Touch of Class

“What”, you say? “You sold your boat”, you say? Well here is what happened.

We’ve had this boat since 2016 when we moved down here

The boat is now 20 years old. As many of you are boat owners (or car owners, or home owners, or owners of anything that is 20 years old), you know that the older something gets (including ourselves), the more parts wear out (knees, shoulders, hips, trim tabs, electronics), the more things need maintenance (drugs, vitamins, exercise, engine flushes, new zincs) and the more things break (hips, ankles, back, shrinking plumbing, toilets, bow thrusters). Well the boat was needing more and more preventative maintenance. Unfortunately, as they didn’t make many of these types of boats, parts are not very easy to find and SUPER expensive.

Lets not forget that there is not much room to work

and it requires a younger man that is built like a monkey with long arms. Which Gary is not anymore. And some of the major items that were next on the agenda to fix would require the boat to be pulled so the engine could be pulled, and then hoping the monkey that worked on it when we first got it was still there.

So…………we put a few ads on the internet in May. Facebook Market Place, Craigslist and the Albin Boat Owners Group. We received a few interested calls and a few people came out to see her but no takers. As we left for up North this summer, we cancelled all the ads but the Albin Owners Group. We were gone all summer and got back to Florida mid September on a Saturday. That Monday evening, Gary got a call from a guy in Solomons, Maryland. He had been to a Albin owners meet and decided that that was the boat for him. He had seen our ad on the Albin Owners Group and gave Gary a call. After a few questions and a bottom line price, the guy decided he wanted it! Don’t you want to come see it? Nope, you seem like an honest guy. Are you sure you don’t want to come see it? No, I’m sure. Well you’re not getting anything until the money has cleared our bank.

Well little miss doubting Thomas who doesn’t trust anyone, was having a very hard time believing someone would shell out money for something they had never even seen. Those pictures could be 15 years old! The motor could be blown! There could be hole in the hull! It could of sunk in the hurricane! We know what it is like to look at pictures of a boat on the internet, think, WOW, this could be the one, only to be disappointed when the boat turns out to be a piece of crap. Well, at least that isn’t the case in this situation, but still…..

I proceeded to type up a purchase agreement and a few other documents. The buyer kept wanting me to send him the “title” to the boat. I’d tell him, as soon as the money is in the bank, you’ll get the “title”. I sent him off the purchase agreement, he signed it and sent it back. He then asked for pictures of the boat from today. Ok, the guy has some smarts. That was on Tuesday. So I sent him the wiring instructions and pictures of the boat.

By Wednesday noon, we had the money in our bank! Holy hoot! This is really happening. I next day aired him the “title” to the boat, some other perinate information and a key to the boat.

Gary, being the guy that he is, couldn’t hand over a dirty boat, so he washed it on Thursday. He also threw in some extra stuff. The back canvases, boat manuals, his maintenance log and he even thru in these

Anyone know what these are and what they are for? Gary is always thinking out side of the box. These are the bottoms of Metamucil containers. He cut them so that they would fit over the red and green running lights. It kept them from fading out in the intense Florida sun. What a thinker, huh?

Friday morning came and Gary delivered the boat to Marine Max to a transport for delivery to Maryland

And we left her in capable hands.

The new guy was so excited to have the boat. He sent us a bunch of pictures

And by Monday, it had arrived at it’s new home.

We hope he enjoys her as much as we did. Now we are on the search for a new boat and new adventures.

Our last place to camp was Pine Point in Holcombe Wisconsin. These sites were much flatter and one even had a dock.

I would appreciate it if someone can tell me what the heck that is for? A marker for the dock? An octopuses glove? A fickle finger of fate?

Again, we went with daughter

Brother,

And us

And our fearless camp dog. They talk about a dogs life…..this one has it made in the shade.

Now we are going to have a mycology questions. The first is…who knows what mycology means? No, it has nothing to do with collies or colons. It is the study of fungus or mushrooms. Now the next questions is

When is the last time you have seen a red mushroom?

