The Adventure Begins

Where to begin? Please bear with me as I learn how this blog thing works.

Several years ago Jill and I began to look ahead to retirement, seemingly a long way off at the time. We talked about our love for travel and the island lifestyle and thought about a little place in the Keys, or maybe the Abacos, anywhere there was sun and sand. The problem became what would happen when we saw all there was to see in our little piece of paradise? Would we become bored and look to move on? I next had a brilliant idea...lets live on a boat and take our island with us wherever we want to go! Now, keep in mind that Jill has always been very patient with my brilliant ideas thinking, like most, that it would burn out also. This one didn't.

I jumped in with both feet and began the research. I followed different boaters blogs, loopers blogs, boating forums and on and on. I've had boats most of my adult life here on the Ohio river and we've chartered on our various island vacations but needed to learn more about living and traveling on a boat to help Jill get more comfortable with the idea. The great "ah-ha" moment came 3 years ago when I realized that the motorcycle wasn't getting any use and traded it for a nice older 28' flybridge boat. Well...Jill took to this lifestyle like a duck to water! We have learned together how to operate, dock, maintain and generally have fun on the water. We have made great friends on the water and spend most weekends on the dock in our "boat neighborhood". This has really cemented the idea of living on a boat in our heads but...we're gonna need a bigger boat.

Fast forward to this spring. I can retire next spring but, more likely, the following year. We began really looking at bigger boats. We met a broker that put us at ease and showed us a bunch of different models. A couple of months ago we went to see one that wasn't even on my radar, a Chris Craft Constellation 460 and fell in love. This boat is a 1986 that has been lightly used and well maintained and has tons of living space for a couple with the occasional guests. We began the process...offer, counter offer, acceptance, survey, sea trial, another offer, it seemed to take forever but on July 19th she became ours! That weekend we took a 60 mile shakedown cruise up the Tennessee river and through our first lock (of many to come) to Euchee Marina.

The Chasing 80 (nee Driftwood) is now on Watts Bar lake getting some love from an excellent mechanic in preparation for the 1000 mile trip home to Cincinnati. What could go wrong? 541 miles down the Tennessee river to the Ohio and turn right for another 451. The plan is to begin the trip August 10th and take 2 weeks to get home. Hopefully I'll be posting and taking pictures along the way. Like I said in the beginning, I'm still learning this blogging thing.

Well, that's enough for the first post and introduction. Next post will be from the trip.