It was Monday January 25th and I was getting my bags packed for a three week road trip for the Seattle and Miami Boat shows, when there was a loud knocking on the hull. It was Bret the Port San Luis Boat Yard manager telling me that they would be splashing me at 10:30 tomorrow morning. As he jumped back into his golf cart and zipped away, I stood there saying...but but but...I'm leaving for Seattle tomorrow morning. It took me about 5 minutes to compose myself and start the panic. I called Lori and asked her to take tomorrow off from work. I texted the kids that they would be “sick” from school tomorrow and then started frantically to get the boat ready to launch.

A few days earlier, as waves were crashing in the Launch Slip, we had resigned ourselves to that fact that the boat would remain in the yard for the next 3 weeks while I worked the Boat Show Carnie Circuit in Seattle and Miami. Now I had 24hrs to get the boat not just ready to launch, but ready to make the 5 hour trip back to Morro Bay. As I texted Lori, “what could possibly go wrong with this plan?” Well the answer of course was an open through hull that filled the bilge as we were in the launch slips, but fortunately our monster bilge pumps kept the flow manageable until we closed the through hull. On the positive side, the bilge was now sparkling clean after all that sea water flowed in!

So we successfully make the 5 hour motor trip back to Morro Bay, seeing all types of sea life and then 15 minutes after putting the boat on the mooring, I’m in a car and starting the drive to Seattle, again, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

So what went wrong?
Well the list is two-fold. First the list of things I knew were not working when I left for three weeks, like the shower and how water and secondly the things that broke while I was gone, like the outboard motor and Honda generator start pull chord.

Oh, I could go into the messy text messages and irritated phone calls home, but you know, why rub salt in the recovering wound. What matters is that Lori and the kids were still living aboard the boat when I returned and I will have the boat back to normal living by the end of the week. But to all those out there that think living aboard a boat is all wine and roses, ha ha ha…I should let you read my text messages as Lori and Amy were stranded on the Morro Bay sand spit when the dinghy died and they were swept away in the 30kt wind and 4kt tidal current.