So! We have decided that our next step is no longer full-time boat living. Our fear is that it would be RVing on the water, and so we have come up with a compromise.
This is a Corsair trimaran.
We hope that this is the compromise we've been searching for. It's big enough that we can spend weekends, or even up to a week, on it. But it's small enough that we could keep it in a marina. One of the issues we had with buying a bigger boat was that you just can't take it everywhere. Bridges might be too low and marinas tend not to accommodate boats of too large a size. And since we had ruled out a monohull, we'd have chosen a catamaran. That would limit us even further in the types of slips we'd be able to use. This way, we can keep it at our own dock. The pontoons on this boat actually fold up and out of the way, so we can use a regular slip at a marina. And if we get a small enough Corsair, it may even be trailer-able. We can take it wherever we'd like to go.
While it's been harder than I'd have thought to let go of our dream of sailing full-time, the benefits clearly outweigh the negatives. We are feeling some pressure to reintroduce the children into some semblance of normal society. They are getting spoiled! And I'm getting nervous that we are missing key components in our homeschooling curriculum. There are also activities that they can not engage in on the move, such as sports and music lessons.
We have been at this for two years, which is 4 times as long as we had planned. We now think it's time to find our home base.
Now. Where might that be? We think we've narrowed it down to either St. Petersburg/Tampa or Savannah/Hilton Head. How things play out over the next year will help determine that decision. Meanwhile, we have plans for the rest of this year and into January of 2019. We'll likely see all of that through before we buy a townhome or house.
We've closed a door, but we are feeling really good about the open windows.
