Month: February 2018

We bought the sailboat 5 years ago with hopes that it would take us to see the world.  Well…….. Due to work sucking up my time, we only used it on weekends to sail out of the bay to the Ocean, then turn around and come back to our mooring in downtown San Diego.  The boat was actually getting in worse shape due to lack of maintenance.  That needed to change quick because we needed a place to stay in San Diego once the condo was sold and I retired.

There is really 2 things going on:  Replacing the Diesel engine with an electric motor and everything else to make the boat livable.

The sailboat has no fresh water storage, electricity, refrigerator or way to cook.  We removed the water storage tank a few years back because it was old and corroded, but never replaced it.  The oven / stove just doesn’t work.  We got a small solar panel to charge our house batteries, so we can charge our phones and rechargeable lights.  We use bottled water for drinking.

The electric motor conversion started in earnest this January.  I removed the diesel fuel tank, Perkins 4-108 engine and associated stuff.  Since we are on a mooring a few hundred yards from shire, everything must be disassembled to fit in the the dinghy, rowed ashore and then disposed.  Likewise, the new equipment was brought out to the boat a piece at a time in the dinghy including the big solar panels, the arch, 8 AGM batteries, the electric motor and the stuff that goes with it.

When we moved aboard on April first, we brought from the condo what we thought we needed.  Of course, the boat was so packed we could barely move inside.  Slowly we cleaned out storage areas and started to get organized.  We quickly determine that living aboard and trying to get our boat ready to travel the world was going to be a challenge on a mooring.

 

We live in a really cool neighborhood called Liberty Station.  It was converted from an old shuttered Naval Base (NTC – Naval Training Center) in the early 2000’s.  Over the 7 years we lived there, it grew into a little “World” that had everything: Brewery, restaurants, grocery stores, bicycle store, a park, access to the water and much more.  Once you got there from the hellish Southern California traffic, you could park the car and walk or bike everywhere.  Combine that with the most perfect weather in the country and we had everything we wanted.  Life was good!

With retirement coming and the desire to live more carefree life  with more time on our sailboat and with family and friends back on the east coast, we decided to sell our condo.  For the immediate future we will still have our sailboat in San Diego Harbor, so visits will be easy.

We spent a good portion of our free time over the last year prepping for the sale.  We replaced the carpets with hardwood floors, added tiling, changed the kitchen counter tops and painted or stained everything that didn’t move.  We contacted the our good friend Laura, the Realtor that helped us originally purchase the condo, and started the process.  We listed it for sale on a Thursday, had an open house over the weekend and had 10 offers on Monday morning.  Done!  I think Forrest Gump said it best, “One less thing to worry about”, or something like that.

We closed in mid February and rented back from the new owners until the March 31 which happens to be my retirement date.  On to the next problem.