Mid-winter update

It's a new year, and it finally feels like I have enough breathing space to post a blog update.

That makes it seem as though life has been more busy than it really has. In fact, it's been a pretty quiet winter around here. Mandy and I have just had our heads down working. Things were pretty hectic right after we got back in port; a variety of issues with our rental (I'll avoid going into any detail, but will say that I had some immediate sympathy for Jason and Christie over at S/V Hello World when they recently mentioned their dealings with "shitweasel tenants"), business, and the basic business of life all conspired to put us behind on whatever arbitrary scale of progress we had chosen to adopt.

So, once we got everything immediate dealt with, we just sort of hunkered down and got to work. It feels like it has all been productive, but it will be hard to say until we are into next year and business cycles start to pick up again (retail may do well during the Christmas season; with us, not so much). If we've done well, we should profit; if not, well, back to the drawing board.

Either way, we have had very little focus on boat-related matters, but we think we have arrived at a couple of useful conclusions:

- Our boat is fine for living aboard, if a little cramped for one of us, but it's definitely too cramped to both live and work aboard simultaneously. If we want to travel, which we still think we do, it's just too small to sustain that lifestyle.

- If we can sell this boat and take the proceeds plus some savings, we can afford a boat that is big enough to both live and work aboard.

So that is roughly what we are planning to do, and in that order... we definitely have to sell Insegrevious before we can contemplate moving on to another boat. For one thing, we certainly can't afford two slips for any extended period. We actually have a larger slip than our length currently at Shilshole, so if we can clear out Insegrevious then we have room to move something else in without hunting around for a new home.

Of course, that's assuming we can find a new vessel in this area, which may just be wishful thinking. Our original plan, long long ago, had been to hold out aboard Insegrevious until we could afford a new boat. There are a variety of arguments about new versus used, but I think I am fairly well settled on the thought that it would be easier and not much more expensive to get what I want, in a more or less pristine state, by buying new. Older boats in a given class are not hugely less expensive if they are at all worth purchasing, and they have a tremendous amount of uncertainty attached, and usually a lot of worthless and potentially problematic modifications in the bargain. So, if I am going to drop a couple hundred thousand either way, on balance I will probably get something new.

But we don't have a couple hundred grand laying around right now, so something older is what is in our cards. If you do have to buy an older boat, then it makes sense to minimize the amount of uncertainty. That means not just getting a good survey done, but also primarily looking at boats you have some familiarity with and which have a known record. For us, that means the older, Cherubini-designed Hunters.

There are 36s and 37s that fit that requirement, and happily also our budget. Unfortunately, not many of them are to be found in the Pacific Northwest.

They also are not really worth trucking around the country, so there are good odds we will be relocating to wherever we find what we might buy. Where we go from there is an open question; we aren't really planning that far ahead.

What we are doing is trying to get our businesses to the point where we don't need to be in Washington, or near Washington, full-time to manage them. I think we have made good progress toward that goal these past few months. The next few will help provide the proof. Then, by spring, hoepfully I will have enough time that I can spend on Insegrevious working to get her sold. What happens next will depend on where, and how quickly, we find a replacement for her.