Could it be Spring?

Today was the first day that we have seen the sun since we've been back from Florida. The last week has been the typical, grey, damp and freezing to my bones kind of weather. And I'm not sure if it's the weather or allergy season, but my throat is scratchy and chest heavy, ah, so good to be home.

But today it was actually a beautiful day and we managed to get out from under the tress we are swallowed in around here at the house so we could enjoy some of it.

Our first batch of money has been spent, the insurance money from the stolen motor bought us trampoline materials, lifeline stanchions, mattresses, new port and starboard running lights, and a fridge. We managed to make it stretch farther than we had thought which is always nice. 

And for the last few days we have been busily selling stuff we don't/won't need in preparing to downsize and have another batch of money to spend on boat projects, it exciting to see things come together and to be buying final touches, like rugs and storage units.

New port holes in the V birth. Previously there was a chuck of wood epoxied over the openings.

So while we are waiting for all our latest purchases to arrive we are prepping the boat to paint (finally!) I have been waiting for the day that we can completely paint out the interior, and the exterior too. So with Mark is just starting his off rotation today and the sun shining we headed down to the marina. 

It was such a warm day and a long time since the kids have been down there they occupied themselves by playing pirate. Mac was the Captain, barking orders in his most 'Captain Hook' like voice, to his mates. They swabbed the decks (with us repeatedly shouting for them to keep off the windows) and they kept an eye out for other pirates and sharks.

While all the hijinks on the high seas was taking place on deck, Mark managed to replace the port holes in the V berth. It's nice to be able to see outside now and even though it is tinted lexan, it does let in some light.

Mark sealing the new port holes. Flattering angle, I know.

Once the pirate play had been played-out, the kids and I left Mark to start sanding the interior to get ready for painting. We ran errands and hung out at the marina playground, fell off tire swings, hit heads on slides, got smacked in the face with footballs, what can I say? We play rough. Once everyone seemed to be banged  and bruised up enough we decided to call it a day and head home. 

The weather outlook for the week is sunny and might even get up to 80 degrees in a few days, I don't dare to hope too hard, but maybe winter is over and spring has finally come.

Trampoline Saga. Part 1

I don't know how many parts there will be to this saga but I do know it will be more than one. Since we decided to spend some of our insurance money on putting trampolines on SweetHaven we have delved into the plethora of information and options out there on this topic. It's daunting, so many options but which one is right for us? 

It seems to come down to three things:

First, what you want aesthetically.

Second, what you need for safety.

And third, what you can afford financially.

Mark and I both sat down with each our own respective iPads and started googling about trampoline materials. I had one picture in my head, he had another. More often than not Mark and I never have the same visions when it comes to projects, but we do eventually make it all gel when we come together.

Mark heard trampoline and immediately thought of this stuff.

Trampoline mesh. Makes sense. The tightly woven, bouncy material your backyard trampolines have.

And some trimarans do use this stuff, usually the smaller, 12 foot kind though, not the cruising types.

I had envisioned this stuff.

Trampoline mesh, heavy duty. This is what you see on all the big catamarans out there. Fancy, smooth and white, with a bikini clad girl or two, sun bathing on them

I had priced out my material and Mark had the figures for his, of course mine was more expensive. The heavy duty mesh from sailrite.com is $53/yard and requires shelter-rite to go around the edges, grommets to string the rope through plus all the required tools to make grommet holes and so on.

For our needs of two, ten foot by ten foot (approximately) sized tramps, this would cost $600 to complete.

Our budget for trampolines was $700 so we were right at our limit, this estimate didn't include the hardware needed to actually attach it to the boat (mainly because we haven't decided how we are actually going to go about doing that.)

The regular trampoline mesh, with shelter- rite and grommets and so on would have come out to about $300 to complete, half the price but not appropriate for our kind of boat.

The white heavy duty mesh is pretty and popular on catamarans but since that option maxed our budget and since we aren't a cat but a trimaran, we decided to keep looking at what else was out there...

