Weird things that happened after we made our decision to move onto a boat:
– We stopped watching anything on Netflix, YouTube, etc. that didn’t pertain to our new future life.
– Everything in our home has gotten the “going on the boat or not going on the boat” treatment.
– We have joined Facebook groups called Gatos Del Mar (Cats Who Sail) and Liveaboard Lifestyle, and we follow a variety of YouTube channels about sailing.
– We Google things like “yacht insurance”, “electrical systems”, “harness training your cat” and “can I bring my rebounder trampoline on the catamaran?”
One of the things that concerns us is cat food, since everyone has to eat a diabetic cat diet, which means lots of canned food—no dry kibble. We have found a freeze-dried raw food that is both light weight and safe for diabetic Tito, but absurdly expensive. I mean absurd. Right now, they get a bit of both the canned and dry food. Aside from being the most spendy item in our monthly expenses, it comes in plastic pouches, so Stephen’s not a fan of that, and neither am I, but the only current alternative for the boat is heavy cans, because I am not going to be making our cats’ food. This is not just because of the equipment, time and yuk factors, but having a consistent, safe source of raw meat is going to prove difficult. Also, having to store it in the freezer in what, plastic? is not a better solution…
Stephen went to St. Petersburg Florida for a weekend in March 2021, before we’d fully settled on Antares, for an event called Antares University. He got to spend some time on our first-choice catamaran. He had our list of questions and info to research—we spent a lot of time on Facetime calls—I’m sure it was super annoying to the others in the group, but they were all very polite and tolerant. On Stephen’s birthday in April, Antares announced the new hybrid model (including a photo of us in the graphics as customers). In May, Antares sent us the yacht purchase agreement and we wired them a deposit on our boat. I’m not sure where they got their mad marketing skills, but introducing the boat of someone’s dreams on their birthday, and including them as instrumental in the decision to go hybrid now kind of made it feel like it was destined to be. And so it is.