I have some catching up to do.  My grand intentions to start these chronicles years ago resulted in no words on paper or screen.  I meant to capture the essence of our dream building more chronologically.  The boat evaluations, retirement planning, boat buying, refitting – all those pieces of the puzzle that make this a life transition in process.

As it is, I’m going to start this chronicle a bit further along, but with luck and continued blessings, still early in the story.  I’ll catch up with some stories of how we’ve gotten to this point, with no particular nod to chronology.

So where exactly is this point?  We live on our boat in Watergate Marina on Clear Lake, south of Houston, TX.  We’re both still working, wrestling regularly with when to toss the lines and go.  Go where?  The Chesapeake, Great Loop, Caribbean, Cuba, Costa Rica.    Basically we want to make the Northwest quadro-sphere our oyster.

We’ve had Cirila for 9 months now, and have completed some of the simple refit tasks that were on our list.  We still have some big ticket items on our list (vacu-flush heads, stripping teak foredeck), which is one reason why we’re still working.  The other is Ben, our youngest, is still in college.

This week we hope to complete one of our big ticket items – replacing all the pilot house windows.  I’ll blog on that and other projects as they progress, and share other milestones as we move ever closer to cast-off time.

Yes, this is also an undisguised intro – my first foray into blogging and using WordPress.  I’m the captain of the boat, the chief engineer and keeper of its log and blog.  I hope you enjoy our chronicles.

Mike Jeglic

Kk42 “Cirila”