And we discovered net trampolines. Nets seem to be the most popular with trimarans our size. 

I was drawn to the pretty, white mesh options at first because it is nice looking and it is what I've seen the most around, but what looks the best isn't always the best. Safety comes first. 

Upon first purchasing Sweets I downloaded a book The Case for the Cruising Trimaran by Jim Brown, one of the forefathers of the cruising trimarans back in the 70's designing the Searunner trimarans.

In his book he of course, talks a lot about the concern most people have with trimarans, that they can flip, back over front, easier than any other kind of sailboat. And this is something to consider when installing trampolines on a trimaran. You want to have something that is light weight, but of course strong enough to hold you. You want something with small enough holes that your feet don't fall through when stepping on it but you want big enough holes for rapid water drainage. If your bow goes under a wave or has heavy splash up, the added weight on the bow could be a enough to flip her (in extremely rough conditions of course) but this needs to be a consideration.

This safety aspect immediately rules out the regular trampoline mesh, no drainage whatsoever there and for me, this ruled out the white heavy duty mesh too, it may be pretty and strong but the holes were only 1/8inch wide, I didn't feel that was enough.

So with both our original ideas ruled out now we moved on to investigating netting.

As I mentioned this is the most common kind of trampolines seen trimarans so naturally there was a lot of different options in netting too.

Some people we read up on just used fishing net, it was cheap and did the trick but I wanted something a bit more upscale than that, fishing net is rough and bumpy, not something you'd want to suntan on.

A search of trimaran specific netting lead us to what we have dubbed, the Oracle netting.

Ultra Cross, silver dyneema netting, the kind if material the racing trimaran Oracle has for their trampoline. 

Dyneema® is the strongest, lightest weight fiber ever made! Up to 15 times stronger than quality steel; up to 40% stronger than aramid fibers, both on weight for weight basis. 42mm BK designation is the measurement of the diamond when stretched or pulled tight. Single Mesh Breaking Strength is approx 765 Lbs. Twine diameter is approx 1/8in (3.1mm)

 It truly is awesome stuff, 15 times stronger than steel? Sheesh, if it's good enough for the Oracle then it's good enough for me. It met the criterial for looks, for safety but unfortunately not for our pocketbook. To do our two trampolines in this stuff would come out to $3000. No crazy steel like netting for us, I'm afraid.

 

After hours of looking we found a material that fit the bill in all areas. Hockey net. Woven, vinyl netting, 3mm thick cord, 2 inch diameter holes when stretched, breaking strength of 300lbs per strand, perfect. It looks prettier than fishing net, holes big enough for safely draining and cost $300 to outfit our boat. 

The materials have been ordered, next in the trampoline saga will be actually fabricating and installing them. Nothing like having the easy part behind you right?

Re-adjusting.

The whole crew is back together on Whidbey Island. The kids and I had a horrible red eye flight from Orlando last night, hard good byes to Nanny and Baba then 15 hours of traveling. I seem to no longer be an air travel person. I've been 'jet setting' across the country since I was 3 years old but now I find the whole processing completely stressful. Just getting through the security check in my left eye started twitching. I know with threats of terrorism rampant in this day and age, how we got to this point, but it seems we have lost all sense of human decency. I've heard air travel compared to being treated like cattle, but it's more like being treated like slaves. The workers talk to you like your dirt, order you about, strip you of half your clothes... It's atrocious. Next you push and shove with a bunch of other twitchy, pissed off people to get to your stupidly small seat where you remain wedged upright for an interminably long time until you can't feel your legs anymore. Gone are the days of complimentary pillows and blankets, free food and these days you're incredibly lucky if you get a TV in front of your seat, which of course you need to pay for.

Our first flight from Orlando to San Francisco was very bumpy, the poor kids screamed through the first half hour of it. Thankfully they slept for the last few hours before we bounced down to San Francisco and had twenty minutes to dash to the next gate for our jaunt up to Seattle. I think from now on I'll be traveling by land or sea, the air is literally "for the birds."

