Not Just Another Day

We arrived back to Daytona Beach after a very nice, but very fast week home in New York. Again, I spent time with my daughters and Warren with his, we like it that way. We always feel bad because we can’t visit a lot of friends in such a short time. We do apologize that we didn’t get a chance to visit, but things are about to change. Why? To answer that question, I need to go back about a week.

Warren was getting nervous about being a 2 boat owner, since our new boat is going to arrive in June, so we decided to go to a boat broker at the Halifax Harbor Marina and give him our boat to sell. Don Jackson, the broker came over and took photos of the Pepi and posted it in “Yacht World” a publication on the web. We arrived back from New York, ready to leave Daytona the next day when we received a phone call from Don.

“I have someone very interested in your boat, can you stay an extra day?”

Our month stay was coming to an end and each extra day is more money so Warren asked Don, “Is he a tire-kicker?” I guess that is a term people use to get onboard and be nosey with no intentions in buying.

Don said, “He is very interested, he is going to drive up from Jupitar, 3 hours away, with his checkbook!” Well, we decided to stay an extra day and wait for the prospective buyer to check out our boat. We left it up to Don and went for a walk. When we arrived back to the boat, there were 2 men checking out Pepi. They seemed to like the boat and told us, “Thank you for staying the extra day, we will think about it and give Don a call”. What does that mean? Is he breaking out his checkbook? We didn’t want to wait to see his next move, we had been here a month and wanted to move on. The next morning we left Daytona Beach. Our next stop, St. Augustine. After a full day of boating, we finally anchored the boat outside of the city, when the phone rang and it was Don Jackson.

“He’s wants to buy the boat!” Don sounded excited.

“Are you sure?” Warren asked.

Needless to say, we got up early in the morning and turned around to go back to Daytona Beach to sell our boat.

We pulled into our same spot and after reconnecting all the lines and electric, Don came over with the contract to sign. He thinks the survey and sea trial will happen this Wednesday and Pepi will then have a new owner, Cliff.

While we were signing the contract, Don invited us out to dinner with his wife, Judy to celebrate the signing of the contract. Perfect timing, since today is my 54th birthday, we were going to go out anyways, so we told them the more the better. At the same time, the harbormaster, Bob came by to say hi and wanted to have a beer with us to celebrate the selling of the boat also. Wow, this is really becoming quite a party! So later that night we all drove to this local family owned restaurant, Lobster Pot. Don suggested this place known for their frog legs and other various creatures! We had a great dinner, a lot of laughs and were happy to share time with our new friends, Don, Judy, Bob and Evelyn.

“What is your next step after you sell the boat?” Bob asked us. That is a good question, since now we don’t have a car, home or boat, and Reuben Trane emailed us today to tell us he just returned from China and our new boat is not going to be ready in June. “We really don’t know what we are going to do, we still have a few days to think about it” Warren said.

We have a few choices, we could buy a car and go back to NY, rent an apartment. We could go to New Zealand for a few months and spend time with my brother. We could buy a camper and go cross country. We could even go to China and watch our boat being built. We got an offer from our friend Cathy, from “Cathy’s Boat and Breakfast” that we could stay at her home in St. Petersburg. My daughter, Paula had a great idea, she said, “What about a sublet in the city?” So I went on craigs list and found a sublet in Manhattan to rent. A young girl who works for a television network is going back home for the summer and wants to sublet her apartment. Perfect, we always wanted to live in the city, we will never get bored and you don’t need a car. Hopefully our boat will be ready by the end of July, the timing may be just about right.

I called Tiffany, and it looks like it could be our next adventure. I told her after we meet Cliff, the man who will buy “Pepi”, we would give her a call and make arrangements to meet with her in New York.

A nice man on the dock, Art just stopped by and brought me a piece of carrot cake that he made from scratch. He heard it was my birthday. The folks here are so nice!

Everyday another choice to be made, life keeps coming at you and you need to be open to it. Warren and I are very flexible and we love not knowing what tomorrow brings, but today is definitely, Not Just Another Day! It is my birthday.