From the waterway to a lake

So, within two hours of Tom arriving at my brother's house, my brother has Tom out helping him load up his boat so we can all go fishing!

We caught a few smaller fish.  Mainly we just enjoyed the gentle air and watching spring spring up on the banks around us.

You notice the water is not clear where we are fishing, near the headwaters of Beaver Lake in Northwest Arkansas.  It's been raining (and snowing!) a lot, so there's lots of runoff through fields along the river.

The first weekend home, we went up to the Beaver Lake Sailing Club where I'm a member to participate in a work day.   You notice the water here, halfway up the lake toward the dam, is clear and blue.

I can't show it here because I lost the picture in the download, but Tom jumped right in to sailing club life by wading waist-high into the water to help a sailor load his boat onto a trailer.  He also spent a good part of the day consulting with various boat owners on problems with their boats.   He didn't seem to mind, knowing that it wasn't his own problem he was trying to solve.  

We brought my Airstream van up to the club to stay in that night.  So we stayed for dinner and hung out with others around the fire in the fire pit in the pavilion shown above.

As we drove away from club on Sunday, we noticed the dogwoods and redbuds had come out, almost overnight.  Spring is very late this year here.

My brother John and his wife Brenda had put us up at their house for the first 10 days we were here.   And we'd had some good fun with them, cooking for each other and playing cards  in the evenings. But we needed to find somewhere to settle into for April and May while I rented out a couple of houses and we got to some doctor, dentist appointments.    We were just about to check into a sterile-looking, poor reviews, extended stay hotel in Fayetteville when Tom noticed a new ad on Craig's list re a cabin on Beaver Lake.   When Tom called, it turned out the cabin is just around the corner from the sailing club and belongs to friends of mine.  And they wanted to rent the cabin out just for the six weeks we needed before using it themselves for the summer.   So we met them up here today (Monday) to check it out, sign documents and move in.   

This is about an hour back down to Fayetteville where I can drive to as needed.  And we did want to check out properties and living up here to see if we'd ever like to be this far out rather than in town.
We've noticed that being in Fayetteville, (population about 80,000) seems buzzy to us.  We think we'd like to live in a quieter place, with access to larger places.  This will be a good test of if we can do that.

Re Tumbleweed Too, the boat:    the new owner has called Tom several times to talk about how some systems work.  It turns out that they took her outside (into the Atlantic) to get her up to Charleston from Beaufort, planning to sail.  But there was no wind so they motored 12 hours.  Then the motor stopped.  They thought they had run out of fuel.  When they managed to start it again, it worked a little, then died again.  THE TRANSMISSION HAD GONE OUT AGAIN!!!!!

Luckily, the new owner was able to have a new one (one that had been ordered for us if we had needed it) installed in a day  and took the boat on up to his home marina.   He doesn't seem to blame us and no one really knows where the fault lies.   But Tom and I are so glad we didn't have to go through all that again.   

Right now, we're happy just hanging out and watching the the leaves come out.

No pictures, just news

We named our last post "Back to the boat, but not for long.     We meant then that we were going back to Arkansas for six weeks for visits, business and doctor appointments.  We didn't know we were going to give up on our boating adventure altogether.  But we have.

We began to realize that we would just as soon do other things as continue boating north.  So we agreed to try to sell the boat and if she didn't sell by the time we came back from Arkansas, we would go on north, showing her to potential buyers as needed.

So I listed her on sailboatlistings.com and craigslist in Savannah and Charleston.  For three days, no calls.  Then we got four calls in four days and all inquirers came to see her.  Two made offers on her.  We ended up selling to the first couple.  They completed the sale after visiting her twice, having a diver clean and check her bottom, having a survey done and then a sea trial.   The surveyor found some things to be corrected, but not enough to daunt the buyers.    They completed the purchase today.

Two others have inquired about her since the sale.  

We think we got about the right price for her, but it is possible we could have gotten more if we had stayed and had more  people see her.

But we had airline tickets good for this Wednesday and we needed to honor them.  And we didn't want to have to go back just to show the boat some more.   So it worked out that Tom took me to the plane yesterday and he went back to the boat to finish packing our stuff into a rental car and to show the buyer some things on the boat again.  He received the remaining payment in mid afternoon and got in the car and is driving this way.  He had stopped at a motel this evening, and may need to again tomorrow, and should arrive here sometime Saturday.

In the meantime, I'm here at my brother John's and his wife Brenda and we're waiting for him.

Tom and I don't know what we'll do next but we certainly have a lot of options, one of which is not to go live in my house because it is rented out until the fall.  So we have a lot of brainstorming to do.  But almost all of the ideas we come up with, we like, so I think we'll be fine.   I think we both feel a sense of relief that we are free this way again.

As to boat life, it is very pleasant at slow speed.  One nice thing is that people are in close proximity to each other at marinas so you get to have almost immediate neighbors.   But we are realizing that we are not really seeing the places we visit, except the parts by the water.  We do not get to know any place very well in short visits (except those where we stayed when we were  having repairs done.)  Bottom line, we had a turn at it, had some very wonderful and unique experiences and also some disappointing ones.   We are glad we did this, but are looking forward to doing something else.

So . . . . .  this is the end of the Tumbleweed Too blog.
 
Some family and some friends may want to keep up with us after this so I will continue writing this blog, but will change the name a little.  Henceforth, it will be the Trips and Travails of the Tumbleweed Two (being Tom and me.)   Let's hope it is more trips than travails!