On A New Tack

After many, many walks around the block in the evenings, we have decided on a name!  Sailing Vessel Mira ( SV Mira for short ) Here is a link to the YouTube video where we announce the name. What makes naming a boat so hard is that you can choose from a lot of different types of names.  You can be "funny/punny" and name a boat something like Knot Working , or Never Again 2 .  You can name a boat after a concept or a feeling, like Tranquility , Respite or Traveler .  And you can, of course, name your boat using a proper name; traditionally a girl's name, but something simple like Jenny , or as in friends of ours,  Greek Goddess . Given that this boat will be our home, we quickly ruled out funny/punny names.  That just doesn't seem right. BUT, we got stuck for a while on concept/feeling names and just a traditional girl's name.  We both brainstormed and came up with lists.  We then bounced them off one-another and looked into their meanings.  N...

 Key West Boat Show and Additional Information on the Vision Yachts 444 Summary We had a great trip down to Key West (okay, actually it was the next island up; Stock Island). The Stock Island Marina Village and adjoining Perry Hotel are absolutely beautiful.  If you are in the area and need a place to stay (and have the means!), it is a great resort.  We were fortunate in that we booked it early for the event and got the room at 1/3 the price it was the week leading up to the boat show.  Admittedly, it was Spring Break, so that may be their peak price for the year for all I know. We had spoken to Tommy and Amy from Sail Away Catamarans a few times before the event and even had a chance to speak with Thomas and Terri, the owners of Kon-Tiki ahead of time too.  What an absolutely great group of people! Additional Information

Thanks to all of our YouTube subscribers for helping us get over 100 subscribers!! We are now at 104 subscribers a few days later!

We Launched our YouTube Channel! We recently launched our YouTube Channel and posted our first video!   Here is the link to your channel . Here is the link to our first video . Check 'em out and let us know your thoughts! Sue and Mike

Friday, April 11, 2020 This weekend was supposed to be the Easter Cruise to the Beaufort, NC docks BUT, that got canceled because that town doesn’t want us. So instead of that, we’re doing some maintenance that’s been on my list for a while, namely replacing the coolant pump on the engine. Everyone that’s ever worked on a boat will tell you that everything takes twice as long as normal. Well, when the town your boat is located in is on a Covid-19 lockdown that prohibits non-residents from basically going into town, that makes things even more challenging. Fortunately, everyone in the boating community in Oriental is awesome and willing to help as they can. So we can still call businesses, place an order, give a CC number and they will deliver to your slip! Shout out to Pat, Lori and Teresa at IWPC, and Jim at Bow to Stern Boating!! The front of the engine had some surface corrosion and missing paint, seemingly from leaking coolant at some point in her past. While the pump...

What will hopefully be the only Annual Update Given that aside from healthcare workers, grocery store/food delivery chain employees, the entire planet suddenly has a lot more free time, what better time to try to get in the habit of updating this Blog! Going forward, I'm going to create at least three types of posts, which can be filtered on the right side, under "Pages".  The current three are Sailing Related Posts - Kind of obvious General Posts - Basically all posts that are not sailing specific Technical Articles - For the dorks out there So what's happened in the past year. Found and bought a boat (1997 Beneteau Oceanis 40 CC in New Bern, NC) Moved it to Oriental, NC "The Sailing Capital of NC" Amazing place, BTW.  Great for a weekend trip.  People are super friendly and it is super relaxing to go there. Had it "on the hard" (out of water) at Deaton Yacht Service to do some work, bottom painting, etc. Named it Betelgeuse. ...

We've sailed a few times, we want to sail more and we want to find out if we can actually live on a boat. After speaking with Jim at Bow to Stern Boating, we had learned that they would like to be able to have a 38ish foot monohull to add to their charter options. This is an interesting size boat.  It's plenty large enough to have a comfortable salon and galley, a nice cockpit, two decent size cabins and long enough to be able to reach a respectable speed (see my Tech Article to learn more about boat speeds ), but not so long that it is hard to find a dock and not so deep a draft that would make sailing it in the shallow waters of the Pamlico Sound a problem. The one notable downside is that in that length it is usually not quite long enough to have 2 heads, and at the end of the day, everyone wants their own bathroom! So, I went onto a few sites to start looking for used boats, surprisingly, quite old used boats (that happen to have been well taken care of).  Yac...