OMG! Boat-less in Nashville

Our home for The Great Loop Adventure

Mother’s Day May 8, 2016 we head for Ft. Myers Beach and Sunny Days with an offer on the table for Sunny Days.  Eddie and Andrea Toomer saw her sitting on the hard in Ft. Myers and saw that she was for sell and gave us a call while we were in Nashville selling Next Chapter.  We were always of a mind to put both boats on the market and hope that one would sell and we could pay off bills and simplify.  2 dockages, insurance, places to keep up plus our dirt home had gotten complicated.  Well, we met with Eddie and Andrea pretty quickly when we got to Ft. Myers and all of the sudden we were boat-less.  Sunny Days was a remarkable boat—we owned her for 3 years, she guided us around the eastern United States and was a safe, reliable vehicle for the greatest adventure of our life.  She is in great hands with Andrea and Eddie.  Now what to do?  The last 3 years has been like going to college—a continuous high, with some fear of the unknown, challenges daily but with a roommate that is your lover and best friend.   I only wish this for everyone.

The dolphin followed us from Fort Myers to Englewood where Sunny Days will live

Captain Eddie with friend Mike got a checkout cruise from Fitz--
Andrea and Eddie are planning a Bahamas' trip for August and the Loop in 2017

  Now we have graduated from the College of the Great Loop, with no job and in need of direction for the next phase.  We hightailed it home so we could go to Knoxville and see niece Abby and her significant Miles Smith off for a year in Germany.  Miles has a terrific new job with Bosh (the refrigeration company) and they leave this week for a year of training and adventure.  They have 6 months in Germany, then 3 months in China, then another 3 months in Germany.   They plan on traveling extensively while there (including staying in an ice house/hotel in Denmark).  She has promised me a blog of their adventure.

Abby and Miles-- we will miss them terribly but they are off for an adventure of a lifetime

Best lifetime girlfriends--Elizabeth and Mary --I am so lucky

This is perfect odds--8 adults to 1 baby-- niece Rae is a great running buddy

Great celebration dinner at Chesapeake's in Knoxville with our besties

  We are beginning to work on our dirt home and getting it ready for us again and reconnecting with our Nashville life. There is a lot to be done.   We go to boat sites daily to shop for our next boat.  Terry likes to say that in our forty years of marriage we have not been without a boat.  The real story is (I did take the pledge not to correct any of his stories in front of people) that in between houseboats The Kid and Therapy then Next Chapter,  we had about 6 weeks of being boat-less.  It was the longest 6 weeks of our married life.  We should be glad Katie and Nick even speak to us as we dragged them to marina after marina looking for the perfect replacement.  The fact of the matter is that we need to have a boat-- so we are actively looking for an ocean going, 2 stateroom boat we can go to Bahamas in and use as a winter cottage in warmer climes. We fell in love with the 49 Defevers, Oceans and Bayliners so we have a little bit of a blueprint.  Wouldn’t it be fun to find one in the Northeast so we could bring her south and revisit NYC, Cape May, Washington DC, Williamsburg,  Charleston and Southport OR find a boat on Lake Michigan and spend another week in Mackinac Island and Chicago. We would also like to bring her to Nashville or the Tennessee River for the warmer months.   In other words we have more adventures in our sites-- meanwhile we will stay connected to our new Loop buddies through their blogs/FB and see if we can entice them to come visit us in Nashville. 

We got to go to niece Emily's brunch after her high school graduation

Helped Cheryl celebrate her birthday

Nick helped us with the babysitting detail

The children were  our biggest cheerleaders

What a Month!

We left FMB on April 12^th with Sunny Days on the hard to get new paint on the bottom.  It is a 15 hour drive back to Nashville so we decided that retired people do not need to drive it all in one day.  We arrived at Next Chapter at Rock Harbor Marina on Wednesday the 13^th in time to reconnect with all our friends and family at our home dock.  Scott and Pamela Moore had seen our Boat Trader ad for Next Chapter and called about seeing her when we got back.  Well they came, they saw and they bought.  Suddenly we are one boat owners.  We worked much too hard moving our stuff out of Nick’s Condo, Katie's, Next Chapter and storage and moved into our “dirt” home.  The kids had come and gotten their stuff and anything we had that they could make use of 3 years ago—we did not repo very much from them so now we are left with a pretty empty dirt home.  It reminds us of when we first got married—the only difference is the furniture we had then was thrift shop bargains and now all we have are the antiques we inherited that the kids didn’t want to use, 1 bed and the back porch furniture.  We will work on the house this summer. 

On April 19^th Leeton turned 6 and on May 1^st Holden turned 4, they had a joint birthday party on April 30^th.  Katie and Scott are sooooo smart—they had about 25 children at the Y for a swim party and where the children had a lot of fun and options.  Great Fun or as Leeton put it—the best day of her life.  We celebrated Mother’s Day by going to dinner with Nick at the Family Wash—a trendy place in East Nashville that was wonderful.  Best Mother’s Day present –Nick paid for dinner.  I would recommend this place for sure.  And our children definitely are the best—I feel very loved.   Sunday of Mother’s Day (the 8^th) we left for FMB to either sell Sunny Days or put her away at Glades Boat Storage near Lake Okeechobee for Hurricane Season. 

 

 

Katie and Leeton went to a Daisy's Tea

 

The Norris Family

 

Holden and his Buds at his 4th Birthday Party

 

We sold Next Chapter--she is in great hands

 

We caught up and had dinner with Terry's siblings while in town