We were back on course in April. My first trip down to the boat was very productive. I installed a water filter in the galley. No more hauling drinking/cooking water to the boat from home. For 2 days I worked in the pilothouse doing electrical upgrades. One of the upgrades was an automatic anchor light switch unit which included a photoelectric eye - set it and forget it technology . The switch will automatically activate and deactivate the anchor light according to how much light there is outside. I also installed 3 switches to control each windshield wiper independently of each other. Previously, the wipers were controlled through one breaker. When the wipers were turned on, all 3 units would come on, but when they were shut off, the wipers would be out of synchronization, and there was always 1 wiper obstructing your view. Now, each wiper is controlled by a dedicated 3 position switch - momentary on/off/on. This will allow each wiper to be stopped when it reaches its full stroke to either side of the window. No more having to look through wiper blades. We also upgraded the pilothouse from 1 fan to 2 fans. When not in use, the new fans fold up against the overhead console so as not to obstruct your view like the old fan did. The fans will be used to keep the windshields clean (condensation) or to keep the captain cool - especially when the captain is irritated by fools who ignore the rules of the road.
Sharon was very busy while I was on the boat. She started setting up the garage for the moving sale. Sharon's motto for the moving sale is "Everything Must Go - Including Us". How appropriate of a motto is that? Sharon managed to clean out the third bedroom of all the items we had staged in there for the sale. Sharon also cleaned out a large portion of the stuff in the basement. Maybe I should go to the boat more often.
We have decided to have a yard sale day on a Saturday in early May before our housing development has its yard sale day on Memorial Day weekend. Hopefully we can move some stuff on each Saturday. Then in early June our town has a community day, which is a fancy way to say town wide yard sale. This event has a very large draw. Main street is shut down to traffic and vendors set up food and craft booths. A lot of youth groups also set up stands to raise money for their organizations. That will be 3 Saturdays to dispose of our stuff.
The house was put up for sale on April 1st, no not as a April Fools Day joke. Right now we only have a sign in front of the home. We did not do any advertising on the internet or the newspapers yet. We did have some initial interest but things have gotten a little quiet. We hope with the yard sale more people will learn of the home for sale.
Although Friday was very windy, we did manage to spot a red fox on this small cliff about 200 feet from the boat. Note - enlarge photo to see fox in center of photo. On further investigation we discovered she was not alone, she had a litter of 3 pups (or kits) with her. We were entertained for about 3 hours as the 3 pups managed to keep their mom very busy. Despite all their antics she remained a foxy lady.
When we downsized for the first time in 2005, we had an auction service come in to help us get rid of a lot of our stuff. Saturday May 15th is our first of three dates for our yard sale. This will be our first attempt at an yard sale. The above photo shows our stuff staged in the garage for that first Saturday. It looks like we're ready!