Hi friends!!
Long time no chat- we spent the rest of July killing time docked in Florida waiting for our scheduled haul out. Since the last update went out I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with some technical difficulties…
Long story short, 12 of our past blog posts lost their photos. It was my fault, something about how I was storing my files, so I went back and replaced as many as I could, but some are still missing. So, if you ever read one of our old posts and think “man I wish she would have included a picture of that”, please know that I probably did. It won’t happen again though I swear!!
Anyway, my birthday was on the 16th, so Ray drove us to Orlando for the night! We stayed at the Grand Bohemian, which is a cute, artsy hotel downtown. We had cocktails and charcuterie for happy hour before a nice steak dinner to celebrate (and dessert of course!).
It was a birthday full of love- thank you for all your kind messages! ❤️ We had breakfast at the hotel the next morning before driving back to Sabado. ⛵️
We spent the following weeks finishing up the list of tasks we wanted to tackle while we were still in the water. We arranged for a new cushion for the table in the saloon, lounge chairs for the top deck, and a new sail bag to be made by a local upholstery company, got our air conditioning units flushed, and did lots and lots of cleaning.
I went through an entire bottle of stainless polish, and wiped down EVERY interior surface with Simple Green. I’m talking about the walls, the ceiling, inside of cabinets, shelves- you name it, I’ve cleaned it. The boat is mold free and ready to be stored on the hard.
We hauled out this past Tuesday, which was a stressful endeavor. We woke up early that morning and gave the floors one last sweep, the countertops one last wipe, and Ray took one last nap (he’s recovering from being sick, and wasn’t feeling 100% yet). We left our slip and moved onto the fuel dock to top off our tanks before heading over to the travel lift.
Ray did an excellent job maneuvering the boat, despite battling a bit of wind. We nearly hit a cement corner at one point, but I was able to get a fender in place just in time so no harm was done! 4 guys helped us handle lines and get the straps in place, then up she went!
It’s very nerve racking watching your house being pulled out of the water by two big straps…
Luckily, nothing went wrong. The boatyard guys moved Sabado off to the side and power washed the bottom. The amount of barnacles that grew on her while we were docked is insane! I’ve never seen the boat this dirty.
That evening we checked into our Airbnb- a little house about 20mins from Sabado. We ordered some takeout and watched a movie.
We’ve driven to the boatyard every morning since hauling out. We do a couple tasks a day until it gets too hot to continue. So far we’ve taken the jib down, strapped down the mainsail, stored the outside cushions, set up a dehumidifier in the saloon, and cleaned out the fridges.
It’s been very strange living like this… we’re both feeling a bit anxious about the boat being left unattended for so long, and feeling “stuck” having spent so much time in Florida. Our plan is to go visit my family in Texas as soon as we can get a negative COVID test. We haven’t seen them since November, so hopefully that will get our spirits up!
I’ve been filming our whole haul out process, so we should have a new YouTube video up on our channel eventually! I’m thinking about holding off and including some footage from our land trips though… so stay tuned!
I hope you had a great week. ❤️