I have a new mental picture. It comes to me often. I see our boat sailing on a nice blue sky day. We are off on some nice adventure to some far off land. Behind us, I see a U-Haul (moving van) on a raft holding all the overflow from what will not fit on the boat. We have a 53 foot boat. This boat has plenty of storage. We even have a trunk (private joke ~sorry Joel, but you know that is what everyone calls the lazarette). We have so much storage space we keep an inventory list on an Excel spreadsheet to remind us where things are kept. Yet somehow, I worry we are piling on too much. So, I keep picturing us sailing along with too much stuff. We can still see the waterline. That’s a good thing. If you have followed our blog you know it is sort of my job to write about and worry about taking our two story home complete with basement and a two car garage and try to downsize so we can move onto the boat. What no one told me was my hubby would fill the boat up faster than I could clean out the house. This is why I jokingly named this post upsizing. In my mind rather than downsizing we are going the wrong way. Sort of a play on words. We simply need to simplify and make some tough choices. What goes, what stays? We have a section of our breakfast room in our home lovingly called our boat pile. A pile of things needing to go to the boat. Every time I pass this pile, it gets bigger. The pile takes over the breakfast room. It can no longer be called a breakfast room but is now more of a boat pile room. Once the pile gets to, oh, say, over my head, Skipper Mark and I head to the boat with our new treasures. You’ve read about the geeky stuff , it is not over yet, there is more to come.
The Boat Pile
This week we are replacing all eight house batteries. Thank goodness this is swap out. All eight off, all new ones on. The batteries will be delivered by a semi truck on a pallet to which we have to find a way to get them down to the boat. The batteries are a bit larger than car batteries but weigh quite a bit more. The semi truck and pallet are because Mark found a really good deal on the batteries but not locally. They are being shipped to us via truck. I am sure Skipper Mark will figure out how to get them there and I am sure crew Cindy will be involved in the cursing and grunting that comes with getting them onto the boat and into their new home. And, for every one that goes in, one will come off. YES, balance! The interesting part will be the installation but I’ll let Mark blog about that part when it is over. Our batteries are not holding charges well and as Mark has said before, Cream Puff’s owners are energy hogs. This all being tongue-in-cheek because we really do enjoy doing boat projects. My favorite part will be all the friendly comments from fellow boat owners on the dock and the cold drinks afterwards. Mark did not elaborate but when we were erecting the antenna for the SSB we had many off color jokes from people passing by on the dock. I am sure there will be more to come once they see the batteries. I guess the new batteries will help to keep the geeky stuff going. Geeky stuff makes my life easier so all is good.
U-Haul in Dinghy
