Not ours anymore

There's a saying in the boating world, that the happiest days of a boater life is the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it.

This week we closed on the sale of Cat-n-Dogs. I'm thoroughly crushed. I really loved the boat. For a while we thought we might keep her and move her up north where we could do summer vacations cruising the great lakes while wintering inQuest on the gulf and Atlantic. Alas it's not to be.

The new owners are scuba divers and wanted an "outting" boat for long weekends or a couple of weeks of cruising. She'll do that well. She's been vetted.

The last time I took her out was for her sea trial for these buyers. It was just a quick out-and-about kind of cruise in the Sarasota Bay. We took her wide open for about 5 minutes, which should have been fine, but on of the engines overheated. Later we discovered her running gear was fouled with growth (barnacles, worms, whatnot). We had her cleaned up and did another run a couple of weeks later (different pilot, though, not me) which she passed with flying colors.

There there it is, the real end of the blog. She took us on quite an adventure. I hope the next owners have similar experiences.