Wednesday, December 29, 2010

“In the Vortex” It Is

The boat is registered!  In Canada, that is.  We were not able to get “the Vortex” so we’re calling her “In the Vortex”.  It’s official.

She has also been moved into her semi-permanent home at Point Loma Marina, slip # 304.  Thanks to Tom for moving her for us.  As it turns out, we don’t have to move her to Mexico after all.  Well, not until May 22 anyway.  Our broker was able to get in touch with the authorities and by providing proof of deletion from the US registry, we can get away without paying the US Personal Property taxes. 

We’re leaving Toronto on Jan 10th, but there’s lots to do in the meantime.  We’ve wired money down to Tom and he’ll start the ball rolling on getting all the survey findings addressed.  He’ll also get the rigging replaced for the mainsail and foresail.  We don’t like the wire lines.  Too hard on the hands, and they don’t move smoothly.  It will require a new winch.  The winch is $1200, but Tom was able to get us a discount so we’re only paying $800.  If all goes well, she’ll be ready when we get there.

We’ve also found a tenant for the upstairs of the house.  And a home for Archie, one of the cats.  Still need to find a home for Piggy.

We’ve already made plans for our first return.  We’ll be coming back to Toronto near the end of April and will return to San Diego on May 9, just prior to our big departure.

Its hard to know what to take with us and what to leave.  We’re not going to take our winter coats, boots and gloves, etc.  But it can get cool in San Diego this time of year, so we’ll need some warmer clothes.  However, once we leave in May, we won’t be needing them, so we’ll probably bring the warmer stuff home in April.  And there is no Loblaws in the US!  So, we’ll have to stock up on all those President’s Choice products we love so much.  We’ve just purchased a roof rack on Ebay.  We can only take what fits in or on the car.  At this point, we really have no idea how much free space in on board.  There is a possibility that we won’t be able to fit everything we’re taking.  That means we have to be careful when deciding what goes and what stays.

We’ll be selling the car when we return in April.  I’d love to keep it and take it with us, but it just won’t fit on the boat.  No way, no how.  What a shame, I love that car.  Oh well.

There won’t be many updates now until we get to San Diego.  If there is news, we’ll write it up here, but if it gets quiet, we’re probably on our way. 

Its all coming together.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Getting Ready

Well, making a drastic change to our living arrangements means lots of things to take care of. 

We’ve decided not to sell our house.  We’re going to rent it, furnished.  That way, we can keep (and store) our furniture in the house and charge a bit more for rent.  So we have to find a tenant.

Even though we’re renting the house furnished, we still have to pack up and store our personal effects that we will not be taking with us.  Our winter clothes, for example.  We have limited storage on the boat, so we’re only taking the bare minimum with us. 

We have to cancel our phone plans, change addresses on all our mail, arrange for out of country medical coverage, etc., etc.

And, it’s breaking my heart, but I have to find new homes for both of my cats.  The tenants in the basement have agreed to take Archie.  Now I just have to find a home for Pig Pen.  I’d really like to keep them together, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

We’ve been to the government to start the process of registering the boat.  This is where we finalize the name of the boat.  The official did a quick search for us and says we cannot use the name “The Vortex”.  Apparently, it belongs to a very old boat.  He said he could petition to get it deleted, but it has lots of problem surrounding it, so it best to just leave it.  Our second choice is “In the Vortex”.  We’ll have to wait and see if we can have that name.

Lots to do to get her registered.  We need all kinds of photos and measurements.  So we’ve had to get our broker to go get the pictures we’re missing and to get some additional measurements.  Funny how US and Canada have different requirements.

And another little glitch; as it turns out, in order to totally avoid both Canadian HST and US Personal Property Tax, we cannot have her listed on the roster of any US marina when the yearly inventory is checked.  So we are now working on having her taken to Mexico until Jan 5 or so.  Luckily, marina charges are much cheaper in Mexico.  However, it will take someone 7 – 8 hours to get her there.  We’re looking at paying a captain to take her there and back for about $300.  Not too bad.

Before we do that, however, we want to address the important stuff from the survey.  The mechanic has already indicated that he can do all the mechanical work – around $900.  We want to replace the rigging for the mainsail and foresail.  We’re still getting estimates, but figure that will cost around $2000.  But after that, she’ll be ready to go.

Right now, our plan is to leave Toronto on or around Jan 10, 2011.  We’re going to drive down and take our time, so we’ll get to San Diego around the 16th or so.  We’ll stay in San Diego until around the end of May.  By then we will have had lots of additional training and we’ll have our sea legs.  We’ll return to Toronto in April to get the last of the belongings we need (in case we forgot something the first time),see our doctors and dentists, etc., sell the car and fly back.  By May 22, we’ll be on our way.

Every day we learn something new.  Its fun and exciting, though scary at times too.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Buying the Boat

Well, we now officially own the boat.