This is called a Russula mushroom and according to Mr. Google. The taste is very hot, spicy and acrid. Not that I ate them or anything

The lake were were on was busy, but then again, it was Labor Day weekend.

We had a beautiful sunset

or is it a sun rise? Awful hard to tell sometimes.

And another colorful camp fire

It was a great summer all around and I leave you with this last question…..what the heck is this guy wearing to eat at The Pancake House?

And do you think he is naked under it?

We haven’t been to Totagatic Campground located in Minong, WI since 2021. We went with my brother, his wife, two dogs and two cats and my daughter and her husband, two kids, one dog and a boat. Lots of people, pets and fun.

We traveled with my brother and his wife leaving from their house. Of course the first logical stop was

Man! I haven’t been there in years. Packed as usual and always delicious.

We made it to our campsites with no problems. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a flat spot to be found. So, when your camping, you have to improvise some times

The first night we had a nice campfire. And thanks to BearTrax, we had a really cool campfire

Brought back memories of when I was a kid and we used to burn our Christmas tree in the fire place. My did used to sprinkle on this magic dust and made the fire turn colors. Such a good memory.

We had chocolate chip cookies as a treat that night. I regret to say, someone left them out and we woke up to this.

Hey! Get your grubby little paws off my cookies! Needless to say we shooed him away then we surveyed the damage. There was a small piece of a cookie with teeth marks in it so we decided we’d let him have that one. Didn’t take him long

He seemed to enjoy it so much, we gave him another one.

That little guy was able to jump down from the table and drag the cookie away. I bet he had some grateful family and friends…..assuming he shared. And all under the watchful eye of the camp dog

As we left the sub tour and headed back into the museum, we came across this sign

Well some kids don’t know how to read so this must be for the parents that tell their kids “Go play on the train tracks!”

This museum was really cool, so for those of you not into it, see you next post

Here’s a bunch of pictures from inside the museum

“Do Not Touch”…..that would be a real problem trying to push that back into place if the “turtle” ended up on it’s back.

So they had this model of this submarine. A pretty big one. My question is why do they have all the men running around in their underwear????

I bet they don’t do that on a real sub.

Look at this classy silverware

It’s even engraed!

Here’s Gary wishing he could take this to the shooting range

There was lots to see and read. A good stop in my book. Now back to a few camping trips before we head home.

We were wondering what to do our last full day. Gary found out that the Submarine Force Museum was just down the road and they had the Nautilus, one of the first subs that was built. Guess were we went?

These circles represent the size of the submarines yesterday and today. The Nautilus is the inter circle.

So for you submarine geeks, here are some pictures from the place.

This is the Nautilus. We got to go inside. Luckily we were really early so we had the whole sub to ourselves!

You better hope with these close quarters they don’t feed the men beans for dinner.

Look! They have a squatty potty bar!

We even had to walk thru these short narrow hatches. This gives you some idea of how short and narrow there were. Can you imagine being in a hurry and trying to run thru these without tripping or smacking your head?

While we were looking around, we could hear some voices coming up behind us. 4 submariners were taking the tour too. I asked them if they worked on a submarine. One guy was well over 6 feet and his head nearly touched the ceiling. They said they did but the subs of today were much bigger. As they passed us I could hear them chuckle about the differences in this sub and the one they live in today.

That’s a pretty good size galley. Looks like the one in my house in Minnesota, except not so much chrome.

Well, that was it for the sub tour, now we go inside and see the museum.

We have a friend that lives on Long Island NY and when she heard we were coming to Mystic, she said we should take the ferry across and come visit her. A ferry ride….hmmmm, sounded like a fun! So we jumped on that.

We had never been on a ferry with a car before. We did a practice run the day before we left so we could figure out where to go. Don’t want to miss the boat.

