Saying Goodbye To Tickety Boo | A Sad Farewell To Our Moody 346 Sailboat

Yep, it's true. We're saying goodbye to Tickety Boo, our Moody 346 sailboat. It's a very sad farewell on our part. This isn't the way we thought our future would be unfolding, that's for sure.

You might remember that about a year ago, we hauled Tickety Boo out at Indiantown Marina in Florida to check her bottom. We had leak in the bilge by the compression post which was discovered during a rigging inspection. Once the boat was out of the water, you could see that Tickety Boo had a crack in her hull by the keel stub - a pretty serious issue.

That put an immediate halt to our plans to head to the Bahamas. Instead, we headed to the workyard for repairs with the hope that we'd be back out on the water in no time.

Things didn't turn out as we hoped. We spent all of last year trying to get things sorted. The insurance process took a while to work through. Once that was finished, we lined someone up to fix Tickety Boo.

All good, right?

Nope. He bailed on us.

Then we lined someone else up. He flaked out on us.

Then we lined another person up. Yep, you guessed it . . . that didn't work out either.

Turns out it isn't easy to get someone experienced and reliable to fix your boat.

We toyed with the idea of fixing it ourselves, but decided it wasn't a project that we wanted to take on.

There we were - stuck with a broken boat that we couldn't get fixed and faced with a tough decision. An emotional roller coaster ride ensued. What to do, what to do . . . indecision took over our lives for quite a while.

By the time the end of 2019 was nearing, we were no further forward. In fact, it felt like we had moved backward. Because we wanted to make sure that we could get our boat fixed, we had put all our other boat projects on hold last year. So even if we could have managed to find someone to fix Tickety Boo in the end, we'd still have lots of other work to do on her.

Finally, we said enough is enough and we made the tough decision to say goodbye to our sweet little sailboat. Life is for living and hanging around on a broken boat in a workyard isn't our idea of living.

We're currently going through all of our stuff and deciding what to sell, what to get rid of, and what to keep as we prepare to downsize and move into our tiny camper once we've found Tickety Boo a new owner. Then we'll probably head out west. That's the extent of our plans for now. We need time to regroup and decide where to from here.

For those of you who have followed us for a while, you might remember our tiny camper. Her name is Scamper and she's a 13' Scamp travel trailer. Yeah, I know, her name isn't all that clever. Curious what she looks like? You can see pictures of her HERE.

We originally bought Scamper in 2015 and traveled around the States before buying Tickety Boo. She seemed roomy enough at the time, but after living aboard a 34' sailboat for the past four years, this is gonna involve some serious downsizing. But it will be fun. And it will be an adventure, something we've been sorely missing for the past year.

We'll be putting Tickety Boo up for sale soon and I'll post all the details here and over on our Facebook page. I'd love to get your help spreading the word when the time comes. She'd be a great project boat for someone with fiberglass skills (or who wants to learn about fiberglassing). Maybe she'd be the perfect boat for you or someone you know? Feel free to contact us if that's the case at thecynicalsailor (at) gmail (dot) com.

As for what's happening with this blog, I'm not sure yet. But, in the meantime, you can find me over at my writing blog. And if you're a Mollie McGhie fan, no worries, I still plan on writing my humorous sailing mysteries. If you want to be notified when I have new releases, please sign up for my newsletter and/or follow my Facebook author page.

The Year In Review - 2015 (Pt 1) | Scampering Across The States

It's that time of year. A time to reflect on the year past and a time to look forward to what surprises the Universe has in store for us in the coming year.  

2015 was a big year for us. 

I tried to find a better word to describe the past year other than big - like colossal, massive, tremendous or monstrous - but sometimes simple words and phrases work best. It was big. Simple as that. We had big adventures traveling across the States, we made big purchases (both our sailboat and stuff for her), we had big fun sailing our new boat and we created big memories.

{Now that I've typed big eight times, I'm growing tired of the word. Plus, the more I say it in my head the more it doesn't make any sense. Have you ever had that happen to you? I'm sure there must be some sort of name for that phenomena.}   

We started off the year scampering in Texas.

The latter part of 2014 was hard for us when we lost Scott's father. So, the beginning of 2015 was a perfect antidote - lots of time together making our way from Texas to Florida in Scamper, our tiny house on wheels. Adventure and travel - the great way for us to start the year. 

