Decision time

By Mike Jastrzebski

With work on the boat winding down Mary and I are facing a decision that will affect our cruising destinations for the future. The decision? Should we sell our car?

Now that may not seem like much of a decision, but having a car has been our one connection with the “real” world since we began cruising nine years ago. (We actually left Minnesota on Rough Draft and headed south nine years ago today). When we left Minnesota we stored our car in Mary’s mother’s barn. When we left Mobile we found a local storage lot, and when we headed over to the Bahamas this past June we did the same thing. Harbortown Marina, where we are currently docked, has even agreed to let us keep our car in the parking lot, so it won’t cost us a dime to store it.

As cars go, it’s not much. It’s a 2004 Dodge Stratus with 115,000 miles and a few dings. So what’s the dilemma? Well, if we keep the car it commits us to coming back Cape Canaveral next summer for hurricane season.

There is a degree of comfort knowing that we have a place to return to, a car, a home port. It also means we can’t make a spur of the moment decision to head south to the Caribbean or north to the Chesapeake.

Some would argue that it’s an old car, sell it and buy another if you come back to Harbortown. The problem with that scenario is that we know this car. We’ve maintained it. In fact, we just put $2000.00 into the car before we left for the Bahamas in June. If we come back for five months we aren’t going to want to spend a lot on a car then sell it again if we head out again next winter. As I said, it’s a dilemma and we have to make the decision in the next week or so if we hope to sell the car and get out of here by the first of December.

If anyone would like to share their thoughts on the issue please feel free to comment. Who knows, your feedback may be the turning point on our decision.

 

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