MOORE HAVEN - GOING "ON THE HARD"

He Said:  Not exactly a TGIF.  I ended my last blog with us hanging Thursday nite the 29^th of May at the RV Park next to Glades Boat Yard.  Due to the location of where we were located we spent the nite having a few drinks and dinner on the boat.  I mentioned that there is absolutely nothing anywhere near the boat yard.

The following morning we moved the boat to Glades for our pull out appointment at about 11AM on the 30^th.  The cruise was maybe 10 minutes to the dock where we easily pulled the boat along side of a long pier for our final few minutes on MTB.  Our job now is pretty much over, with the dockdudes taking over from here.  They pulled the boat along side of the dock and turned the corner into the fairly tight slip.  We both kind of helped while they lined MTB up to yank her out of the water. With our water, fuel, and stuff I am guessing we weighed near 32,000 lbs.  I know we are 28,000 when empty, so I am really taking a stab at it.

MTB in her home for the next 5 months.  Everything below the gold line is typically underwater

By now it is early afternoon and we had a 3PM pick up time to leave the yard and get to Ft. Myers Airport to pick up our rental car. This left us 2-3 hours to get our STUFF off of the boat and get MTB closed up for the following 5 months.  Once you are out of the water with no power, the boat heats up like a mother.  By the time we closed everything up, got our stuff off the boat, and everything else done we were pushing our 3PM pick up.

The boat yard promised us 50 Amp and it was not available - not good.  We bought a dehumidifier and it was very important in the rainy, damp, humid Florida weather that we try to keep the inside somewhat dried out.  At the end of the day, they found us a long extension cord so at least we could run our dehumidifier.

Unloading the boat takes on a whole new ballgame, not only about 150 degrees inside but we had to get a large ladder to get in and out of the boat.  The heavy suitcases and climbing up and down long ladders in big heat was no flipping fun.  We did make it and had almost enough time to dry ourselves off.  Of course, with no electric and no water, it was no good!

Our trip to the rental car went ok.  Our driver dude was about my age and a know-it-all.  As soon as we entered his ride he asked where we were from.  When I said Phoenix, he said, “what a hell hole that is.”  I said, “so 3 or 4 million people are all crazy I guess.”  Not a big deal.  We started our 30 mile drive to Naples.  Of course, after arriving in Naples at about 6 that evening we headed over to the local pub for cold drinks and food.  How about this for an excuse?  We had no food or drinks in the condo, and it was the right thing to do.  There you go.

We will spend the first 2 weeks of June at my brother Jim’s condo and the next 2 weeks at Pat’s good friends’ condo in the north side of Naples.  After that we will be flying to Columbus for 8 days to visit my family then on July 9 heading for our European cruise with Pat’s family.  Then in late July, believe it or not, we will be heading to Phoenix for a few months.  In November, we will head back to Florida.  Our plans are to spend time on the gulf side of Florida, the Keys, and the Bahamas then probably call it a day.  This would bring us to about our 2 year anniversary of boat life.  Probably time to get back to normal, whatever that is!!  We have 1 more blog to send out kind of wrapping up our 1 year and 1 week adventure - oh what a ride.

Take care, and we will keep you posted.  Jack

 

She Said:   The day has finally come for us to pull MTB out of the water.  It’s been such a fun, adventure filled year I hate to see it come to an end.  BUT, I’m really looking forward to some time on land.   

The dock master met us at 10:30am and held our lines as the wind literally blew out of the slip.  We took a short 10 minute ride down the river to The Glades Boat Storage Yard, pulled up to the dock and waited for our time to be pulled out of the water.  I went up to register and when I came back MTB was already lined up with the sling and slowly being lifted out of the water.  My phone and camera were on the boat so I couldn’t get a picture.  Basically, there were 4 straps attached to the hoist/lift.  The hoist/lift  (picture below - the blue machine) straddled a boat slip (sort of like a car driving over an oil changing pit) with the straps underwater.  MTB was on top of those straps and the hoist/lift slowly lifted the boat out of the water.   

This is the first time since April that MTB has been out of the water.  We had divers look at her bottom 3 times and every time we were told it looked good (not a lot of slimy growth or barnacles) so we were really curious to see what it looked like.  We were surprised at how good it looked – it’s amazing that she was in the water that long and had so little growth.  They power washed the bottom for about a half hour and got just about everything off.  There were a few places where the bottom paint had worn thin and that was where some barnacles attached.  All and all – the bottom is in excellent shape.  We will repaint the bottom this fall before we put MTB back into the water. 

The guys drove MTB to her parking place in this huge boat yard.  This is when the day took an ugly turn.  We reserved a spot with 50-amp power so we could run a small fridge and a dehumidifier while we were gone.  The spot they put us in had power, but not 50-amp.  I spent the next two hours looking for a way to adapt/convert our 50-amp plug down to 110 outlet.  We had so many ideas – all of which would work – but we didn’t have the right parts to make it work.  In the end, we settled on running just the dehumidifier using an extension cord direct to the 110 outlet.  Not exactly what we hoped for, but certainly a viable solution. 

By now, we had only 1.5 hours to finish closing down MTB.  Everything was packed (except for the stuff in the fridge), but we had to disconnect the batteries, close off all the thru hulls (the spots along the gold line), bring everything we could from the outside to the inside, and cover up everything that was left outside.  The storage yard didn’t have a pump-out facility, so we pumped out before leaving Ft. Myers (this meant we’ve been without a toilet for two days).  We were doing all of this without A/C in 90 degree, 90% humidity and no windows.  It was absolutely awful. 

Now we had to get our stuff off the boat.  We were basically on the second floor of a building with only a ladder to get up and down.  And our “stuff” was more than a couple of suitcases.  We are going to be away from MTB for 5 months, so we had a lot.  AND we had all the food stuff that we couldn’t leave on the boat.  Since we would be spending the next month in Naples we knew we would be cooking so we didn’t worry about using everything up before getting off the boat.  We had more than we thought we had.   

By the time the car service picked us up we were hot, sweaty and exhausted.  We hadn’t had anything to eat since dinner the night before.  We had about an hour drive to our car rental and then another 45 minutes to our condo.  I got nauseous riding in the back seat of the car.  I can’t remember the last time I was in a car going 60+ MPH with other cars rushing by - for the last year I’d been traveling 9 MPH often with no other vehicle around.  It was a long, hot, awful day – definitely in the top 5 of the past year. 

For the next several months while we are off the boat, we occasionally post some updates.  Within the next few days, we will post our top 10 destinations and some facts about our year on the boat.  We will also post pictures and adventures from our two week European cruise later this summer.  Thanks for everyone who has read and commented on our blog.  We really appreciate it and look forward to seeing our friends and family this summer.