lending a hand with SweetPea in getting her to SC.  We hope you enjoyed the 1000 mile trip Jim could not of done it by himself, we hope to see you again.

Make sure you VOTE today and when you are standing in line remember you live in the greatest country on earth!  But also remember that their are many people who because of Sandy are homeless and living without electricity and heat with the temperatures dropping and more wind and rain on its way. 
Consider giving a donation or blood to the Red Cross @ http://www.redcross.org/charitable-donations