Todays thought....An update

Ok...so Lil Floor is here. 6lb 4.5oz and 19in long. Just the cutest little bundle of joy. Just a little over 3wks old now she has been in the hospital once. Turned out she had a virus. Bless her little heart. But she's home now and doing much better.

On another note..my husband, mama and daddy and really good friends of the family went on a vacation together. We paid money and rented a houseboat from Eastport Marina for 6 nights, 7 days. We rented the boat Sun Cruisin. It is 54' long and sleeps 6 people.

We had a really good vacation despite all of our setbacks. I feel I should say this now before I get into depth with our trials while on this particular houseboat. And mind you now...I cannot speak for the rest of the housboats available for rent at the marina, this is just our experience, with this particular houseboat.

Our first night on the boat we found that we could not flush toilet paper down the toilet. There was just not enough water pressure for it to go down. I leave it to your imagination to what else would not go down the toilet.

Before setting out the next day to enjoy the majesty and beauty of the lake we were on we were told by the marina owner that when we tied into a cove for the night that the front of the boat was to be 75' off the shore line and the two back lines were to be out at a 45 degree angle so that the boat would not be blown by the wind into the shore. We get into a cove to run from a thunderstorm heading for us to find that the front line was only 35-40ft long at most and the backlines were a hair longer. With that being said, the reason the back lines were longer was because they had been spliced, and more line had been added on to them.

We also found out while trying to hide in the cove, the depth finder on the boat did not work. We were going blind hoping that we did not run aground because...lets face it...its impossible to stop a 54ft boat. It's not like there's breaks on the things.

After being out there for the second day and running from the storms, we found that after 2 full days of running wide open down the lake and 2 nights of running the generator...the gas gauges didn't work.

By Tuesday we docked into Sulphur Creek Marina to fill up on gas since the gauges didn't work and we didn't know where we stood on gas, and decided to stay the night there. That night a massive cold front came down from the North (Which from here NEVER happens that the storms come from the North and move South) so you can imagine how bad it was. Wind is blowing the boat everywhere tied to the dock, we're trying to save the boat and some little push carts that the marina has there for their customers to load and unload luggage on to their boats...and the list goes on. While trying to save all of this stuff from being blown away in these 90-100 mph straight line winds, the restaurant staff at the marina comes by and says not to worry about the boat, they'd get it later and we needed to follow the restaurant staff up this massive hill to get to the tornado shelter they had. So we did, wind blowing, lightening everywhere, spitting rain. After about 30-45 min we got back to the boat and they made sure all was fine with us before going any farther.

While on the trip we also found that the navigational lights didn't work (Which for those of you who may not know, they run at night to let other boaters know that you are there), there were ants in the wall of the kitchen, the fire extinguisher was not charged (Thank God we didn't need it), the oven wouldn't light and to top it all off, the last night we were on the boat, we turned the generator on and it caught the batterie charger on fire. We were pulled in at the dock of the marina next to the gas tanks.

I think the thing though that made it so bad for this place was the owners completely nonchalant attitude about everything. When we told him about the nav lights he told us that the nav lights go out on his boats all the time and if he took the time to replace them everytime one went out he'd be working 24-7. He told us that the toilet flushed better than some of the others on his other boats, he told us that to fix the depth finder he would have to pull the boat out of the water and he had no intentions of doing that until fall. When aproached about the fire extinguisher he shrugged it off.

There were quite a few more safety issues as well but I won't get into that right now. As I said, all and all we really did have a great time. One of the friends of the family who had been affraid of the water for 20 years got in the water. It took some finess and we had to convince her that as long as she had her lifejacket on, she was going to float. That I think was the hilight of the trip. We did have a couple of beautiful days in, got some fishing in and when in our last cove before going into port we were just up from a nest of baby bald eagles. However...I can honestly say we will never rent from that marina again. As I said, I cannot speak for all of the man's boats, but I can speak for this boat that we were on and I can speak for his attitude toward us.

On a lighter note to my blog...Saturn is pregnant. I was so tickled to find out. I got to be there when she found out that it is going to be a boy and he is due in November. I will reffer to him as Puck (Short for Hockey Puck). I have plans to take Saturn somewhere to see something that she loves...but it is up in the air right now because she may be giving birth at that time. That will most likely be my luck after I've bought the tickets. That's ok though...Puck is more important than something that will be back into town again. If we can't make it then Saturn...I promise I'll take you to whenever it's back.