The process was a little involved.  Once we had an accepted offer, we had her hauled out of the water and surveyed.  We did both a general survey and a mechanical survey.  There were only a few small things to fix.  We got the seller to pay the cost by reducing the purchase price.

The marina where she is docked at the moment does not have a slip for us, so we had to find another one.  We visited a number of marinas.  The one with the best price just happens to be 2 ½ hours from the ocean.  We aren’t crazy about that, so we ended up at a more expensive marina, but it is much, much closer to the ocean (Point Loma) .  It is affiliated with the other marina (Pier 32), so we can visit and stay there if we’d like.  That just might be our first trip.  What’s good about it is that the entire trip is within San Diego bay, so it is calm and safe.  A good start, I’d say.

Tom, our broker, is so very helpful, I don’t know how we’d manage without him.  He’s going to move the boat over to the new marina for us.  Thankfully, it is quite close to where she is now.

In order to put her in a marina, we needed proof of insurance, so at the same time, we’ve been looking into that end of things.  It turns out that, because we don’t have a lot of experience (less than a year), we will have navigation restrictions imposed on us.  We have a range of about 200 miles or so where we can sail, but, unfortunately, we are not allowed to sail alone until a Captain provides a statement of proficiency to the insurance company.   We have a Captain lined up.  According to Tom, we will probably need to go out with the Captain on 2 or 3 outings and then he’ll give us what we need.

We don’t want to be stuck within a 200 mile area so we discussed this with the insurance agent.  After we get some experience we will be able to extend the limits.  So I guess we’ll just hang around San Diego and the northern most part of Mexico for a few months.  Then we’ll contact the insurance company about taking her further.  Depending on how it goes, there is a possibility that we will need to take another experienced person on board with us for a while.  I figure we’ll be able to find someone who’d like to make the trip and will do it for free.

To avoid paying taxes, which could run another $7k or so, we arranged for an off-shore delivery.   Our broker, the Captain and maybe another official took her 3 miles off the coast.  They took photos of the GPS reading to prove that they were indeed off-shore.  They also took a picture of the front page of the day’s newspaper to verify the date.  This does mean, however, that we must remove the boat from the US within 6 months.  We cannot bring it back for 6 months or a year (we’re not sure exactly how long).  That’s ok with us since we aren’t planning on staying the US anyway.

So, we have the money, we have a slip at a marina and we have insurance.  And we have our boat. 

We still have to register the boat, so we do not have the rights to the name yet, but we’ve got our fingers crossed that there is no other “The Vortex” out there. 

If all continues well we’ll be heading down to San Diego in early January to start our new lives aboard.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Finding “The Vortex”

Neil and I decided that we wanted an adventure when we retire, rather than just sitting on the couch watching TV.

We thought about getting either an RV or a Motor yacht.  We thought the boat idea was a lot more romantic than an RV.  Plus, we can go further on boat than on land.  Once we settled on getting a boat, we started looking around to get an idea of the cost, etc.

We called a broker down in San Diego whom we connected with immediately.  His name is Tom and the first thing he did was steer us away from a motor yacht.  He said we’d be limited to how far we could go on a tank of gas.  Plus, we’d always have to know where we’d be getting our next fill-up.  And motor yachts, we were told, were not as safe on the ocean as sail boats.  Sail boats are much less likely to capsize.  And wind is free, so overall, the cost of running one would be considerably cheaper than a motor yacht.

Once we decided on a sail boat, we knew we’d have to take some lessons.  Sailing, in our eyes, was much more complicated than just steering a motor yacht.  So we signed up and completed our basic sailing course.  In the meantime, we started looking at boats for sale to get an idea of the size and price range that would work best for us.

We decided to get a large, heavy boat,  mostly for safety and stability reasons.  We spent several months looking at boats for sale on-line with the plan of going to San Diego in October to buy our boat.  It is our intention to take off on our journey in January 2011.

Once we got to San Diego, Tom showed us a few boats that he felt would be good for us considering our experience level and our goal of sailing as much of the world as we wanted.  A big, strong boat would be safest for “blue water” or middle of the ocean voyages.  It is not our intention to sail across any ocean for probably at least a couple of years, but once we do, its good to know we have the right boat for it. 

We found a boat we both fell in love with, almost immediately.  She’s a 45 foot Columbia.  And she’s equipped to go anywhere.  She has storm windows, two GPS units, 7 batteries, 2 generators, a battery-charger, a HAM radio and large refrigeration and freezer units.  She has two stateroom, two heads, two flat panel TVs, a stereo with speaker throughout, a large, fully enclosed cockpit (which also can be opened up), a head sail furler, autopilot, etc. etc.  So, we bought her.  Actually, we made an offer.  Acceptance is in about a month (end of November).

And we’re naming her “The Vortex”.  If you know Abraham-Hicks, this name will be familiar to you.  If not, just know that the vortex is a place of good feelings, where the things you want manifest easily (the place of dreams).

If you are interested in keeping in touch and hearing about our adventures, check back here.  We’ll be providing updates regularly.