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Boat refit on water
Trying to do a boat refit on water is no easy task. Also at that time, I had no income source and not much money left either. That meant that I had to keep my expenses as low as possible. I did managed to survive with less than $300 a month, that including my $100 phone bill.
I had a special guest as well. A friend that came aboard for a few days and we got to hang out together. We used to be roommates while working on cruise ships. Now we were roommates again, but this time aboard my own “ship”. I stopped working on the boat for a little. It helped me relax and step away from the headaches created by all the problems I was facing.
Boat refit on water
As I was saying earlier, I wanted to start with simple projects that I could cut from the list quickly and fix everything really cheap. I started with the water system, as the water pump no longer worked. After I figured out the issues, I replaced the electrical cables and got it working again. I wish now I didn’t fix that pump. You will find out why in the documentary film. Honestly this was the point where I realized that many of the things I put down on my list, I won’t be able to accomplish before my departure. The boat was not in such a bad shape, but not the best either. Clearly she wasn’t 100% ready for the ocean passages I planned.
Practicing sailing
My friend Clayton invited me to go out sailing on his sailboat at some point. That was fun as I didn’t got to sail much in the past. Every opportunity I had practicing sailing was perfect for me. I can’t really say I was sailing, as I was just steering the sailboat while watching him do his thing. It was good to learn a few new things and talk about sailing though. Me and Clayton got to know each other on a Facebook sailing group, years before I moved to Miami. We’re still good friends even today and we keep in touch constantly.
His boat used to be a racing boat in the past, but right now she was his escape from life on land. His drop of freedom away from work and the daily life. We had a lot of fun going out sailing in the Biscayne Bay a few times. This is how I got to also test Navionics for the first time. I knew nothing about navigation at sea, so this was the only training I could do at that time. Turns out it was a good idea to learn navigation, as life was preparing big surprises for me.
To be continued
As much as I loved having fun sailing, there were still many things to do to prepare my boat for offshore sailing. For that reason we will talk more about my adventures aboard Flashback together with Clayton in a podcast episode. Right now I will stop here, but we will continue the story in the next chapter. This entire sailing adventure is about to have an unexpected turn at some point… not the pleasant kind of turn unfortunately.
