After taking Julia to the airport early Sunday afternoon, Chad and I headed to the airport to fly to Virginia! We closed on the boat officially on Friday – funny that it was also Chad’s last day of work! We got in late or rather early Monday morning and got a bit of sleep before heading over to the Blue Odyssey to clean her up! We knew it would take some work but WOW did we have a BIG job ahead of us!
Side note…Yes, we did rename the boat. Anyone that has “helped” us name something knows this is not an easy thing for us!! It took us nearly a week, AFTER he was born, to fully decide on Nathan’s name! We loved our river boat the “Island Gypsy” but Julia educated us on how derogatory the name is in Europe. We still love the restaurant on Isle of Capri but just couldn’t use the name again. If we were going to rename the boat, we had to have it figured out before closing and filling out paperwork for the Coast Guard. We went a little into panic mode as we thought we had a few days not hours. We sat at the counter at the lake cabin debating. Minne.. Sota Pop…Salty Sota…Sota Girl…Purple Pelican…Gjollohorn…Skol! we do love our Vikings after all!! We had lists and lists of names that we debated back and forth but nothing really felt right to both of us. I was looking up Roman/Greek goddess names for water and somehow came across Achilles, Homer and then the Odyssey. It struck a note with me, as the theme of Julia’s senior dance season was Homer’s Odyssey!! hmmm..Blue represents water and an Odyssey is an epic adventure so Blue Odyssey felt perfect for our Looping boat!!
Anyway, back to Portsmouth. We rented a storage unit so that we could get everything off the boat. We knew we were going to have to have work done and didn’t want all the stuff in the way. Plus there was so much on the boat we couldn’t really move around or sit down! We figured that we would be making many trips to the dumpster..but then Chad met Rabbit. A woman who lives on her sailboat nearby and maybe has a bit of a hoarding issue…she took nearly all of the things we didn’t want or need. There was A LOT of stuff on this boat! A used mattress that didn’t fit in the berth, pillows, bedding, dishes, a sewing machine and so much more. She had us leave the mattress on her deck to get “cleaned up” in the rain that was coming. She is a very interesting character!! Chad must have made 8 trips with a full cart to her boat. We did salvage quite a bit of usuable things too but the storage unit wasn’t nearly as full as Chad had expected! Just getting all the stuff off the boat made things feel much better but then I scrubbed every inch of the boat – walls, cabinets, ceilings and woodwork. A few areas of the boat were gag worthyand it took me 2 full days but the boat actually feels comfortable now.
Our original plan was to have an official boat captain help us move the boat to Severn Yachtyard…about 40 miles up the Chesapeake. They are a full service boat yard/marina and can do most of the work that needs to be done. The plan also included teaching us to drive a trawler in the big waters of the Chesapeake. Unfortunatly, the weather didn’t cooperate, so Capt. Alan spent 4-5 hours with us at the dock. He and Chad went thru nearly everything on the boat…the electronics, engine compartments, and they actually were able to fix a few things that we thought were going to be a bigger deal.
Early Wednesday morning, we got up and headed to the new marina to check it out and sign some papers. It was about an hour drive thru some beautiful land. The area has so much history from both the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. I’m looking forward to learning more bout the area later this summer when we go out to the boat again. The new marina is not in the middle of a big city like we are at in Portsmouth! It is down some very small roads and the views are amazing. We really liked the marina staff and are excited to have the boat moved there in the near future. Captain Allen will wait for a good weather window and move it with a first mate. The cruise wil be about 5-6 hours by boat so it will make for a long day.
We flew out of Richmond later Wednesday afternoon and made it home by about 7:30. We were wiped out from all the work we did on the boat but very excited for our next adventure too.
Awesome blog! I wanted to leave you a comment on the blog, perhaps your first! Can’t wait to hear more of your adventure! Your excitement renews our excitement
Thanks Rose! And thanks for the tips on subscriptions and adding photos. The photo additions are working better now (although funky – I think it’s more of an Apple issue than anything). I’m still working on adding a “subscription” button with our “theme”. Geez, I had no idea this was so tricky, but just need a rainy day to work on it, we’ll get there! Chad.