If you haven't met Scamper before, here's what she looks like. Simply adorable! With approximately 65 sq ft of room, she's definitely cozy, but she has everything you could possibly need including a kitchen and bathroom. And Scamper was a huge improvement over the tent we had been sleeping in when we kicked off our cross-country roadtrip from Portland, Oregon back in October 2014. (You can find more pictures of Scamper, inside and out, here.)
 

We were hangover-free on New Year's Day. Hard to believe, but true.

We rang in the New Year in southeastern Texas, near Kemah on the Galveston Bay. Well, to be honest, we really didn't ring in the New Year as much as sleep through it. We're those early to bed and early to rise kind of people and generally find New Year's Eve to be a bit of an overrated holiday. Yes, we're those boring middle-aged people who prefer sleep to loud parties, followed by hangovers the next morning. You can read about our time in the Kemah-Galveston area here and here.

We looked at a few sailboats while we were in Kemah, but we just didn't find the one while we were there. The one deserving of the name Tickety Boo. So, it was time to push on towards Louisiana. {Extra points if you know what kind of boat this is.} 

We can't stop talking about the shrimp in Louisiana.

Do you ever have meals that you keep reliving over and over and over again? Honestly, we probably talk a little too much about the shrimp we got at Dean's in Grand Isle, fresh off the boat that morning.  

"Do you remember that amazing shrimp we got when we were at Grand Isle State Park?" "Yes! You made the best spicy shrimp pasta with it." "Even better, it was only $4 a pound!" 

Then we start drooling and daydreaming about finding shrimp that delicious and at that incredibly low price point again someday. You can read more about it here.

We made a detour to New Orleans in search of beignets.

Have you ever had a beignet? I love them. You would too. Fried dough sprinkled with heaps of powdered sugar. What could be better? There was no way we were going to leave Louisiana without scoring some beignets in the Big Easy. In an effort to save money, we stayed in a really dodgy RV park and took the bus into the city each day. Which was smart, because then we had more money for beignets. You can read more about our adventures in New Orleans here and here. 

Florida, here we come!

After gaining at least five pounds each eating beignets in New Orleans, we made our way to the Florida panhandle via Mississippi. Our plan was to drive down the Gulf Coast of Florida and then up around the East Coast in search of a sailboat and warmer weather. While finding warmer weather was a bit elusive in January and February, we did get a chance to see some of amazing diversity that the Sunshine State has to offer. 

I asked Scott what his favorite memory of our time on the Gulf Coast was and he said spending time with my wife. Isn't that sweet?

We actually have a hard time picking out what we enjoyed the most. We know what we enjoyed the least, camping in Walmart parking lots, although we did enjoy the fact that it was free and it was easy to pop in for groceries). In order to keep to our budget, we tried to find free (or close to free) camping sites when we could during our travels in Florida, but they're pretty hard to come by. However, we managed to find a few - like a parking lot in Panama City, Hagen's Cove at the Big Bend Wildlife Refuge and the Babcock Preserve. (If you're interested in how much our per night campground costs were, check out this post.)

We saw armadillos, creepy vultures and UFOs!

We also camped at some wonderful county, state and national parks and forests including the Gulf Islands National Seashore (where we had wonderful walks on the beach), Pine Log State Forest, Manatee Springs State Park (where I saw my first real live armadillo, plus a lot of creepy vultures), Ochlocknoee River State Park (where we got drenched in torrential flash floods), Shell Mound County Campground (where we had a UFO sighting), Myakka State Park (where I got overly excited about the strong WiFi signal) and Collier-Seminole State Park (where we stalked fellow Scampers and went canoeing). We also spent a couple of nights at the very quirky Linger Lodge where road kill is on offer at the restaurant (we settled for just beer).

In mid-February, we got a lead on a sailboat that looked promising.  

After months of daily checking of sailboat listings and not really finding anything suitable, we found a boat for sale that looked like it might tick most of our boxes (you can see our boat wish list posts on this page). Next up on The Year in Review, we'll tell you about our adventures making our way down around the tip of Florida and up the East Coast of in search of Tickety Boo and the twists and turns that followed.

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Cost Of RVing In Our 13' Scamp Travel Trailer

I'm always curious how much it costs other people to live and travel full-time in their RVs (yes, call me nosey), so I thought it only fair that I share our costs from living and traveling around the States in our 13' Scamp travel trailer. We also did something similar when we lived and cruised on our sailboat in New Zealand - you can check those numbers out here.

