The past month has been very exciting for 5KNOTS.
Back in Tennessee, we jammed all of our belongings into our truck, tied our newly reconditioned Jetta to the top, and drove to Clearwater. Getting a late start, we decided to drive all night and arrived in Clearwater around 06:00 the next morning. It was a long haul but we were happy to have an extra day at the boat before our scheduled repairs were to begin.
We had an Arch constructed and installed by Tom at Aqua-Shade (www.Aqua-Shade.com) and it looks fantastic! It was designed to accommodate our Jetta, Solar Panels and a Wind Generator. Since we want stay off the grid as much as possible, it was necessary to have a way to mount our equipment and have an easy way to get the Jetta in and out of the water. The Arch will do this for us and I believe we are going to be happy with it.
The following day we had our wind and depth equipment upgraded to interface to the Raymarine Seatalk system. This is newer than the ones we had and rather than repair the failed systems we decided to upgrade. This was a good choice and will allow us to add additional equipment as needed.
Jesse, Danielle, Cole and Rachael spent the weekend with us on the boat and we all had a wonderful time. Cole and Jesse took on the task of getting the Jetta seaworthy and we all took turns taking her for test rides around the marina. It turned out to be a lot of fun for all of us and probably others that were coming in and out of the marina.
The weather was fantastic all weekend and we took 5KNOTS out for a day of sailing. While sailing we were escorted by a pod of Dolphins who were playing and decided to follow us for a good part of the day. It is always a thrill when you see dolphins hanging around the boat. Our company left the next day but we sure enjoyed our time together. We are hoping that we can have Anthony, Nick and Melissa down soon and we can get all five of our children together on 5KNOTS. That would be awsome!
Now that the Arch installation is complete, we were looking at getting a wind generator, solar panels, SiriusXM radio and weather radar. We were fortunate to have met Daniel while he was working on another boat here in the marina. Daniel owns Optima Marine (www.optimamarine.net) and is located in Houston Texas. He stopped here in Clearwater due to bad weather and some equipment failures that happened while on the way to the Bahamas. Daniel rearranged his schedule to fit us in and installed the SiriusXM radio and satellite radar. He did a fantastic job and we are happy to have these items installed and crossed off our to-do list.
More to come soon …….
Hey its Jonathan from bad daddy’s! Look forward to following your journey. My ship date has moved around some but it looks like it will be end of April.
Hi Jonathan. Thanks for checking us out. Things are taking longer than we had hoped for here in Clearwater. But at least we are checking things off of our To-Do list. Looks like we will be here until the end of February before we can set sail. Best of luck with the Marines.