Aboard Idilio

This post has been long in the making, at least in our heads. We intend to share more in-depth posts about the larger project that we have tackled on  Idilio , it is just hard to find the time! Well, since I wrote the last entry on the flight to Ireland for our family vacation, I thought I’d build on that momentum and take this one on, in the return leg. Warning: This post may be a bit boring for family and friends, so feel free to skim or skip. But for those who love boats and/or who might consider taking a similar project on, do read on, you may find some value here! This is the abbreviated story of how we bought our boat in October 2021 thinking we’d pay  someone else  to  fix  the windows, but ended up frantically installing new windows in June 2022 just before the boat was picked up for transport to Bayfield. And of how lucky we feel that  somehow  it all actually worked out – because this was hard, but it could have been way worse!   How Bad Were the Windows? The windows on this

We're back! It's been quite a while since we posted here, which has prompted a few people to ask - some directly and some indirectly - whether we have given up on either the blog or the boat. We are happy to report that neither is the case! The truth is that after such an intense first year or projects, we were both pretty ready for a break. When the boat came out of the water last October, we intended to keep working on it this past winter as well - maybe at half the intensity of the previous year, we originally thought. But after I made a solo trip in November to tackle a few small things, we kept pushing our next visit out... What started as "maybe we'll go every third weekend" became "well, maybe we'll just take a break until after the holidays" eventually became "hmmm... maybe closer to the season starting"... In the end we made it up only once before splash to do a few things that had to be done out of the water. So, the break became

Here is a quick update (for a change!)... This Sunday, on what was likely our season's next-to-last boat weekend, we found the time to get the new name on the transom. It's been a long time coming and marks another benchmark in truly making the boat ours. While the application of the name is obviously the "big moment," we have been working on making this happen since way back during our first visits to the boat last year. Removing the old name was one of the things we did during our very first project weekend in our beloved warehouse in Manitowoc, as previously documented here  (scroll towards end).  Then, of course, we had to come up a name! We spent countless hours brainstorming, which helped to shorten many our Manitowoc drives. The list soon became long... 65 names long in fact... Many names were inspired by dancing, the Tollycraft brand, the idea of bringing something back from the brink, my original obsession with buying a Hatteras, etc. Many were in Spanish. So

I am happy to share this long overdue post to let you all know that we did indeed make it into the water in 2022! It's been a whirlwind of a summer, and it's hard to believe how quickly things happened between June - when we didn't have windows or a functioning electrical system - and September, when we hosted overnight guests twice!  The boat went in the water on August 10. There was a bit of a scare in the morning, when I got a call from the service manager saying there was something wrong with the electrical, but it turned out to be a simple miscommunication regarding battery connections. In any case, after a little stress, things were quickly sorted out. We made it there the next day, and it was quite a surreal experience to FINALLY arrive at this boat in the water. We had almost exclusively known this boat in a warehouse, and also mainly as a construction zone. Seeing it float was almost odd! As always, the boat seemed quite smaller when in the water, in a good way. It

We really appreciate the enthusiasm that friends and family have kept showing for our seemingly never ending project. It feels like most days one of us gets asked whether the boat is "done" or in the water. The truth is that being done is still quite a bit aways. We'll probably be mostly done with the initial round of big projects sometime next summer, even if some smaller things linger on. However, being in the water is - hopefully - much much closer! We have now achieved one of the biggest milestones that had been weighing on us ever since we started looking at larger boats last summer: transport! Admittedly, I'm not short on opinions when it comes to boats, so there weren't many appealing options near us, and transport logistics were often a complicating factor on boats we liked. So it's a big relief to have our new boat moved, even though it took significant effort. Above, Becca shows off the elbow room we enjoyed during our last few weekends in Manitowoc,

"The bulkheads are rotten" is what the surveyor said - softly - dropping a bomb at the end of the day, just minutes from when Becca and I were to get on the road back home. We had made a day trip to Manitowoc for the survey and sea trial of the soon-to-be-our boat, and everything had seemed to go ok. Sure, the boat had LOTS of issues we already knew about upfront, but we were ready to deal with those. And yes, the engines didn't reach their recommended RPMs during the sea trial just a couple hours earlier, but we had already been doing the mental gymnastics to get over the issue, adjust our offer, and move forward with the purchase. This bombshell news flushed all our optimism down the head, and made for a gloomy 5-hour drive home.  Firstly, for our readers who are less hip to boat lingo,...  Bulkheads are the "walls" that run across the hull, perpendicular to the stringers (the "beams" that run the length of a boat). Bulkheads provide dimensional st

Well, here we are in late May and as deep in this project as we ever were...  We are still cautiously optimistic that we may yet get Idilio in the water this year, even if just for a couple of months, but there is lots to do before we get there.  Our visits to Manitowoc are accelerating! I've even done a couple of back-to-back weekends as we push to get this boat to a condition where it can be splashed.  All that said, we are starting to wonder if we're finally "turning the corner." Even though we are still taking things out, some of the new is starting to go in! It's definitely a morale booster when you get to put something nice in, after putting so much effort into the deconstructing.  One such example is the hatches. They are in! The hatch saga is over! If you go back to one of our  earliest posts , from our first project weekend on this boat, you'll remember that removing them and sending them out for refurbishing was one of the first things we did. I rece