Friday, December 24, 2010

Slocum on Spray - Good book

I will also post information about books that I am reading and I will give me 2 cents on how valuable or useful they are for someone wanting to learn more about sailing, cruising, or refitting a boat.

I downloaded a free Kindle copy of "Sailing alone around the world" by Joshua Slocum.  It was really pretty interesting to hear about someone that sailed around the word by themselves in a boat that he essentially rebuilt from the ground up.  This took place in the late 1800's and early 1900's so the references and places he visits and writes about are very interesting.  When visiting beautiful pacific islands, the inhabitants are referred to as "savages" because so little was known about these wonderful people.  I do recommend this book for anyone that finds that kind of adventure interesting.

Below is a link to the Free Electronic copy and the physical book copy
Free - Sailing Alone Around the World   
Paperback - Sailing Alone Around the World

The first load was moved today

Since we made the decision to look for a place to live along the south coast, Deb has been packing daily.  She has been my springboard for this journey and I am so thankful for it.  When we started discussing this dream, she would say "If we aren't stepping toward it, we are stepping away".  To that end, we started the search for a place to live.  For some background information, we sold our house in the last year and moved into a much smaller apartment very close to the land locked lake where we kept our boat.  Having the freedom of apartment living and the ability to just move at the end of a lease has made this a bit easier to move.

We started looking in the Kemah, Seabrook, Clear Lake area in Texas.  We found a few places we liked but finally settled on one that had both a Marina and apartments right next to each other.  The good news is that when we were searching on line, this is one of the one that we were most excited about.  The management team in the leasing office were great and they worked with us on a date for move in and allowed us to arrange some of it by phone and other parts when I was in town for business.  Our official lease starts on February 1, so we will be moving early that month.


When I was in this area on business 2 weeks ago, I found a storage facility not far from where we will live and I will be able to set up my wood shop.  While it is not much, it will certainly aid in any work we do on our current boat or more importantly the next one.

Since we had a preplanned vacation at our timeshare in Galveston, we decided to rent a small uhaul trailer and take the first load of packed "stuff" down and put it in storage.  We did just that and just before lunch we had unloaded the trailer into storage and returned the  trailer. As soon as we loaded everything in the unit and pulled the trailer out, Deb said "You know this means there is not turning back now"  She is so right.  We are heading down the path !!