It probably goes without saying that everyone's costs will be different. Some people spend heaps more then we do, while others have really sussed out how to do this super frugally. I imagine we're probably somewhere in the middle. 

Before we get to the numbers, here are a few things to keep in mind:

1 - December is a shorter month.

The time frame covered is from mid-December (when we picked up our new Scamp in Minnesota) until the end of April.

2 - Not everything is captured.

This is a really important point. Certain things aren't reported in our numbers, but we still have to spend money on them. When you're looking at people's RVing costs, you're not always comparing apples to apples. People slice and dice their data different ways and consider some things RVing costs that other people don't. 

So what have we excluded? Anything related to booze and chocolate. I don't want people getting all judgy about how much chocolate cake I eat.  Trust me - I ate a lot of the stuff. And we do like to have a cold beer on a hot summer day or a gin and tonic while watching the sun go down, but I think I'll just keep those numbers to ourselves.

I've also left off our costs related to our new boat. It's just too depressing to add those up (boats are the ultimate money pits) and they aren't related to our RV lifestyle. 

Finally, I've also excluded what we spend on health insurance. Since 2001 we've lived overseas in Scotland and New Zealand and would get travel insurance when we came back to visit family. But once we decided that we would be spending more time in the States and, in fact, would be here for most of 2015, that travel insurance route wasn't going to work for us anymore. Option 1 was to go uninsured and pay the penalty under the Affordable Care Act. Option 2 was to get insurance. Neither one was ideal. We hemmed and hawed and eventually decided to get insurance under the Affordable Care Act. If we were younger, I might have been less risk adverse and gone without coverage, but we're of that age where one of us could have a major health issue. I was also keen to protect our assets should we have a catastrophic health issue. Going bankrupt doesn't really appeal. So we bit the bullet and got insurance. It is disheartening to see how much of our monthly income goes out the door to insurance premiums, especially as we're both healthy and don't need any medical care.

3 - Our RV is brand new.

While we've had some minor issues with our new Scamp travel trailer, we're still covered under warranty. Folks with older RVs will have higher repair and maintenance costs then ours, which is zero. 

The Numbers

So, now on to the nitty-gritty. Overall, we spent $8,687.02 over the course of 20 weeks. That works out to an average of $434.35 per week. We spent the biggest percentage of our budget on costs related to our Pathfinder tow vehicle - mostly for gas ($2,750.06). We spent the least amount on personal and household items ($269.32). I guess that give you an idea of our priorities.

Here is breakdown of how we categorized our spend and other tidbits that might be of interest. There is a table at the end of the post which summarizes our spend against each category by month.

GROCERIES | Overall Spend = $2,010.32

It always astounds me how much we spend on what we put into our bodies. Occasionally, I try to take a more frugal approach to grocery shopping, but it never really works out.

PERSONAL HOUSEHOLD | Overall Spend = $269.32

This includes all those household goods (like paper towels, toilet paper, cleaning products, ziploc bags etc) and personal items that make you smell nice and look pretty (like shampoo, soap etc). 

CELL PHONE & DATA | Overall Spend = $390

We're currently on the $60 AT&T Go Phone plan. Unlimited minutes and texts and 4GB of data a month (increased in April from 2.5GB). I'm a bit of a data hog, so we end up buying extra data packages (1GB for $10) each month and we've also purchased international calling minutes. I'm so jealous of all of those folks who have unlimited data plans. Too bad they don't offer them anymore - at least not that I've found.

RV | Overall Spend = $1,981.62

We break our RV spend down into several categories - campgrounds ($1,388.31), repairs/maintenance ($0), equipment/gizmos ($129.35), insurance/registration ($178.00), LPG ($52.20) and miscellaneous ($35.20). 

Our campground costs make up the biggest percentage of this category. We were surprised to find how much we were spending to basically rent a piece of land to park on for the night. Here's a snapshot by month:

• December (partial month) - Total = $198.56, Per Night = $15.27
• January - Total = $571.06, Per Night = $18.42
• February - Total = $631.33, Per Night = $22.55
• March - Total = $424.54, Per Night = $13.69
• April - Total = $0, Per Night = $0 {Note: we stayed at a place near our boat for free while we did repairs etc.}

We spent a bit on equipment and gizmos as our RV was new and we needed to get kitted out. Things like chocks, hitch locks, water hose, water regulator, outdoor mat etc. In fact, we bought chocks and an outdoor mat twice as I left our original ones at Babcock-Webb Wildlife Management Area in Florida (hope whoever found them enjoys them).

