Daily Archives: December 16, 2011

I don’t know why but we felt like we were out here alone. Oh we would talk to a broker, two or three a day, email and phone calls but all we heard were stories and rumors of shoppers. And then it happened. Yesterday as we pulled into a marina I saw a couple, our age, notebooks in hand assessing the yacht we were coming to see. Blurry eyed, with that dazed look, the same look that I expect we have. Awkward at first. Maybe even tense. They were doing a counterclockwise rotation and we were doing a clockwise rotation of Florida. Essentially we’ve rejected the rest of the boats they are going to look at and they’ve rejected all the boats that we are going to see. Like midnight shoppers working from one end of the sale table to the other. Bumping into each other at the middle.
We liked them, although he saw us as competition because he really liked a boat that we were going to see in two hours, and he hadn’t had enough time to lobby his wife. She didn’t like it, he really did.

Marce calls them our Shadow Couple. I can only guess what they call us.

Ever onward.

We saw a boat today that felt like home. Figures it was already sold.

We’ve been out a week and we’re running out of boats to see. If I could take the galley from one, the heads from another, the cockpit from a third and so on, we’d have the perfect boat. But that’s what everyone says. It ain’t easy.

Meanwhile, my brain is starting to overheat. It’s not the boat shopping–that’s the fun part. What’s exhausting is the daily route and schedule planning, deciding the best place to overnight, booking hotels and finding food that’s both cheap and reasonably healthy, all while keeping up with normal home chores like paying bills. If this were a vacation we’d have time for fun, but sadly we drove right past St. Simon’s Island, St. Augustine, Cape Canaveral, the National Navy Seals Museum and many more places we’d love to visit if we weren’t on such a critical mission to find a home.

Every night we review the boats we’ve seen, search for new listings and prep for the next day’s boats. Then, while a hundred thoughts go swirling around in my cranium I catch up with what’s going on in the world and in my circle until I drift off. I leap out of bed every morning certain that we’re late for an appointment.

Now that we’re about to turn west and cross the state, we’re also trying to fit in visits with as many family members as we can, and there are a lot of them. I feel a little guilty because this is such a busy week for most people and here we are blowing down from the north interrupting carefully orchestrated plans. Sorry, everyone, but we hope we see you all the same.

At least it’s finally warmer. I packed our fleece and heavy winter coats in the trunk of the car. And I’m wearing flip flops for the first time today.