Our ticket was for 8:00 AM and the website said to arrive 1/2 an hour early. Of course knowing us, we were there 45 minutes early. When we checked in, the guy asked us if we wanted to hop on the 7:30 ferry, we said heck yah!

After you drive on (and there are people there telling you EXACTLY were to park your car, we had to avoid being over a manhole), you lock up your car and go above deck where the coffee and treats are.

We had to check out the scenery and the boat before we got some coffee.

Wow, look at this one

This is incase the Captain wants to go skiing

I figured we were doing pretty good until I saw this on the aft deck

I hope that is not filled with explosives…I think we might be ok. If you zoom in you’ll see a lunch box. No one is going to blow up their lunch

That ship looks like they open the nose of the boat to let the cars out

I had to ask Gary about this place

Electric boat? This is a big and impressive building to be building electric boats out of. I didn’t think they were that popular. Here is an example of what they build

Oh…that kind of electric boat. One of those would be cool to tour.

We went inside to get some coffee and get out of the wind. It was a little bit of a bumpy ride but nothing us seasoned sea farers couldn’t handle. After we had our coffee, Gary found us a spot toward the front of the boat. As we got closer to the front, we could hear car horns going off. Ahhhh, I bet it is like an earth quake to the cars, every time the ship hit a wave hard it set off the alarms. As I am listening I wondered if one of the cars was ours. Gary pressed the “open” button on the key fob and one of the cars went silent, must have been ours! Then the horn started again….and again….and again. OMG, does this happen on every ride. It must drive the people that work on the boat nuts.

We saw a few lighthouses on the way over

This doesn’t look in very good shape. Let’s see that one close up.

Tough shape but there is a chair and plants in pots. I wonder if someone lives on it? Now THAT would be a cool Airbnb to stay at.

And look at the houses we saw

A house that serves as a light house too.

That is quite the place. I bet their view is phenomenal. And plenty of places to park your car.

Now that’s a place ready for high tide.

I saw this house in the distance and wondered why it was so pink so I used my zoom to get a better look.

That looks like it was a total gut job. I bet it’ll be something when it’s all done.

When we got to long island we were very early to meet our friend so we just drove around and checked out the island. There were a bunch of vineyards on that end of the island, too bad they were all closed. Maybe they make wine for Makers Mark too

We ended up meeting up with our friend in Greenport, CT at a restaurant by the water, quite a distance from her actual house. Turns out she was at a retreat for the Electrical Union. Her husband belonged to the union so she could go to these retreats which they held a few times a year. Now these retreats were held on properties that were like resorts…..right on the ocean! Talk about a sweet gig. And they used to have two of them on the ocean that the union owned. That’s a good investment for your union dues.

We spent a few hours chit chattin with her but she had to get back to her retreat. We figured we had seen as much as we wanted to of that place, so we thought we’d head to the ferry dock and see if we could hitch a ride back early. Our return ticket was for 6:00. So when we got to the dock at about 2:15 (the ferry was taking off at 2:30), the guy said we could wait in the standby spot by the orange cones.

He was pretty sure we’d get on. I hope so, look at the line of cars. I found out that the way they load this ship is cars drive on and then they raise the floor so more cars can get on underneath them. They ended up with 3 levels of cars on each side. Finally, the guy started picking up the cones and told us to follow that boat onto the boat

So we did! I feel like this ride was a much tighter squeeze. They sure know how to pack the cars and trucks on board. No Unabomber’s this time, so I knew we’d have a safe trip.

We had a much smoother ride on the way back but that didn’t stop the horns from going off.

I snagged a seat out side. The lady I sat next to heard me comment about the horns going off. She said it happens every time. She then proceeded to put in ear plugs. Now THAT’s a seasoned ferry rider. And yes, our horn did go off, but this time, only once.

We didn’t have to drive far. It was a lot bigger than I thought when I saw the buildings on the road. And guess what? It was an actual VILLAGE!

