Pre Loop Madness and Monotony

   The build up was huge, the anticipation was killing us. Now we're here, living on the boat in Bradenton, FL for the next 14 days before we "shove off". With everything we think we will need for the trip in the back of our car, we load it onto the boat. Where in the heck are we going to put all of this stuff? Organizing and storing in every nook & cranny, sorting and reprioritizing. Re-looking at something and saying, "Do we really need 3 of these?" "Put it back in the car." After two full days, Beth managed to get it all labeled and packed away, somewhere. This little boat has a lot more storage space than we thought. Now, to be able to find it when we want it. I looked for my work gloves for 20 minutes! 

"Where is all this stuff going to fit?"

    Meanwhile I'm doing the same for all of my tools and gear, gallons of oil, fluids and filters, spare parts and odd things that we just might need to get us out of a pinch.  A few last minute small projects like tap lights for dark areas, installing a smoke detector, some wall nets for small gear and routing the Starlink antenna wire down to the engine room, installing the portable freezer on the flybridge and that does it.

    On the mechanical side, I was warned to consider replacing the exhaust elbow on the engine. Turned out to be a good call as it was pretty corroded, which would explain a small temperature spike when running high RPM's. Once I got the elbow off, I examined the turbo and found some corrosion in the exhaust side, not terribly bad but bad enough that my new diesel mentor Vaughan said "Replace it, I'll rebuild you one and ship it to you when you get further into your trip." Sounds like a good plan. I changed the impellers on the engine & generator, changed oil & filters and the transmission fluid & filter. 

Old exhaust elbow vs New

    You would think that after working on the boat for 2 years there wouldn't be anything left to do, but as it turned out, there was plenty to do in this last 2 weeks. With some free time left, we played Pickleball, socialized with the other folks at the marina and began to learn how to live in close quarters. I also used the time to prepare some provisions, like Jalapeno infused Tequila. 

Science Project

    We were humming along pretty good, then came "the scooter incident".  Outside the boat I heard Beth shriek some odd birdlike sound followed by some words that were hard to describe. It seems that while folding her scooter, it tipped into the "drink". Funny thing about electric devices and water, although only the handle bars hit the water, it was enough to lock up the display and then...DOA. No amount of sobbing and drying helped, it was unresponsive. I started to do some troubleshooting and emails to the manufacturer and swapping out the displays between the good scooter and the dead one. The manufacturer said they could send the parts, but it would take weeks, and even then we weren't sure we could fix it. With this being our best form of inexpensive, space saving transportation, we went on the hunt for a replacement. We only found one at Best Buy but at $900 that was a "no-go". We turned to Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. We found 2 close by, 1 was in Sarasota at a scooter rental place and another (identical model) in Bradenton. The rental was rough and beat up. The Bradenton scooter was pristine. Both were basically the same price, but we chose the "barely used" one. The brightside was that since we hadn't left yet, we still had a car which made the running from Sarasota back to Bradenton simple, Secondly, the replacement was alot nicer than the one she had. Now I know why I did the Tequila science project...

Pickleball Ya'll

    Friday came and we met with some Canadian Loopers currently in the Panhandle who drove down to get the information about our slip. I had made contact with them through the AGLCA Forum and they were interested in a six week rental of our slip the day we vacate. After that it gets turned over to the marina to manage. Hopefully we'll get some of the cost of ownership back while we're gone.

    We traveled back to Crystal River to run some last minute errands, take back some of the things we didn't need and pick up a couple we did. We dropped our car off and got a ride back to the boat from my parents. 

My parents come to see us off

    With everything in place & all the projects done, we planned our first couple of routes and stops. This is it, weather permitting, we shove off in 2 days.