Well, it has been a while since I lasted posted.  We are still living aboard Carina at DiMillos in Portland.  We had a nice 2012 sailing season but was cut short a little when Sandy showed up in mid November.  We moored Carina far up the Harraseket and stayed with our friends the Collins for the storm.

Kathy and I have been mountain biking a lot and have a couple of trips scheduled this year to visit Kingdom Trails in Vermont.  We went there twice in 2012 and had a great time.

Carina is almost fully commissioned for our 2013 season.  We still have some cleaning and waxing to do.  We plan to take 2 weeks in September to do some Maine cruising.  In 2012 we visited Roque Island for the first time and it was so beautiful.  You can see our cruise photos here.

Our winter was snowy and blowy.  Quite a few blizzards this year but we just hunkered down and turned up the heat.  We spent Christmas at Burke mountain and did a lot of hiking with Shamus.

In March we spent 10 days in the BVIs with some friends and Mark and Di.  We charted a couple of boats for a week and then spent 3 days at the Sugar Mill hotel on Tortola.  See our video below.

Well it is great to have the girl in the water again.  We splashed Tuesday, April 16th and I motored back to Portland.  Our haul out was quick and we accomplished everything on our list:

Sand and paint bottom with 3 coats WM PCA Gold(Pettit Ultima SR40)
Polish and 2 coats wax on topsides
Repair rudder and skeg
Install new speed, depth, temp transducer
Repack prop log
Install new cutlass bearing
Service prop
Install zincs
New vhf antenna
New wind transducer

Now we wait for the bill.

A big thanks to our friends, the Collins, for putting us up for 10 days while we worked on Carina.

We are now officially on the hard.  We moved Carina up to S. Freeport last Thursday evening with the help of our friend Rodd.  Firday morning Brewers hauled us and set us in the slings for the weekend.  Our list of projects include:
 
Polish/wax the topsides, replace the cutlass bearing, replace the speed transducer, repair the rudder, sand and paint the bottom.
 
Kathy and I worked all weekend and got a great start on the projects.  I did run into a problems with the rudder.  The top bearing is an eccentric hub bearing and was very difficult to remove.  We also found that someone over-bored the strut to accommodate a larger 1.75 inch cutlass bearing.  As a result, the strut has a thinner sidewall. 
I will get a new strut from Buck-Algonquin and keep the old one as an emergency spare for now.
 
Thanks to our friends Rodd and Cara for letting us crash while  the boat is out of the water.

We are getting ready to remove the winter cover and haul the boat for some maintenance.  Before we can do that we need to complete some projects on deck.  First was to rebed all the chainplates.  I also potted the chainplate slots with thickened epoxy.  You can see the complete project here:  Chainplate Rebed

We also decided to remove and refinish the eyebrow.  This gave me the perfect opportunity to polish the cabintop.  So I removed the handrails and broke out the Makita buffer.  I used a Presta black wool pad and Presta Gel-coat compound.  Speed set at 3.5.

I feel guilty about not keeping up with our blog.  Yesterday we briefly met a couple who had read our blog and are now in the process of moving aboard full time.  Aside from our cruising blog, we have not posted anything for a long time. 
 
Well, we have almost made it through our second winter.  It was a mild one so not much to write about.  Although we did get to do a lot of mountain biking this year throughout the winter. 
 
Ous summer was a lot of fun.  We sailed most every weekend.  We enjoyed meeting new friends and had 3 different lobster bakes on islands.  Kathy is committed to breaking that record in 2012.  We had a great cruise in September again this year although the Northeast Harbor Race was canceled due to hurricane Irene.
 
We sailed right up through thanksgiving.  In fact, on black Friday, we sat on Jewel Island alone enjoying cocktails while watching the sunset.  The rest of the weekend we had great sailing.  We returned to S. Freeport Sunday evening so we could get the mast stepped for winter.
 
This winter I have taken on a few projects to further improve Carina.  We are rebeddedong the chain plates after potting the holes with thickened epoxy, refinishing the eyebrow, replacing all the instruments, sounder and autopilot, converting the reading lamps to LED.  We will also buff and polish the cabin sides and cockpit.

