{"id":5451,"date":"2017-06-23T12:36:51","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T12:36:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/?p=5451"},"modified":"2017-06-24T10:50:51","modified_gmt":"2017-06-24T10:50:51","slug":"is-the-great-loop-prep-over-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/?p=5451","title":{"rendered":"Is the Great Loop Prep Over Yet?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Holy crap! In just a few days my wife and I will be moving into our 32 foot cabin cruiser for a whole year. Talk about shaking up your life! I expect nothing less than a life changing experience. Or maybe a life affirming<\/em> experience. That would be cool.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“How does one prepare a 6,500 mile journey around the eastern United States?” you ask. Well for starters, take a year\u00a0leave of absence from your job and\u00a0save up a bunch of money. Easy peasy. Ya right! Easy my ass! It took us five years to get that done. After that, everything else was pretty painless. Oh, we did a few extra things to the boat, but nothing too major,\u00a0a couple of\u00a0new\u00a0shelves, some grab-rails, new goodies for the engines, just stuff we probably would have gotten around to sooner or later. Because we’ve had her for 7 years, Ginger Lee<\/em> is\u00a0already set up for long cruising, which we do every\u00a0Summer, but this is different.\u00a0I suppose during\u00a0a year-long cruise unexpected things could happen,\u00a0but\u00a0since there is no way to plan for that, there’s no sense in worrying about it.<\/p>\n

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Changing out the alternators.<\/p><\/div>\n

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New safety rail that runs the length of the salon.<\/p><\/div>\n

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New tranni oil coolers installed.<\/p><\/div>\n

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More solar panels installed on the hatch covers.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Our 5 solar panels make 13.9 volts and 11 amps! I like the pictogram of a happy battery. It frowns when there is not enough charge.<\/p><\/div>\n

But ya know, I’m excited about this trip\u00a0in spite of\u00a0all its\u00a0unknown factors. Why not shake it up for a while?\u00a0I feel just like I did\u00a0when I was\u00a0a kid waiting for Christmas, worried that I might\u00a0get hit by a bus\u00a0before it all happens.
\nNo! I’m not taking my usual morning walk through the woods. I’ll get\u00a0Lyme’s disease from\u00a0a deer tick for sure. I’ll just walk the streets and the beaches.
\nNo! I won’t ride my bicycle on busy route 6. A hung-over driver\u00a0will surely sideswipe me and knock me into the cranberry bogs where I’ll drown in a foot of water and never be\u00a0seen again. I’ll just stay on the sidewalks and side streets.<\/p>\n

Will the boat be ready? I think so. I mean, she’s floating; the engines start and run; the props turn; the electronics work.\u00a0When you think about it,\u00a0whatever problems come up will be handled where ever we happen to be, same as always, business as usual.\u00a0Just the scenery will be different. Oh, there will be problems, I’m sure of it,\u00a0but we’re not going to Siberia; we’re\u00a0travelling the open waterways of the good ol’\u00a0U. S. of A.,\u00a0where there are plenty of enterprising people ready to make money\u00a0from\u00a0our misfortune. It’s the American way. Yup. If I can’t fix it myself, I’ll be paying big bucks to have somebody else fix it. I can accept that. At least we’ll be under way, and the Great Loop prep will finally be over.<\/p>\n

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Sporting my new buzz cut.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holy crap! In just a few days my wife and I will be moving into our 32 foot cabin cruiser for a whole year. Talk about shaking up your life! I expect nothing less than a life changing experience. Or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2TWzP-1pV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5451"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5491,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5451\/revisions\/5491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rickcoraccio.com\/boat\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}