Good morning all. I joined to harness all the experiences and knowledge this forum has to offer. My wife and I bought our waterfront lot in Oriental,
North Carolina in 2019. The village boasts a population of 850 people, no traffic lights, and over 3,000
boats (mostly sailboats). With great access to the Neuse River and Pamlico Sound, this town is a sailor's dream. In March 2020, I left the Northern Virginia lifestyle and moved to our house full-time until I retired later that summer. My wife, Carole, joined me full-time in 2021.
We own two
boats now. The first is a 2020 WorldCat 230DC "Pandemic Edition". I refer to it as the Pandemic Edition as we took
ownership the weekend that the NC governor was shutting the state down for COVID-19. As
new boat owners, we had a plan for getting help from a friend to help us learn the basics of
boating. Now, with the country shut down we found ourselves with a
boat on a
trailer and have never launched or operated our
boat on our own. So what do you do? YouTube "How to Launch a Boat". It worked and we managed to get the boat in the
water and to our house on our own. Since then we have put over 300 hours on our Cat including an adventure this past June that included over 550 miles in the
Bahamas.
Our latest addition is a 1987 Albin 36
trawler that we purchased in July. We had a thorough
survey done on the Cummins 6BT
engine as well as the boat with the full intention of re-fitting the boat's systems with new technology. The boat's systems screamed the latest and greatest of the 1990s. I started in the
saloon but quickly found myself in the
bilge. After months of
work and some really nasty jobs, we have new black and gray holding
tanks; all new hoses; cleaned and painted
bilge; new
batteries; and the absence of miles of dead wires and old technology. Our plans are bold, but we want a cruiser that will offer us the modern comforts of
extended cruising to
Florida and the
Bahamas in the chilly winters of
North Carolina. I have built a house
battery bank of 1,400 Ah of LFP
batteries. I am designing a full
electrical system using
Victron Energy components to charge the batteries with
solar power as well as the
engine and
shore power. The
galley will be all-electric including an induction cooktop and microwave/convection
oven. To remain connected we will have high-speed
internet using Starlink while on the
water. For our
navigation needs, we will use
Garmin products since that's what we have on our Cat. I joke we bought a $50K boat; are investing $75K into it, and might have a $75K boat in the end.
I'm looking forward to the experiences we can learn from the members of the forum. I'm sure many will consider our venture a little crazy, but that's how we roll.
Cheers!