Anybody that has ever read our blog knows how fluid our life is. One day we are heading South, by lunch West looks interesting then by that evening we are headed North because work sent me that direction.
If you want to, you could pick a day where we admitted a “plan” in our blog, then read what we really did and there’s a good chance it changed. I guess my construction worker background made me pretty comfortable with change. I do have a question for the audience though.
If I have more than one house and sail the Bahamas several months out of the year where do I live? Good question…. Lets look at where I have been recently maybe that will help us “decide”. The last two nights I spent at my step-daughters in Beaumont, one night this week I was on the boat, I spent several nights at my mom & dad’s in Buna, last weekend we slept on the boat because we changed marinas, this weekend we are taking the kids sailing so I’ll sleep on the boat again then it’s back to work in Port Arthur (for a while) so I’ll either be at mom’s, Erin’s or where we spent several nights in August.. at a friends house in Beaumont. The weekend before we moved the boat we were at the lake house…. I have clothes and basic necessities in several places so do you judge where you live by where you have toothbrushes? Where you get your mail? I don’t know. Last year the boat stayed in her home port of Brunswick Georgia for 6 months with nobody on it and we rented a condo to work out of. The past 3 years I would contend I don’t “Live” any particular place…. certainly not one place.
If I didn’t have a house.. my only bed was on my boat, you could make a case that I live on that boat, but that’s not right because I have more than one other house. A “liveaboard” is someone that sold everything and uses his boat as his primary residence right? That’s not me. What about the guy that buys a boat and uses it for an apartment when he wants to get away for a while… is he a live aboard?….. I don’t think so. There are hundreds of boats in Kemah that never move.. but the owner uses it for a second home yet they aren’t liveaboards. Because I actually use my boat.. does that mean I live on it? If I spend more time than the average guy in the car does that mean I live in my car? I have to move around a lot for my job. Some guys buy a travel trailer so they don’t have to rent a place to stay on the road…. do those guys “live” in their trailer even though they have a nice house? NO….. the fact is.. there is no ONE place you could possibly say I live… if you wanted to pin that crime on me….. “living in one place” I think the overwhelming evidence clearly shows otherwise.
My mail comes to one of several places, our lake our or our Beaumont house. None of those are my boat. Personally I don’t care where somebody says I “live” but recently some jerk came on my boat and stole two major items… this same night another boat down the way was vandalized as well. I pay for insurance for my boat, things were taken (that are covered), the police came and made a report, I made a claim… no brainer right?
I’m not going in depth at this point about what is going on or who my agent and carrier are.. we’ll see how that unfolds. Apparently if they decide I “live aboard” (where my stuff would be much safer) they might not pay for the stolen items. I guess it’s better if you buy a buggy load of groceries and leave them in the Wal-Mart parking lot unattended. If you take those groceries home boy….. where you can take care of them or use them… somebody might steal them huh? What a crock. It’s a no brainer, I had the stuff, it was stolen I ordered replacements and showed the adjuster the reciept, it’s covered… but they are acting like I”M THE CRIMINAL. We’ll see how this shakes out. With all that’s going on in our life right now…… If we have to add fighting with the insurance company to the mix… just suffice it to say “it ain’t gonna be pretty”.
Linda here: I would like to add that when I got this insurance with Progressive (I don’t mind saying who we are dealing with) I told the insurance company EXACTLY what the situation was. I told them that we might sail the east coast next year or we might decide to go back to the Bahamas. If we decided to go back to the Exumas we would then have to go with another insurance company because Progressive does not cover the Exumas they only cover some of the Bahamas close to the US. Last year we didn’t think we would bring SYL back to Texas DUH…….that’s why we left her in Brunswick. I HATE insurance companies……..I am ready to self-insure…..it simply is not worth the hassle. Thanks for letting me vent!! I do feel better!!
Sea Yawl Later!!