We Did It!

We moved on board our catamaran! And spoiler alert: Catamaran Life doesn’t suck.

Another thing I’ve done?  Let the blog go for far too long.  As I tend to do, I have SO many ideas to write about, and then get busy – and then get too overwhelmed with all of the ideas and just plain don’t write at all.  

No Worries

Instead of fretting over ALL of those brilliant blog post ideas that are just sitting in my brain gathering dust, I’m just going to start here.  Now.  And let you know what’s happening.  And then, hopefully, I can get back into the swing of updating you weekly.  Wouldn’t that be fun??  It will be for me!

In Case You Missed It:

To be fair, we HAVE done a couple of videos to keep you updated. But in case you haven’t yet subscribed to our YouTube channel, here is a tour of our new-to-us Leopard 38.

We ended up signing a contract on our boat in July – but, you know, Covid was happening. And the boat was in the BVI’s – which are STILL closed, by the way. So we headed up to Maine to explore and visit friends. And ended up having so much fun that we stayed for a month!

After a month, Maine started getting chilly, and we had a 12 year old’s birthday party to hit in Oklahoma, so we headed back west. But not before a brief detour to the Outer Banks, NC for some beach action. We know ourselves; we needed an ocean fix before being land locked again.

Our goal for closing on the boat was Nov 2, 2020. That was officially out of Hurricane Season, so insurance was a little less crazy (but still RIDICULOUS) and we thought for sure Covid 19 restrictions would be over… Ha.

We eventually loaded up the weekend of Nov 14th (sadly, also the same day my niece got married in Alabama, so right off the bat this Catamaran Life has disrupted Family Time. But such is the life of full time travelers) and headed down to St. Thomas. Here’s a video on that adventure as well. Short Story: We finally saw the boat in person, after the Moorings had her brought over from Tortola. We spent two days doing a sea trial and our own inspection (a survey had already been completed) and we decided to move forward with the sale.

Boat Projects

Getting into Catamaran Life has ultimately been an endless cycle of boat projects. We’ve purchased a boat straight out of charter. Well, with a year+ of sitting in Tortola twirling it’s little catamaran thumbs. So, not only was she pretty basic, but she’d been sitting in a boat yard/marina for ages.

In case you remember that far back, our Beneteau was also a Moorings charter boat – but we didn’t purchase her directly from the Moorings. We purchased that boat from the people that bought her from the Moorings. Those lovely people spent three or four seasons cruising her in the Caribbean and had done all of the initial changes one does when coming from charter.

In regards to the boat projects, we are taking all that we learned with six years on our monohull and pouring that straight into Luna Sea #2. (She’s officially named Luna Sea, not Luna Sea 2, just for the record) So along with all of the cleaning and sorting that goes with a boat from charter, we are also moving straight into the major systems.

Watermaker

We absolutely know for certain that we are Watermaker People. While you run into fewer of them now than even just 4 years ago, when we first headed off to the Bahamas, there are still people who think that the cost of a watermaker is not worth it. These people prefer to go to marinas to fill their water tanks whenever they are low. Or use jerry cans to lug the water back to their boats. We are not these people. The freedom that comes with having a watermaker onboard is AMAZING. And worth every penny.

That being said, we did find a way to spend fewer of those pennies and still get exactly what we wanted in a watermaker. Mark did loads of research and we ended up going with a dual membrane Seawater Pro. It’s a high output reverse osmosis watermaker. So instead of the six gallons per hour we made on the monohull, we now make FORTY gallons per hour. Magic.

For more on the watermaker – yep, you guessed it, there’s a video. You can also head over to our Partners Page for an affiliate link. We like the system so freaking much that we became affiliates. (This simply means that if you are buying a system, and you go to Seawater Pro via our link, we get a tiny kickback. It does not affect your cost of the unit.)

Show Me the Power!

Another lesson learned on the monohull: Go big, or, well waste your hard earned money. Specifically in relation to the solar. On the first sailboat, we hopped and skipped our way through crappy flexible panels, on up to cheap semi-rigid and finally landed on the mack daddy of solar panels: LG Neon 360. And we now have three of those bad boys resting on our hard top. Even before our Battle Born Lifepo’s are here (Yes, of course we’re going with lifepo again) we are cranking out the power! It’s crazy. Our LifeLine batteries stay pretty darn full (but are safely regulated by the Victron Solar Controllers that Mark has already installed). So get this – we have virtually unlimited water AND power?!! What magic is this?

Catamaran Life: The Daily

Two months in and I’m still finding things that need to be cleaned. Yep. I feel like I’ve been deep cleaning for two months straight. But really we’ve been doing projects, which are their own sort of mess. But she’s coming along.

Mark is both doing the projects AND working on other people’s boats when a local business needs him – you know, taking full advantage of still technically being in our own country and legally allowed to earn some moolah. And while we wait on our batteries to get here (our last major project is the battery/inverter install) it’s cool that he’s keeping busy.

I’m doing my normal provisioning, cooking healthy meals, exotic bucket laundry, morning yoga, occasional YouTube videos, etc. I’m being rocked to sleep each night by the ocean. I can nap on the trampoline while the laundry dries. And dream of our next adventure, as we decide where to sail off to next. And I’m so happy to be sharing this catamaran life with all of you again.

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