The kids enjoyed being home, playing with their toys and running around the yard, seeing the neighbour kids again and the priceless moment when they randomly remembered there was a zipline out back, I guess they had forgotten. I on the other hand was battling jet lag and unpacking and organizing the ton of stuff we somehow managed to accumulate down south and trying to fight off the depression of being back in this freezing, dingy place. I had forgotten how this house manages to suck the life right out of me.

After stocking up on groceries we took a trip down to SweetHaven to inspect firsthand all the work Mark had done in our absence. It's exciting to see everything starting to come together and the kids were excited to use the head for the first time (it's the little things in life), and I can finally start to actually picture how it will all come together. There is still so much more work left to do but we are getting there.

Our 'providence provided' funds arrived in the mail today, it is even more strange to us that our broken outboard motor would be stolen and we would get the insurance money for it in less than a week, but here we are and thankful for it. We've decided to put a push on getting the boat livable by the end of May if we can, and we have narrowed down our remaining projects to ones we feel are essential to living aboard. So the next few weeks we have, painting the interior, fabricating and installing trampolines between the forward amas, putting up the lifelines and netting and purchasing mattresses for the cabins.

The weather is still very cold here and the damp wind down by the water just rips through my bones, makes me wish I could blink my eyes and be back in Florida again. It is difficult to get up the energy to go down to the boat and get work done when you just want to stay curled up with a hot tea, but warmer days are on their way. And while we wait for them to get here we are re adjusting to the weather and to the new direction our life is headed.

Ask for a Sign and You May Get Robbed.

Proverbs 16:9- 

The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.

This past week, every time I would FaceTime with Mark back home, he was always the bearer of bad news...

 "Hon, the propane company is on our backs to pay the last bill and the tank is almost empty, we need to come up with another $4000 to fill it"

"Hon, the dryer is broken and is just days shy of being covered under the warranty."

"Hon, the military wants us to pay back hundreds of dollars in pay because you've been out of the State for more than 26 days."

"Hon, the phone company have been charging us extra long distance fees and we are behind in bills."

"Hon, here is a ton of doctor bills that tricare won't cover."

Everyday, it was something else and things started to weigh on my mind. I didn't stress or panic because The Lord has always provided for us and this time was no different. Finally after all this I checked our Canadian bank account and our tax refund had gone in after only a few weeks when we weren't expecting it for months. 

So the credit card is paid off, home school curriculum is bought for next year and our Christmas ski vacation is paid for next year. 

Now that we are able or breathe a little bit easier, we are still faced with some hard decisions to make. 

   For the past 18 months we've been managing to carry the bills on our massive log house, just barely. 

And even though we have managed to weather all these new bills we can't maintain it long term and still do what we want to do.

Now I can hear you saying, "But Becky, you just spent 10 weeks vacationing in Florida." If we can afford that, surely we can handle some bills? 

Firstly, this trip would not have been possible without my grandparents paying for the condo rental, paying for our Disney tickets and essentially feeding us while we have been down here. We are very grateful to my Nanny and Baba for their generosity and we cherish the time we've been able to spend with them before we head back to living a country apart from them.

And secondly, we could continue to live in our house, paying through the nose to heat it and gas money to travel back and forth to the city for work and shopping but we don't want to. Aside from the fact we hate living there, we have plans to live and travel on the boat which we can't save for while maintaining that house.

So, the past few days Mark and I have been trying to figure out a way to get out of the house and move onto the boat sooner than we had planned to. And we were smacked with a million problems. We came around to the solution that we could leave the house empty, shut off the utilities and move into the boat since we can't get out of our lease until the military posts us back to Canada, it seems like the best solution. When I ran the numbers, we could save a lot of money this way. But this scenario has problems too, the boat is not ready to move on to. And we have no money to fix it up fast, our rehab budget has been exhausted and living in our house we have no extra money to spend on it.

