Sunday, November 28, 2010

Getting the Boat Ready

Evanston, IL - The 11th of December we are driving our old and rusty Ford Econoline with my really good friend Eduardo, all the way down to Ft. Lauderdale. We will stop in Ocala, Florida to pick up our new/used dinghy that we bought there. On Monday we are hauling out the boat at the Lauderdale Marine Center, where we are servicing the sail drives, painting the bottom and doing a litle bit of fiber glass on the keels.
I also have my friend Ivan flying that day to help with all the new electronics installations such as SSB, Pactor modem, antena, wind generator, etc.
It will be a very busy week doing also other jobs like adding new book shelves, rack for jerry cans, inspecting rigg, and a very long list jobs before sailing for a year and a half .
I'm very fortunate to have such good friends like Mitch who is also coming on Tuesday the 14th to help with all the improvements.
We are hoping to be done with everything by the 20th which is when Karla and the kids arrive in Florida.
After that we are going to start with provisioning the boat and I'm sure countless trips to Costco, Home Depot and West Marine.
-Sebastian

Monday, November 15, 2010

GETTING READY

Evanston, IL - Welcome to the Begonia Blog! Here we are in Evanston getting ready for our trip. Our home has been packed up and we are living with the bare minimum awaiting Sebastian's departure date of December 4 when he will be driving to Fort Lauderdale with all our belongings for the next year aboard the Begonia. He will take advantage of his time alone to fix up the boat: add storage shelves, install the wind generator and take the boat out of the water to repaint the bottom with anti-fouling. The kids and I will join him on December 20 when our tenants move into our home on land and we move into our home on the sea! T-one month! We can't believe this is really happening.