Like any big purchase, there are feelings of excitement along with post-purchase cognitive dissonance (excuse the marketing lingo).
Post Purchase Excitement
Although we had three/four months until our current lease ended, we immediately started planning for the move. Major downsizing would need to occur, which we actually found to be fun and quite liberating. I mean, do we really need 20 knives and forks, three TV’s and 15 pairs of shoes each?
We became avid craigslist and “letgo” sellers, dealing with the whoas of tire-kickers and low-ballers. At one point, we had nearly 75 items for sale on each platform! All proceeds went to the “boat fund jar,” a blue painted mason jar, appropriately fashioned with a sand dollar on the front. In the end, we ended up donating most of the items, trashing some and storing the rest. You can say we have definitely embraced the “Tiny House Living” movement that a number of Millennials have done.
Downsizing was fun, but we were even more excited to transform the smelly, outdated interior of the boat and make it our own pride and joy. Having watched too many HGTV shows, we had lofty plans of changing this, tearing up that, and replacing it with this. But renovations would have to wait until August, because as you know, owning two homes means paying twice the rental amount than usual. — Que the post-purchase whoas!
Post Purchase Whoas
Originally, the guy who sold us the boat was going to stay on it and pay for the slip fees until August, which was perfect for our timeline. Until one day, he decided he’d up and leave at the end of June, giving us 1-weeks notice and leaving without providing the training and overview we had paid him extra to receive.
And just like that we added “AirBnB hosts” to our life’s resume.
Living by the Review
Lucky for us, the boat rented out fairly easily. We had about 20 guests come and stay within a two month time span. The best part, of course, was that the income was enough to pay the slip fees that we hadn’t banked on prior. Success! But, success came with lots of hard work, cleaning, washing sheets and dealing with the guests who somehow happened to always run out of water, complain about wifi, break an arm rest, and back up the forward head’s toilet, twice.
We were living by the review, trying to make sure our guests enjoyed themselves amongst the learning process of things constantly breaking and we not knowing how to fix them yet.
Last But Not Least… The Paperwork
As if dealing with renters wasn’t enough fun, dealing with pesky insurance companies, unresponsive boat vendors and awful marina services was just as delightful. You wouldn’t think it would be that hard for an insurance company to take your money, but since we had little experience on the water and hadn’t owned a boat of this size, we were considered “High Risk” clients.
When we finally found a company who would work with us, we learned we would need to hire a Captain who could sign off that we knew how to operate our vessel, as well as a complete survey – apparently ours was missing a few pages from the previous owner, surprise, surprise! So we added Captain training to our list of upcoming expenses and started researching and dialing previous owners of “Ben’s Play Pen” (the previous name of the boat) to see if they had the missing pages of the survey.
Shout out to the Devine’s and Redmond’s for providing the info they had on Ben’s Play Pen, and sending their best wishes for our future plans with her. We learned she has been down to the Bahamas’ and to the Florida Keys, originally coming south along the Mississippi River from Lake Ozark Missouri.
All this left us scratching our heads wondering, who is “Ben” anyhow?
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Comment by Ray Devine
Ray Devine November 20, 2016 at 9:42 pm
Ahoy! This is Ray Devine and prior owner. We named it Ben’s Play Pen after of our grandson Ben. I can’t tell you how many single women wanted to know who Ben was! Always had a good laugh over it.
We had a wonderful and adventurous experience with her. We Traveled more than 3000 miles, starting in Lake of the Ozarks, MO, trucking her to St. Charles, MO then motoring down the Mississippi River to the Ohio River. We then went up the Ohio river about 90 miles and locked into Kentucky Lake. Southward we traveled stopping overnight at tributaries, coves, little towns and marinas along the way. We started our trip in late October. So waking up, the weather was cool. Typically in the 50’s, totally isolated, fog on the water, with hot chocolate in my mug and the distinct feeling of tranquility, with our new adventures on the horizon. After a lot of turns, locks, and chart plotting later, we made it to Mobile AL. We continued along the inner coastal waterway, through the Florida pan handle, pass all the popular Florida beaches and cities. We made it to Apalachicola, FL our jumping off location to cross over the Gulf of Mexico. I’ll leave it here, because I don’t want to take up all the blog space. I’m sure she will be a fine boat for you. The interior changes are absolutely wonderful. FYI, we sold her to buy the sailing catamaran. We have a 50′ sailing catamaran in the Virgin Islands, please check out our adventures there, and like us on facebook at Devine Sailing, or devinesailing.com.
Sincerely,
Capt. Ray