The ultimate catch-22.

This brings us to today's 'bad' news from Mark.

When we bought our boat it came with a 10 horse power outboard motor, it had been sitting on its side unused for months so the carberator was gunked up and needed work. For the past six months it has been sitting in garbage can of water in our garage so Mark could try to get it running so we could sell it. 

This morning our marina was having their annual garage sale/swap meet where we had hoped to bring the motor and our oversized water tanks to sell and hopefully get some money to keep working on the boat. We weren't very hopeful, because we have been trying to sell it on craigslist and Facebook for months to no avail and because it wasn't running we couldn't have hoped to get much for it.

Anyway, Mark goes out to the garage this morning to load the motor into the truck and it is gone, someone had stolen it.

Now things get strange. It seems highly improbable that our place could be robbed. We live in the middle of nowhere!

Here is our driveway.

Our front yard . No way you can see us from the road.

What? Can't you see us in there?

All the lovely trees, blah. (Cute bunny though.)

Turning onto our dirt road which dead ends. Only deer here.

We are miles away from town, down a hidden dirt road, on seven acres of densely forested land. People who actually try to find us can barely find us, so it seems impossible that someone would wander onto our property while we weren't home and steal a motor out of our garage.

Here is our garage. Large front doors and a side door.

Now it gets really strange. Our house and garage has been locked up tight for the last two months while we have been gone, Mark came home and opened the side door which he kept unlocked but the front doors were still barred. 

Two days ago the motor was still in its spot when Mark took out the mower to mow the lawn but this morning it was gone.

Strangest of all is why this person took that 100 lb, broken motor and not the brand new, still in its box motor sitting on the floor right in front of it? Or the surf boards on the wall? Or the motorbike? 

None of this makes sense and seems completely impossible.

But as Mark is laying it all out for me, about filing the police report and that we can make an insurance claim on it, I remember the list of numbers I ran last night trying to see how much we would need to get the boat to where we could live on it. I had come up with the figure $2500.00, for lifelines, trampolines, mattresses, fridge, table, etc...

How much will the insurance company reimburse us for that stolen motor? $2600.00

Too strange, too incredible to be a coincidence. 

As much as we have always planned to do this, we have sunk all our savings into this boat and with members in our family being openly opposed to us living on a boat, it's hard not to have doubts. When your mother says it breaks her heart to think of us making our children live on that boat, it's very difficult to stand strong in your convictions. 

I'm not sure if any of our plans are actually going to work out. We may move onto the boat and hate it, but at least then we can say we gave it a shot. 

But I do know God has guided our lives this far, He has always made His will known by definitely closing doors to certain paths and making the way clear for others. And when the exact amount of money needed to get the boat live-aboard ready is so randomly provided, I can't help but see an open door.

16 Tons

You load sixteen tons, what do you get

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

Now that vacation is winding down its time to start preparing to go back to reality, back to Whidbey, back to the woods, back to the dark house and back to bills. Bills, bills, bills, as much as we need money I can't help but hate it so much.

I read all the other cruising blogs and it's beyond me how people/families can just quit their job and sail off. I mean, I get how they can do it, it's what we want to do, but how do they afford it? It always seems to come back to money and every cruiser out there has written posts about money but none of it seems to gel for me. They either work while they are travelling, lucky if you have the kind of skills that allows you to do that, we aren't so lucky. Or they managed to save up an exorbitant amount of money before they left, enough to carry them through years of sailing before they need to stop and reload the kitty again. Nice idea, but we are not savers.

Mark and I have been together for almost 15 years and we have always been behind the eight ball where money and debt is concerned. We always manage to pay our bills and have all the necessities of life plus all the toys and un-necessities we could want and I guess that is why we never seem to get ahead, living from paycheque to paycheque. But the same desire that makes us want to sail away on a boat is the same one that keeps us in debt.

