Leaving Land Life

We sold the house and have the check.

Previously we shared some of our efforts related to clearing out the attic and having a yard/moving/estate sale. Here we continue with some more of the adventures.

60 Pounds of Kitty Litter

We found a lot of surprises in the attic. Most of it was not suitable for the yard sale and needed to be thrown out. (Yeah, so why did we not do this before? We asked ourselves that same question.) We counted 25 cans of paint that had accumulated over the 25 years of home improvement projects.  Most of the cans had labels, but quite a few did not. Many were nearly empty and were latex paints. (Again you ask, why did you not throw them away?). A few cans were more than half full of oil based paints, which posed an added challenge for disposal because the cans cannot contain paint that is still liquid. We read that we could mix the paint with kitty litter! It took 60 pounds of kitty litter but by the end of the day we had solidified all the paint for proper disposal.

Just pour in the kitty litter and stir!

Fossils in the Attic

Hidden in one corner of the attic we re-discovered Tracy’s “rocks”.  After 25 years of avid collecting, Tracy had accumulated about 25 file sized boxes filled with fossils, shells, and bones. Most of these treasures had been collected from sites and beaches in North Carolina, with a few shells from the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii, as well as some fossils collected from Ohio and Illinois. Tracy took four days to carefully sort through each box, and each box within a box, to decide which fossils and shells she would keep, and which she would give away. You might wonder how difficult it was to get rid of something that was so highly prized for many years.  The truth of it all was that it was completely refreshing to only keep those that were truly special.  Tracy didn’t get rid of all of her collection, but brought it down to a manageable 6 boxes. 

Half the effort in getting rid of stuff is finding a new home. The bones went to a good friend, Gail Cannon, who is also an avid collector of fossils, shells, and bones.  A neighbor suggested that Tracy should donate some of her shells to a charter boat in Beaufort that takes visitors to the barrier islands. They hand out shells to the kids that come back from the beach empty-handed.  Rather than donate some fossils to the Aurora Fossil Museum, which would involve a day trip to Aurora, she donated them to the Duke Marine Lab.  The marine mammal fossils went to a couple of researchers studying dolphins, and the invertebrate fossils went to an invertebrate researcher who runs an outreach program.  

524 Books

As scientists and avid readers, we have been collectors of books.  Combined in the attic, two bookcases, and the bedroom closet, we still had hundreds of books despite previous purging efforts.  Tracy had donated two truck loads of textbooks, technical, and leisure books to the Duke Marine Lab.  Some of Bud’s technical books and textbooks went also to the Duke Marine Lab.  His large collection of fiction and nonfiction books were donated to the Webb Library a few blocks from our house. We had regularly visited this library over the years and were well-known to the staff. We hoped they would want some of this collection. Asked by the staff how many books we had we said we really hadn’t counted – maybe about 10 boxes or so.  When we arrived back an hour later and opened the bed of the truck, the librarian was a bit shocked.  We probably had twice that amount of books, 524 to be exact!  The library was pleased and assured us they would find some new homes for the books.

A subset of all the boxes of books.  Liquor boxes work the best! 
No, they were not from our consumption!

You Have Been Summoned

Neither of us had served on jury duty in all of the years we had lived in North Carolina. Of course it would be most inconvenient now just before closing on the sale of the house to get a summons. Bud was summoned to appear before Superior Criminal Court in Beaufort on 14 May! Recall we were supposed to close on the house on 7 May and that we expected to be aboard Leilani by then. We read in the summons that Bud could be excused from jury duty IF he could show proof of a new residence, such as a piece of mail with our new address. The problem of course was that we hadn’t moved yet, and we had no mail.  Fortunately we had address through a mail forwarding service in Green Cove Springs, FL. We figured we could send a letter to ourselves as evidence of our new address. Coincidently, and even better than our letter, we also received a letter from an internet provider welcoming us to our new address.  We requested the mail forwarding service to scan the contents and send us a pdf, which we could then send on to the courthouse. We had only a few days before closing on the house and we needed to find out if Bud had been excused. We received notice of mail from the Superior Court in our mailbox. The St. Brenden’s Isle Mail Forwarding service has proven to be incredible. We asked if they could open the letter and then read it to Bud over the phone! He was excused from jury duty. We had not anticipated how valuable this mail forwarding service would be in allowing us to view our mail and decide whether to shred it or forward it.  They will even deposit checks for you at the bank!        

The Last Load of Laundry

The last couple days before closing on the house were a bit of a blur.  There was so much to do. We rented a storage unit for the few pieces of furniture and other keep sakes. All of our remaining belongings were now going be held in a 10’ by 7.5’ unit (75 square feet) or on the boat. As we quickly realized our truck would not be big enough for all that we needed to transport to Leilani, we rented a 5’ by 8’ U-Haul trailer to take stuff to the storage unit and then on to Leilani.  Between packing up clothes and the kitchen, shuttling stuff to the storage unit, taking donations to the local thrift store, securing Layla, and packing up the trailer, we were exhausted. When we finally arrived at Leilani in Brunswick, GA, we took two naps a day just to recover!  A few miles down the road on the trip to Georgia we remembered we left the last load of laundry in the dryer! That was going to be a surprise for the new owners- a load of underwear and socks.  We laughed and wondered how long it would be before they discovered the “unmentionables” in the dryer. It took only a couple of days to hear from them.

Our shuttling trailer

Our storage unit still has room for more stuff!

The attic did get emptied!

A last look through the house before leaving.

All that was left were the few items that the new owners wanted.

Nothing left in the bedrooms but the beds.

One last look at the house before heading to Brunswick.

UPDATE

We are finally living on Leilani full time. As we are no longer burdened by having to maintain a 160 year old house AND a boat, we feel liberated!

We spent a month in Brunswick, Georgia unpacking, purging, and finding a place for all of our stuff aboard Leilani. One month to the day after arriving in Brunswick, we were on the water and headed south.   

We had lots of stuff to sort through before we could head south.

A manatee greeted us on our dock before we left.

Leilani heading out from Brunswick Landing Marina.

We are now in Fort Lauderdale, provisioning and waiting on several packages before we head down to Key West.  Stay tuned for our next post where we will reveal more about where we are going next. 

You can see where we are, often in real time when we are underway, by clicking on the link on the map above on the left side of our blog.  If you are viewing the blog on a mobile device, you will need to scroll down to the bottom and click on “view the web version” to see the map and related panels.  

Anchored at Cumberland Island the first night.

Sunrise on our overnight passage from St. Augustine to Vero Beach.

The seas were very calm and the winds very light for most of our trip down to Fort Lauderdale.