2020 - A Good Year For Boating

Many aspects of 2020 were very unprecedented, and there were some big challenges for the world, and for us personally as well, but overall it was a pretty good year for boating. Here is how the year shaped up for us.

January 2020

In January we were full on busy shopping for our yacht. We had our old Trophy 2802 listed for sale, and we were shopping for our next boat. We went to the Seattle Boat show, and toured many boats from Blaine WA to Anacortes WA, and to Gig Harbor. We knew that we wanted around a 50 ft boat, but the selection of available boats in the Pacific Northwest was not so great, so we decided to extend our search to California.

February 2020

The first weekend in February we flew to San Diego California to shop for boats, soak up some sun and just get away for the Washington state weather for a weekend.

While there we viewed about 15 different boats, with several different dealers, and although we didn’t end up buying any of those boats, that really narrowed down our search criteria.

We toured boats from 40ft to 59ft, viewed offshore fishing style boats, ocean going yachts, and a wide variety of different boats.

Once we calculated in the cost of transporting the boat from San Diego to Washington State we realized that we wanted to buy something in the Northwest.

March 2020

On March we decided to purchase the 4788, and the day we actually took ownership was the same day the Governor of Washington State decided to lock down the state with the “Stay Home” to prevent Covid plan.

March was really about getting the boat home and cleaning out all the junk from the previous owners.

Posts from March:

April 2020

April 2020 was really all about getting the boat ready, the world was still reacting to the initial Covid lockdowns, and we weren’t sure where we could stay, so we spent the time getting the boat ready.

The first thing that we ran into was problems with the dinghy, and it took a bit to get DINGY REPAIRED AND RUNNING, but now is runs really well.

We also removed the old name the “Falcon” and replaced it with the new name of Off Leash. We made the NEW VINYL BOAT NAME with our vinyl cutter, and applied it ourselves.

The next upgrade was solar panels since we do not have shore power at our normal “home” dock we needed a way to keep the batteries charged so that the boat would be ready for us to go.

May 2020

May was a busy month for us boating. We had our first 2 trips on the boat, and started finding out more things that were worn out and needed repairs.

Our SHAKEDOWN CRUISE at the start of the month was to Shallow Bay at Sucia Island, followed by another trip to Sucia Island again for MEMORIAL WEEKEND 2020 – TRIP #2.

During the month we installed a NEW HOUSE BATTERY BANK, we added INTERNET ON THE BOAT, fixed the PILOTHOUSE DOORS, added NEW PORT SIDE STARTING BATTERIES, NEW MATTRESSES and a NEW CHAIN FOR A BETTER NIGHTS SLEEP.

A very busy month replacing a number if items that we did not expect to need to replace so soon.

June 2020

In June we had 2 trips on the boat, PREVOST HARBOR – STUART ISLAND – TRIP #3 followed by TRIP #4 – ROCHE HARBOR.

July 2020

We had 2 trips in July, TRIP #6 – KAYAK COVE followed by TRIP #7 – ROCHE HARBOR. In July we also got the remaining batteries and finished EXTENDING THE HOUSE BATTERIES.

August 2020

We did 2 trips in August, TRIP #9 SUCIA ISLAND DAY TRIP, and TRIP #10 DEER HARBOR AND ROCHE HARBOR.

During August we also had to install a NEW FORWARD TOILET, we were able to replace the FLY BRIDGE STEREO AND POWER. To help with some of the stink from the sewage holding tank we installed a new HOLDING TANK VENT FILTER which was perhaps one of the best improvements ever that we did to the boat. We also replaced broken COCKPIT LIGHTING. It was a busy month.