During our Christmas and New Year vacation, we sat down and put all the cards on the table. The BIG topic? Can we "really" do America's Great Loop in the boat we just bought? Is now, this year, a good time to start it? What will we do about our jobs? Will our CAF pensions cover expenses for our home and the trip? Etc.... The short answer to all those questions, as you've guessed, is Yes! Are we excited? You bet we are. Are we nervous or scared? a bit - we are not doing this with blinders on. We know there will be challenges, but we know that we can find solutions to most problems that we'll encounter. If we need to readjust our plans, we will.
It was bitter sweet to hand in our resignation letters, as both of us have jobs we enjoy and both of us had upcoming projects that we would have loved to put our hands into. But as we had discussed when we took our decision, we will have other opportunities later on (and worst case scenario, we will create our own opportunities). We were both pleasantly surprised by the response we got - everyone is supportive, and encouraging us in our crazy adventure we are planning. Those that know us well were not surprised, we've been talking of wanting to do this for years. Our non-boating friends, well, they now know about the Great Loop.
One of the debates we had this month is one we've had since we bought the boat last year. We had every intention of renaming it, however, we kept going back in forth - unsure of what it should be. Our previous boat was/is named Paco2, and most of our boating friends refer to us by our boat name (very common in the boating community). They encouraged us to keep the same name, but change the number to 3. We considered it, but... we finally decided to go with Sea Loons.
Another big step for us was to decide on a blog name. We decided to go with Migrating Loons and we went ahead and bought our own domain! www.migratingloons.com Our web page is hosted on Blogger, and if you want to start a blog - I find Blogger very user friendly! With the decision taken regarding the blog name, everything else just fell in place. You will have the option to follow us on our Facebook page @ Migrating Loons, Instagram (it will see more use when we have more photos to share) or on our Blog. I am also going to pin some of my post to Pinterest (as myself).
We registered to take a course through the local power squadron, small engine maintenance, mid-March to May, should be interesting. I'll be sure to give an update on what we learn. We also registered to attend the AGLCA Spring Rendezvous in Norfolk! We are really looking forward to that trip, we hope to meet other Canadians planning the loop, but also would like to meet those that we will cross paths with on our own loop once we start this July. I am sure I will be able to update and add information on my "Misc Info - America's Great Loop" page following our time there.
On the boat preparation side of things, we went to the Toronto International Boat Show on the 20th and found a few items on our wish list for boat gear. The aluminum propane tank, the transom davits, self inflating PFDs and the Waterway Guides were our top finds. We still have things we hope to buy such as a hands free communication head set - but I think we are going to go to a motorbike equipment store for those, more to follow on that.
All in all, January was a busy month! February is already looking like it will be just as busy too, and that my friends, is a great thing!
Nice recap.
ReplyDeleteKeeping busy I see.
M'cook Jeeper