On the way in, I saw this weird looking tree

The leaves and branches are so tight together, I bet you could stand under it in a deluge of rain and not even get wet.

After we paid our admittance fee we saw that they had some boats tied up that were definitely not of the 1800 vintage. We saw a Navigator

They had this large room with some art work and this really cool mural on it

It had lots of interesting little item depicted in it. Gary thought the art work was a waste of space that could of been better utilized with boating stuff.

So we went outside again and found this old whaling boat that we went on

They had the crew giving a demonstration of letting out the sails

Geez Wheez! No way Jose would I be hanging off that mast.

Down below you can see how little head room they had

They were either very short people or they wanted to save the room in the ship for whale parts.

Here are the sleeping quarters

There was a fire ship but unfortunately, they never let anyone one…..at least when we were looking, cause I really wanted to go on that one.

They had another ship we went on where the people that worked in the village actually sleep for the summer

At least they had a way to defend themselves if their ship was overtaken by tourist

They’d blow a hole in their transom if they shot it in that position. And it’s all anchored down, that won’t work well for protection.

Look at the size of that wench though. Just think of the size of the anchor!

It did have an unusual figurehead on the bow

The last ship we saw looked like a giant catapillar

They were working to restore this ship. All wood. I looked around for the travel lift they must of used to pull this bad boy out. Here’s how they did it.

They have their own working shops in this village to get all the pieces done to repair the ship. A wood working place, a black smith, a pully place,

a rope place,

a guy said they would have a building 1000 feet long so they could make ropes at 1000 feet because the weakest point of a rope is if you have to tie two together.

They had a building that made the name plaques for the boats, a place where they had the figureheads displayed

We were able to take a peek in the ship to see how far they were with the work

I bet that fire extinguisher is not from the 1800’s.

A guy told us by the time they are done restoring that ship, there will only be about 10% of the original ship left. Apparently all those tall ships are the same way, when they get restored, there is only a very small percentage of the original ship left. Probably the metal parts, I am sure they hold up better than the wood.

We saw some other cool stuff, like a pot for melting down the whale blubber

An old harpoon

All in all it was fun but I guess Gary was a little disappointed, he thought there would be more boats we could of gone on. At least we can cross that off his bucket list.

Tomorrow we’ll be on one of these

Heading to Long Island NY.

I was just fooling you about going to Boston. All we did was fly in there and rent a car and get the heck out of there. We had already visited Boston many moons ago when we went to see boat show out there.

So we flew into Boston, rented this cool car, can you guess what it is?

We didn’t stay in the camper but we did wonder about the sign and where THEY went camping.

Here’s where we stayed

We rented thru Airbnb. This was located above their 3 car garage and was reported as being at a vineyard. One of the reviews said they got a free bottle of wine. I was looking forward to having a locally grown and bottled bottle of wine too

At least it was a good year….oh wait, that was the year COVID started. We better not drink that!

The grape vines were wrapped around our deck

They look good enough to eat

I guess looks can be deceiving. Gary picked one chewed it, then spit it off the deck. Looks like it needs to ripen on the vine some more!

Gary always said when he got out east he was going to stuff himself with lobster. So the first day we drove around Mystic and found a seafood restaurant that had a lot of cars in the parking lot. That usually means it’s good, doesn’t it?

I left my fork on the plate so you could see a size comparison, and no, that is not a Paul Bunyan fork. So for $32 you got this small dish of food. 2 pieces of shrimp, 2 scallops and the rest stuffing. The green beans were not even cooked through. We had to stop at McDonald’s after leaving so we weren’t hungry any more. I guess that will teach us not to go to a restaurant where the cars all have out of state license plates on them.

Our next attempt at a $32 meal was

That is a lobster roll on a very small bun. Gary would of preferred a little butter or something on the lobster. And it actually looks more like crab meat to me. So much for stuffing yourself till you’re full. I don’t think we can afford it.