 I've always had this impression of time passing me buy, life is fleeting and we need to do and experience while we can. So we do and experience, we take R.V trips and two months vacations in Florida, put the kids in all the activities they want, throw extravagant parties, etc... And we have enjoyed our life style but if we ever want to actually embark on our sailboat phase of life, things need to change, and that is going to be difficult for us.

While we were away, things got a little 'bumpy' back home. 

Propane prices doubled and stank needing to be filled, doctor bills insurance won't cover, phone company changing our plan without informing us, broken dryer...

To say the least we are feeling the pinch. 

Normally we wouldn't be concerned, just annoyed; but now that we are trying to switch gears from credit cards to savings, we are realizing that we are living beyond our means and if we wish to actually finish the boat refit before we retire then we can't really afford to keep living where we are.

There are so many things I would change if I had my time back. Above is pictured the house we are renting, first impressions it looks amazing. How cool is it to live in a log house? Unfortunately very cool. Being made of logs it isn't air tight, it's barely water tight, as well as being huge it is a pain to heat. Wood, so much wood. I am drowning in wood. Walls, roof, floors, and our property is completely wooded, so dense that what little sunshine we do get can't filter through the trees, this makes our property shady and cool and the house dark and dingy. 

With the propane prices doubled in our area due to the bad winter out east we can't afford to keep heating this huge house and it grates on us to have pour so much money into a place we hate living. Especially when there is water tanks, lifelines, trampolines, depth finder, and a million other boat things to buy.

Lifestyle change is never easy and shifting priorities and making big decisions are facing us, and as I list furniture and things to sell to raise money for boat projects rather than defaulting to the credit cards, it's scary. 

We Look So Welfare.

All the pictures I see of our boat I can't help but thinking she looks so rough. Really hard done by and the type of boat most people would look at and wonder why anyone would buy it. 

All these years while we dreamed of living on a sailboat and spent hours perusing the for sale boats, we'd see the gorgeous boats, smooth and shiny fiberglass hulls, sparkling steel dodgers, clean sails, beautiful teak work interiors, comfy cabins and roomy salons. I look at our 30 year old, home made trimaran that has been damaged detrimentaly more than once and oddly enough, she looks great to me. 

Not saying I don't feel a pang of envy when I walk past the brand new 45 foot benetau down the dock from us but, Sweets is ours. With her chipped paint and soft spot on the deck, her dinged walls and leaky hatches, she's old and damaged, not the prettiest boat in the marina but she's ours. And that makes her special.

When I look at her and see how much work there is to be done I have many doubts about whether we will ever get her to the point where we could live in her, actually feel homey. She's so small comparatively speaking. She's 40 feet long and has a 24 foot beam, 24 foot beam! That must be so roomy, not so. Most of that width is taken up by unlivable ama space and two akas which is livable but only 3 feet high so more like sleepable space. That leaves the main hull, the vaka as our primary living space, and that only has an 11 foot beam, pretty tiny. Not to mention anyone over 5'7 needs to duck to stand up in the head.

Was this the boat I dreamed of living in? No, but that doesn't make it a deal breaker. It'd be nice to downsize and have less needless stuff around, the smaller the boat the less area I need to clean, the kids are still under 4 feet so ceiling height doesn't matter to them and Mark and I who are both 5'8, don't mind ducking. Do I wish we had a shower actually inside the boat? Yes. Do I wish we had pretty wood all shiny and nice? Of course. Do I wish we had the pretty boat that everyone else walks by and feels that pang of envy too? Sure. But we are very good at seeing the potential and I am leaning heavily the faith in our ability to see the potential in his huge fixer upper.

Mark is less worried about our ability to make Sweets a nice boat to live on then I am, and I suppose that is comforting, he has plunged right back into the mountain of projects.

We,ve been having a devil of a time trying to get the hatches and windows at least decently water tight, appearantly that is mission impossible on a boat. Certainly a boat that just has holes cut in the sides with a layer of plexiglass screwed over it.

