We've had several calls about our small sailboat.  She is called "Winds of Change" from a line in a Jimmy Buffett song (just as this blog is titled from the same song).

So far no one has offered to buy her.

She was the perfect training boat for us.  Not too big, trailerable, with an actual keel (swing keep) as opposed to say, a Macgregor with a water ballast.

So far everyone who has visited has have nothing but nice things to say about the boat.  Hopefully someone will buy her soon so we can go forward with the next plans! :)

When the fires hit Colorado Springs, ash and soot fell all over the city.  People with any sort of respiratory problems were suffering.    Smoke covered the city on several days and there were 2 lives and 346 homes lost.  Thousands of animals fled the mountains, including bears and deer moving into the city to escape.

Thousands of people were evacuated.

The FBI and Homeland security, along with the local police and county authorities are investigating this fire but are being very closed-mouthed about it so far.  We have suspicions this might have been something even worse than simple arson but for now I'll keep that to myself as well.  I hope they catch the person that did this.  I find it strange and scary though that there wasn't just ONE fire, but three near major urban areas of the state, not to mention the other smaller fires that were apparently set in various places of the state.

This weekend I'll be trying to finish cleaning out the over-stuffed garage (It's about 1/2 done).  Next week - it's the basement.  It's time to start looking at a truck to start filling to take junk to the dump and stuff to donate elsewhere though.

That's it for now.

The fire is 45% contained and has burned a lot of trees. The fire has burned 17,659 acres and killed two people.

The two were apparently an elderly couple from what I can gather from the small bits of data I can find.  She was confined to the home I believe. 

We are sorry for the folks who lost their lives.  It was unnecessary.

The FBI and DHS are investigating this fire and I can only suggest there is more here than meets the eye.  This blog isn't for my political musings though so I will leave it at that for now.  I hope they find whomever is responsible though before the people of Colorado Springs find him.

Yesterday someone came to look over our current boat,  "Winds of Change" and it appears promising. I gave them a full tour and let them look her over, ask questions and with luck perhaps she is the right boat for them.  Their current sail boat is a 19' boat and too small, and they are looking for something bigger but not too big. 

If we sell the boat, we can work on getting our travel trailer for the next part of this journey.

JoAnne came up with the brilliant idea of saving money at hotels by purchasing a small camper/travel trailer to go across country when the time comes.  This will kill two birds with one stone, allows us to save cash by staying in our trailer instead of hotels and we can move temporarily into the trailer  while we strip the inside of the house of everything, remove the old carpet and replace and paint, do the minor repairs and so on.  That will allow us to be able to show the house as well without actually living inside haha.

The week of the 9th of July I have contractors coming to start on the roof (hail damage a few weeks back) and gutters.  Sometime after we will have the house painters.  Getting that all accomplished soon.  With luck we can sell the boat and use that to fund our trailer.

As to the disposition of the trailer, once we arrive where we're going to find our boat, find the right boat and make that purchase, the trailer gets sold.  The truck will be sold once we have outfitted the boat to the point we can make our way to the Caribbean.

The plan is working.  Four years into the Five Year Plan and everything has worked correctly to this point.