Our annual insurance for our Scamp is $134 a year. You'll see this as one payment in April, as well as a pro-rated payment in December.  

ENTERTAINMENT | Overall Spend = $1,028.88

This is where we capture every penny, nickel and dime we spend on eating out, having drinks out, going to the movies, getting coffees, buying books and magazines etc. We really blew the budget in January ($350.14), but, hey, we were in New Orleans and we had a great time. We spent more than I would have liked in April ($212.69), but we were so exhausted and busy from working on the boat, that we ended up having other people make food for us more often than normal.

VEHICLE | Overall Spend = $2,750.06

We spent a fortune on gas. Which isn't surprising given the fact that we picked up our Scamp in Minnesota, drove down to Texas and then along the seaboard to Florida. 

The other big expenditure was for our annual insurance for our Pathfinder. It went up to an astonishing $909 our annual policy. And that's just for third party liability. I'll be doing some calling around looking for better rates, you can bet on that.

We also spent money on public transport in New Orleans, parking, toll roads and a new battery for our Pathfinder.

OTHER | Overall Spend = $256.82

This is a catch all category for things that don't fit neatly elsewhere. Like clothes, laundry, postage, photo-copies etc.

So there you go - our costs for full-timing in our Scamp travel trailer. Was it more or less than you imagined? 

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Wee Beasties & Other Random Nonsense {Flamingo, Everglades National Park}

This sign would be more accurate if they replaced the picture of the bird with a picture of a giant mosquito.

After five days camping at Flamingo in the Everglades National Park, we look like we have a case of the measles. We're both covered head to toe with bites and dripping with blood from scratching too much. You know you shouldn't scratch, but you just can't help yourself. 

People had warned us about Flamingo. They told us it would be a once in a lifetime experience. You do it once and you never want to go back because of the wee beasties. And there are lots of wee beasties to contend with - flies, fire ants, mosquitoes and noseeums. The flies are just annoying and you can usually avoid the fire ants, but when it comes to mosquitoes and noseeums, you're out of luck unless you wear netting from head to toe and stay inside your camper with all of the windows and door shut. Even then, they'll manage to find you and leave their mark.

Scamper parked at "A Loop" at the Flamingo campground in the Everglades.

But if you can see past the wee beasties, the Everglades is an incredible place to visit with tons to see and do. And Flamingo is pretty cool to camp at too. We had reserved three nights on Loop A in advance, but it turns out it wasn't necessary. There were plenty of walk-up sites available. Loop A doesn't have any hook-ups and many of the paved drives are pretty short, so it probably won't work for larger RVs who need more space and electric. But because our Scamp travel trailer is only 13', we were able to easily tuck into one of the sites with a few inches to spare. 

After three nights in Loop A, we moved over to the T Loop for a night to plug in, recharge our battery and enjoy some air conditioning. Strangely, T Loop only has electric hook-ups, no water. And it will cost you - $30 a night vs. $16 a night in the non-electric loops. We didn't think T Loop was as nice as A Loop and paying an extra $14 for air conditioning for a night seemed a bit excessive, so we headed back to A Loop for our final night. It's a bit more social in A Loop as most people are tent camping and sitting outside trying to cool off in the breeze. In T Loop, it's all RVs and everyone is inside their air conditioned rigs avoiding the blistering heat. 

Regardless of what loop you stay at, don't count on any warm showers. The toilet blocks are a bit outdated and we never could figure out how to get any warm water to come out of the shower head. But when you're sweating like a pig and covered in bites, an icy cold shower can be refreshing. 
 

We loved the retro look of the Flamingo Visitor Center and although pink isn't my favorite color, it works.