When we first brought her home, we took all the hatches/windows off and resealed them with silicone and cleaned them all up. This fixed about 80% of the leakage but this window in the starboard aka leaked even worse! sieve-like.

So here is attempt #2 to seal her up. We've removed the plexiglass again, scraped off all the old silicone and sealed around the edges with epoxy putty.

Now on to adhering it back to the boat. We ordered special glue that is used to hold fish tanks and skyscrapers together also some heavy duty butyl tape, if this concotion doesn't keep the water out, nothing will. So here's hoping.

This picture here shows our first 100% completed project. This is the deck iron that the wood stove smoke pipe is attached to, and there is is with a bung to cap it off while not use. Done.

Here is the damaged area in the port side aka, the boys cabin. The hole in the floor has been fixed and now on to the window, oddly enough, this window doesn't leak, but you can see the white parts was the original wood and the bare wood is the new stuff from when it was fixed. Now comes trying to extend the trim around the window as it was in the original design. Basically this is finishing work but this is the last major carpentry work being done inside which means when it is done we can paint! Oh my goodness I can't even tell you how excited I am to paint, it's not pretty, varnished teak but crisp, fresh, white will be just as pretty to me.

Wrapping up.

We had a fun two weeks with Mark down here in Orlando, it was busy that's for sure, a different park everyday, but we swam and got burnt and walked our feet off at Disney world and Universal. We met characters and fought Darth Vader (so awesome) but now Mark is back home in Coupeville, WA and the kids and I are counting down our last ten days here before we follow suit.

 

Mac breathing like Vader.

My pirates.

We are incredible if I do say so myself.

Jedi training academy at Hollywood Studios. So, so cool, if only we were under 12 years old Mark and I would have been up there too.

The wonder and fright of Fantasmic firework show.

Late nights.

After his fun packed time here with us Mark caught a late night flight back to Washington where he caught the shuttle back to Whidbey Island. He didn't arrive until 2am and instead of being a decent person and dropping Mark off right along the highway at the end of our road, the driver refused and went into the town of Coupeville where his scheduled stop is at the gas station. Mark tried to call every taxi company on the island but all went to voice mail, I guess they don't work after 10pm. The driver of the shuttle tried too and when he couldn't get a taxi for Mark either, he shrugged his shoulders and drove off leaving Mark stranded in the middle of the night. With no other recourse Mark started to walk/hitchhike, ten miles back up the highway dragging two 50lb suitcases behind him.

Of course no one would pick him up (another example of that small town, hospitality) so he ended up walking for 3 hours, back up the road, all because the driver wouldn't pull over for two seconds. 

To say the least we were livid that anyone would do something like that. I sent an email to the shuttle company informing them of my disgust with this, while Mark tried to recouperate his poor feet. The company sent me back a snippy comment saying it was against their regulations to stop at non authorized stops and that I had mentioned Mark was dragging two suitcases but had only been booked for one so we should be thankful that they didn't charge us for the second one, that they have us a break. I pretty much lost it then and unleashed my sharp tongued reply through email back to them. In the middle of the night, on Podunk, Whidbey Island there is no reason the bus couldn't have pulled over. How could they leave someone stranded with no recourse? I can't help thinking what if that had been the kids and I? It is their own policy that military members get two free suitcases on their shuttles, so I'm not sure what kind of a 'break' they are talking about... But I guess it's all right as long as they have their arbitrary regulation to hide behind.

Anyway...

Once Mark had a full day of sleeping and recovering he is back down on SweetHaven carrying on with the projects.

When Mark left he was in the middle of running the plumbing on the boat, he had the cold and hot water hoses run through the bilges to the galley sink, the head sink and the hot water heater as well as the city water intake valve set up.

This is our tankless hot water heater, the instructions say it is ventless and can be installed anywhere but I do not feel comfortable having anything that runs on propane inside the cabin. That's why I opted out of having a propane heater and went with the shipmate wood stove for interior heating, we do have a propane stove in the galley but I don't see any other way around that. At least I feel better minimalizing the pipes of propane running through the hull. So we have installed the water heater out in the cockpit on the wall opposite where the galley stove is on the inside. The propane locker will be right underneath it. Also our cockpit shower right there above it.

