From: "Mr Potatohead"

Glad to see you're still pursuing your dream, Skip. All the Fieros
gone? I haven't been following the newsgroup lately and haven't seen
much of what you are doing. I'm in Florida on the other coast just
south of Jacksonville. If I get a west coast cruise going to St Pete --
and I might -- I will try and find you and Lydia.
Otherwise, suffice it to say that I might be getting a 28 foot sailboat
up north to see if I enjoy it as much as you do. Then who knows?? I do
plan on being at the Alabama Swap Meet this year, as usual.

Fred Clarke



Hiya, Tater!!

Nice to see you in atl.general - what'd you do, google me?

Yes, we're actively pursuing; my rehab is going well, I'm going back to
the boat on 2-15 for a couple weeks to flog the slaves and get some
dedicated work in, hoping that the remainder when Lydia and I actually
step aboard will only be the hoped-for 30 days of tying up the loose
ends before splash and seatrials before making the dash to the Bahamas
to meet the tax-shelter (no sales tax paid) rules of being out of the
state in 20 days or less.

My two remaining Fieros are still for sale; for the gory details you
can go to gafiero.com and look for "2 for sale" in the forum, or to
Fiero.nl and the for-sale forum there. However, they're both daily
driven, the van being reserved for boatyard transport and hauling
duties.

That's because we aren't in St. Pete, and aside from the smallish time
we hope to have to devote to the end, we won't be there very long once
we head down. Aside from local bay-running to shake out the stuff
which was done, and wait for the weather window for the Stream
crossing, we'll not be in the water. We're still in the tiny cottage
(under 300SF) which has proven a great training ground for us, with our
never having lived together before I moved here in early October. The
boat will be less space for any given function of what we have at the
cottage, but has more separable spaces to allow us to get away from
each other if needed (too much togetherness is one of the major reasons
intended full-time, rest-of-their-lives cruises fail), and, due to our
having done custom berth cushions which duplicate Tempur-Pedic
mattresses, it's actually a lot more comfortable than "home" here in
the mountains.

So, we're very close, in terms of the time from when we started, and
the end is in sight, though we don't yet have any certainty of when it
will be. Need to sell the Fieros, and while we'd prefer to have two
cars right up to the end, if it came to that, we'd sell both of them
before we left. The van we expect to sell in St. Pete, or failing
that, give it to either our uncle (the one essentially responsible for
our being together) or one of the kids (4 from each of our first
marriages).

Y'all come see us some time; likely we'll have gone by the time of the
swap meet - which I think I saw Ed saying was perhaps going to be
called something else this year?

L8R

Skip and Lydia

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
http://tinyurl.com/384p2 The vessel as Tehamana, as we bought her

"Believe me, my young friend, there is *nothing*-absolutely
nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing,
messing-about-in-boats; messing about in boats-or *with* boats.
In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter,
that's the charm of it.
Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your
destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never
get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in
particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to
do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."