Flamingo used to be an old fishing village until they kicked everyone out years ago. They rangers probably don't describe it as "kicking" people out, but the end result was that the people's land was bought out and the village was no more. Nowadays, the new Flamingo is home to one of the Everglades Visitor Centers (painted this cool retro pink color). Did you know that it is extremely rare to actually see a flamingo at Flamingo? If you see a pink bird, it's more likely to be a roseate spoonbill. Scott says there is also a pink stork with black wingtips flying around Flamingo. I obviously wasn't paying attention when the ranger mentioned this. For some reason, flamingos used to be my favorite bird when I was little, so I was a teensy bit disappointed not to see one while we were at Flamingo.

Dolphins are so cute, even when they're on a feeding frenzy.

The Flamingo Visitor Center sits on the Florida Bay and is a pleasant place to hang about and look for wildlife. We saw a dolphin on a feeding frenzy when we were there. So hard to capture a good picture of dolphins jumping out of the water, but Scott managed to do it. That's why he's in charge of the camera.

Can you see the tiny sailboat at the far end of the marina? Wouldn't it be cool to sail right up to Flamingo?

Right next to the visitor center is a marina, shop and concession with boat rides and canoe/kayak/bike rentals. It's also a great place to look for crocodiles and manatees. Did you know that the Everglades is the only place where crocodiles and alligators co-exist? As if it wasn't scary enough to worry about running into alligators, you also have to worry about crocodiles.

When the heat gets to be too much hanging about the marina, pop into the visitor center and enjoy their air conditioning, check out the museum and sign up for the free guided canoe trip through the mangroves at Nine Mile Pond. Yes, you read that right - free canoe trip. And they even provide the canoes. If you know anything about us, you'll know that we're cheap and cheerful travelers so we signed up right away. And it was awesome, despite all of the scary looking alligators swimming near us.

They have lots of great ranger programs in the Everglades including a car caravan where you follow a ranger along in your air conditioned car and stop at points of interest in the park. If you like biking, then sign up for the free bike hike at the Long Pine Key picnic area. They provide the bikes - it doesn't get any better than this! We were the only people who showed up for the bike hike so we got a personal tour from one of the wonderful park volunteers.

The boardwalk at West Lake.

If you're into walking, there are a number of nice trails, including some with boardwalks. I love boardwalks. I just thought you should know that. It was hot and muggy while we were at the Everglades, so to be honest, we didn't push ourselves hiking (four miles is probably the longest we did), but there are a lot of shorter walks that we enjoyed including the boardwalks at West Lake and Mahogany Hammock, strolling from our campground to Eco Pond and to the Flamingo Visitor Center on the Guy Bradley trail and trying to find the rest of the trail on the Bayshore Loop (we never did manage to complete the loop).

This evil plant is strangling another tree. It grows over it and takes over until the unwilling host tree dies.

While we were walking, we saw some strange plants as well as some downright dangerous ones. They really should warn you about poison wood in flashing lights when you enter the park. We didn't find out about it until our second day in the Everglades. Apparently, it grows throughout the park and if you touch any part of it, you can develop a rash worse than poison oak or ivy. For some people, the reaction is so bad that they have to go on steroids. After someone told us about poison wood, I started being paranoid of all plants. It isn't just alligators you have to worry about in the Everglades, the plants will get you too.

Pretty bird and its reflection on Eco Pond.

We really need to learn more about birds. It seemed like every other person visiting the Everglades was an avid birder. I can recognize an anhinga now, so I'm making some progress, but other than that, I'm still pretty clueless when it comes to birds.

An example of the diversity of wildlife in the Everglades. We saw this tree snail on our bike hike.

The Everglades are the largest sub-tropical wilderness in the States stretching 1.5 million acres across southern Florida. What makes the Everglades special is that it was established as a National Park in 1974 to preserve its unique ecosystems and diversity of life Unlike some of the other National Parks, such as Yosemite and the Grand Canyon, the Everglades doesn't awe you with its stunning scenery and grand vistas. Instead, you find yourself taken with the subtle nuances of the environment as you explore the different ecosystems contained within the park including dry hardwood hammocks, mangrove swamps, prairies and estuaries, to name a few. Attending the ranger-led programs really helps you appreciate and make sense of all the diversity and they open your eyes to the hidden beauty of the park.

But it isn't all nature and wildlife at the Everglades. One of the things that surprised me about the Everglades is that there is a former military base where the soldiers sat ready to launch missiles in the event of an attack from Cuba during the Cold War. We went on a fascinating ranger-led tour of the site, but more on that on Friday :-)

The wee beasties feasted on us at Flamingo from 15-19 March 2015.

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