Under the galley sink we have the water filter and that blue tank is the accumulation tank which goes after the pressure pump. The pump fills the accumulator tank and pressurized the system so that we have 2 gallons of water to use before the pump turns on again, saves wear and tear on your pump and keeps it quieter in the boat with the pump running less.

The new anchor installed.

Work on the port side ama where damage had been done. As I wrote earlier in the blog when we were purchasing the boat, the previous owner had done extensive damage, he had left her sitting at anchor in Port Townsend, when she let off the hook and drifted miles across the harbor and crashed into a navy crane. Which ended up punching a huge hole through the middle of the port ama and into the aka, which was repaired adequately so that she is sea worthy but the finishing work inside was never completed.

The port ama is the boys cabin. Mark is replacing some floor boards where there was still a jagged hole from the crane crash. Also the paneling around the window needs tiddlying up.

So work carries on while the kids and I enjoy our last few days here in the sun, it will be nice to get back home to Mark, but I am dreading head back into our log dungeon, oh I really hate our house. This winter has proven very difficult for us is in trying to maintain such a large house and being made of logs, it actually isn't all that air tight and energy efficient, the propane bills are through the roof. And with all the bad weather back east this year, the west has been shipping propane out that way and as a result the prices have doubled. The high bills and struggling to make it through a season without losing our shirts and all for a house we hate living it. It's making us think about why we are doing it, we might be moving onto the boat sooner than we'd planned.

Amusing Parks.

We are in the middle of full vacationing. Marks time here in Florida is quickly coming to a close, two weeks went by awful fast. We have been on the run since he got here, a different amusement park each day. I gotta say, my feet are starting to feel all this trudging around, so much walking and standing and waiting.

This is how dad gets school done.

Wish I could take a nap in the middle of Disney world.

Cool trident.

Universal Studios.

Met Spider man, the boys are so jealous.

Couldn't track down iron man so I brought my own with me.

But the coolest part for Universal studios for us was all the Popeye stuff. She was such a good Olive Oyl.

Sweet Haven. Our boats namesake.

Swee'Pea, our dinghy.

In front of Popeyes ship.

While us parental units were traipsing around the amusement parks, the kids were home with the grandparental units, pool time and snorkel practice.

Of course we get back early enough to get in on the water fun.

Crazy kid is always wiggling.

Scooby is invading my personal space.

And of course the minute Mark gets to town, the diet goes out the window...

Dinner at Krusty burger. I actually got a wrap from Lisa's treehouse of horror, the food at Krusty burger was a little too life-imitating-art for my taste, their burgers and hot dogs were floating in a heated bucket of water (at least I hope it was water) before they slapped them in a bun, blah.

Mark was brave enough to try one.

When is Hogwarts you need to have some frosty butter beer, it was so good.

Mmmm, forbidden donut.

We carry on with our daily gallop through the amusement parks, we hit Hollywood Studios in Disney tomorrow with the whole crew, a busy day of rides, shows characters greetings and Disney being what is has become these days, I have to plan a day there as much as I would a sailing passage. I've got maps and apps and character and show time schedules and locations. I have our route plotted, our time table worked out, all crew members have been briefed and I as acting captain for the day am ready to take the con and guide us through the day and arrive safely back at our starting point ready to all drop, exhausted into bed.

Throw in some burnt shoulders, sore feet, shopping and ludicrous amounts of money being spent, and you have vacation success, I guess. This is our last time doing the Florida/Disney/amusement park thing, there is so many other places to go and things to do, time to experience some real world, don't get me wrong, the plastic, over commercialized world of Disney is a lot of fun, let's face it, if it wasn't fun there wouldn't be millions of people spending thousands of dollars to go there, but this is my fourth time, my kids second time in the last three years, it's time to move on to new things.