No Time Like the Present

  We are still asked all the time, "When are you leaving?" I can only name one person that we know is only interested because they actually want to see us gone, but the rest are just curious. I think. Many of you following this blog since it was started last December know that we've been planning this for a couple of years and we are now getting close.
  Our big obstacle currently is the delay of the sale of our condo. When I say "delay", what I really mean is that we flat out cannot sell it. The real estate market has not co-operated with our plans, but when does everything go as smoothly as you want it to? We keep lowering our price, and are still considering leasing it out, but we still have a few weeks to make a final decision. Hope remains eternal that we'll get something going soon.
  The other big item is that the cost of fuel is going up in a big way, but that is not keeping us here. Fuel prices always go up, but now it's got us paying some attention. A friend asked the other day what we were going to do about the high fuel prices. I said "Pay 'em". What else can we do? The way we figure it, we intend to spend most of our time "on the hook", or at anchor. (Notice how the blog address reflects this?) We'll just take longer intervals between travel time. As we've stated, we'll have no schedule, so getting somewhere by a certain time won't be an issue. A simple way to explain this is that if we had decided to travel 60 miles per day and changed our plan to travel 30 miles per day, or 60 miles every other day, we've just halved our fuel cost outlay. If it gets to the point where we can only afford to travel 60 miles every three months, we'll take the engines out and get a mooring ball in Key West. Just kidding.
  As a side note; last week another friend who had just gotten back from the Keys reported diesel at over $8 per gallon, I think just to get my goat. I checked the current diesel price at Conch Harbor Marina the next day and found an acceptable price of $4.82 per gallon.
  I got a call yesterday from Jeff Miller, the new service manager at Bloch Marine at Polestar Harbor. They were starting to sand the bottom of Swing Set and wanted to remove the dinghy and get it out of the way to avoid getting dust debris on it. That was a considerate, but expected call, and since the dinghy was going on a trailer we decided to have some minor engine work done on the Mercury outboard, so a good move all around.
  As far as the leaving part, our friends are making us feel like we will be missed, and it's actually making our decision to take off harder to do. But we'll find a way to overcome our grief about missing our friends, along with this downturn in housing costs and the uptick in fuel prices. We have a few weeks to go, I just hope by the time our departure date arrives, we aren't chased out of town like those townspeople did to Frankenstein's Monster way back when.
  Just a short blog today. I've added some neat features to the blog and wanted our friends to see them. Let me know how the "follow by email" feature works. Scroll down to the bottom and see the most popular posts, along with a soon to be growing list of blogs we are also following.