We are off to check out the Mystic Seaport Village……

Gary and I went back to Pokegama Campground, which is run by the Army Corp of Engineers. We like those camp sites because they are always by water, they are well maintained and they are cheap. $39 for 3 nights. We use Gary’s Golden Pass for the Federal parks. Well worth the price.

So this year we bought a Minnesota fishing license.

Seeing as there was no action at the dock, it was

I’m not much of a fish eater anyway, unless it is the expensive stuff

We enjoyed our nice quiet drink around the campfire

Unlike our next trip to Lamb’s Resort where there was a whole brood of people

Lamb’s is on lake Superior and you can tell by the clothing that it was a little chilly. Gary refused to put on jeans but he would consent to a jacket. Now that he lives in Florida he can hardly bring himself to wear jeans anymore. Not me, I prefer to be nice and warm

The lake was as beautiful as ever

My daughter bought us ladies all matching camping shirts with a picture of our campers on them.

One day we had a silly string fight

Then we made a deal with the kids, who ever picked up the most Silly String got extra quarters for the arcade room. Aren’t we smart! I supervised to make sure we got our monies worth. See, us old people still know how to get those children to clean up.

After the quarters were all gone, we keep everyone busy with a game of Chicken Foot

We played this game with our kids on the beach when they were about this old.

We had a visitor to our camp site. First time someone of his caliber has shown up.

That is the downside about camping, it is all the creepy crawly flyie nature stuff that hangs around the camp sites, the trails and the toilets. It is always interesting what weird nature things you see along the way. As long as they don’t bite me or try to craw up my pant leg, I’m ok with them visiting.

Speaking of weird nature, take a look at this birch tree. Is it sheading it’s bark? Is it having a growth spurt and is sheading it’s bark, like a snake? Did a bear come along and shred it? Or did a human come along with a knife and drag it down the trunk? We will never know.

Later in the trip, the youngins showed their grandpa how fishing is supposed to be done

Maybe Gary could take some tips from this fellow.

We had another good trip to Lamb’s, now Gary and I will be off to our trip to Boston!

P.S. I really knew the river wasn’t the Mississippi but I was just testing all you guys. For those of you that believe everything I write as gospel, that river was the Missouri. (Or so I’ve been told)

Our little buddy Smokey had something happen to his back right leg and left hip. Not sure if it was cancer or what but it just gave out on him very suddenly. He took his last ride with us to the vet on June 28th. So here’s a tribute to our favorite and well traveled cat of 17 years.

We bought this soft sided cat carrier but unfortunately he figured out how to stick his paw out the top and pull the zipper back. Next thing you know he was out of that in a flash.

We also used this technique to try to sneak him into a hotel room. Unfortunately, as Gary was carrying him to our hotel room, he passed someone in the hall, the cat starts meowing. Gary, the quick thinker that he is, starts singing hoping to cover up the meowing.

Another hotel that we snuck him into, he goes behind the curtain so he can look out the window. Who is right outside the window? The guy from the front desk who checked us in is now right outside our window pulling weeds. Geez Smokey, trying to get us kicked out?

This was his favorite spot on the boat when Gary would start the engines. He’d be up by us one minute and then tearing down the stairs another moment to his hiding spot. I guess this is better than my daughter’s shelty. That dog pooped right on the engine hatch of the ChrisCraft when Gary started up those engines. I guess they don’t call it the poop deck for nothing.

After the boat would be running for a while, Smokey would come up and look out the screen door.

Smokey never liked me to pick him up and hold him. But he’d come running when I’d shake his treat bag.

Smokey loved his naps.

Smokey had a favorite toy. It was a ball that looked like a leopard. He’d loose that thing so many times under furniture. Here Gary is digging it out for him from under the couch. We ended up putting a beach noodle in the front and side so he couldn’t shoot the ball under the couch anymore.

We will certainly miss you my little buddy. You were the best cat that acted like a dog that a person could hope for.

RIP Smokey