I started my blog only a few years ago, and there are lots of things I haven't posted about that happened pre-blog. So, I think I am going to start getting them down for you, but mostly for us.
When we moved to Houston, Texas in 2006, I was three months pregnant with Sophie. (That move will be a whole different post) We moved in with Chris' sister Nicole and her two kids Christian and Maddy. The house belonged to Chris' grandfather, who was a doctor. We stayed in the part of the house that had been converted to his office.
Well, pretty soon after Chris started his new job, he realized that he wasn't going to like it. And we can laugh about it now, but he kind of had a mid-life crisis (He's been told he's only allowed one per life) and decided to buy a sail boat on Ebay. Chris has spent a week on a sailboat on some lake in Texas growing up with scouts I think and thought he would like to get into it. The auction for the boat he was looking at ended during the day so Chris was at work. He asked me to put in a set amount with a minute left. I did, but it was already outbid. I should have just lied and said sorry hun, we didn't win. But we tried a few more bids and we won this beauty:
The Ragamuffin. Very cool and very piratey, but very worn out and very far away (Florida). We were going to rename it Got booty? Get it? Anyway, it was trucked over from there to here on a truck and I met it at some shipyard, very pregnant. It was supposed to be an investment/flip opportunity.
We took her out on her maiden voyage when I was 8 1/2 months pregnant. I can't remember all the details now, but on our way back into our slip, the Jib sail thingy broke, which meant instead of the sail at the front of the boat being nice and wrapped up, it was beginning to unfurl in the wind, causing us to go faster than we wanted. Not to mention it was whipping around something fierce. So we make out last turn into our slip and something breaks with the rudder or the engine or the throttle. Basically, the boat got stuck in forward and he couldn't get it into neutral or back it up. We might have hit another boat during all this. He ran down to where the engine was to try to fix it and I waddled off to look for able bodied men. I found one or two and Chris got it fixed or turned off and we got her back home in her slip. Could have been worse, and we tried to count our blessings on the way home.
We took her out two more times with a baby Sophie and Chris' parents.( I know I have pics somewhere) It was fun being out on the water. It was scary thinking about getting her back in the slip. It made me nervous. Chris spent lots of time at West Marine and learned a lot about his boat. We sold it on Ebay before we left for Montana. A hurricane came a year or two later. We had it assessed at $25, 000. (Don't worry, we didn't buy it for that) And we wonder if we had hung on to it, would it have been destroyed in the hurricane and would have had a nice fat check mailed to us?
2 comments:
Ah, the sailboat. Dave and I were pretty lucky to go out on it once. It was an expereince! Such good times while we (breifly) both lived in Houston.
I think the first time I met everyone Chris wanted to take Brian to see it, but they never did. Brian always talks about spending summers fishing on a lake with his Grandpa.
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