 
This spring we will do a long haul and tackle some additional
  projects including replacing the prop, cutlass bearing and zincs.  We
  will also take the time to repair the rudder, install the transducers for the
  new instruments and paint the bottom.  If time permits, I will also polish
  the topsides.  

We enjoyed some great conversation in the cockpit last night and really enjoyed the warmer sunny weather. I got to thinking about our winter.
 
We made it through our first winter and feel it was no big deal.  We stayed warm and dry.  In fact, the boat was more comfortable than our 200 year old cape we used to live in.  The clear shrinkwrap cover made a huge difference.  It was nice to have the light during the day and the deck would heat up nicely.  We spent many weekend mornings on our "sun porch" enjoying brunch.

We even held a party in January with 30 guests.  People were inside, on deck and some even on the dock in the sub 20° evening temperatures.  Everyone had a great time.


 

It has been a while since we last posted but here is what has been happening:
 
In August we found our new home, a 1997 Caliber 40lrc.  We closed on the house on Monday and made an offer on the boat that night.  A few weeks later we closed on the boat.  We took delivery on a Tuesday and competed in an overnight race on Friday.  It was the 3rd annual Northeast Harbor Race put on by Centerboard Yacht Club.  We had won this race the previous 2 years so we were really excited to get the boat in time to enter.

We placed third in the race and had a great time.  We spent  the next week cruising the coast of Maine on our new  boat.
 
After returning to Portland, we picked up a slip at  Dimillos Marina and finally moved aboard in early October.
 
Well, the reason we have not posted recently is that we have been very busy installing the new heater and getting the boat covered for winter.  The boat came with a Mermaid reverse cycle AC/heater but we knew
that would only get us heat as long as the water was in the 40s or higher.  So we decided to install a diesel fired hydronic heating system.  You can read about the installation here.

The heater is running great and we had a very toasty Christmas and New
Years.

Not to be confused with "Preparation H", which does feel good....on the whole!

My contract at MDI had ended and I had few other contracts to finsih out before I could really get to work on the house.  I tore out plaster, stripped, painted, edged, replaced floors, hung and mudded sheetrock, and generally cleaned up.  After 3 months of work we put the house on the market in mid May.

During that time, I had sold "Cordelia", our 1985 Ericson 35-3 that we owned since 2006.  We put a lot of work into restoring her and she commanded a premium price.  Click here to see more photos.  I helped the new owner deliver her to Annapolis.  My friend Chris Allen and my brothers Doug and John crewed.  We went as far as Stamford, Ct.

Well, it has been a year since I was laid off from  Emery-Waterhouse.  My position was "eliminated".  Thank God. 
Kathy was so happy that day because she knew how unhappy I had been since things  started going south with Emery.  I had been half heartidly looking but not  too serious.  Well now I had 6 weeks severance and I had to make some decisions.  Luckily we had very little debt so my salary was not necessary.
 
While cruising on Cordelia a few weeks before we had discovered  that Bucks Harbor Marine was for sale.  We decided to pursue this  opportunity and started meeting with the  owners.
 
In the mean time I had picked up some consulting work and landed  a 3 month contract with Mount Desert Island Hospital in Bar Harbor which would  keep me busy thru Feburary 2010.
 
After lots of research and meetings we arrived at the fateful  day of making an offer on the Marina.  Kathy was very anxious so to calm  her down I suggested we formulate a "Plan B".  Plan B would involve selling  our house and boat and buying a new boat to live aboard.  She liked this  and now said she would be fine if the marina deal fell through.  We made  our ridiculously low offer expecting to be laughed at and run outta town but the  owners said they could work with us.  We got a little scared by this so we  had another accountant check out the books.  He told us to run, not walk,  away from this deal so we did.  We felt like we could breathe  again.

This is the story of how Kathy and I decided to make a life change.  I had been laid off from a job that I hated and we decided to take a new direction.  It started as an idea to buy a marina and charter business and evolved into living aboard full time.  Following is the story of how we sold our beloved "Cordelia", a 1985 Ericson 35-3, renovated and sold our house, bought a new boat and moved aboard.