This whole not having a boat thing SUCKS. I’m going on about 2.5 months now of no boat. I knew in the back of my mind that there was the possibility of this happening, but I didn’t think it actually would. I figured, maybe a month and I’d be back in a boat.
Now, before I go into any details here, let me first say, that I have had access to a couple of friends’ boats who have been extremely generous in letting me borrow their boats to continue guiding. However, I’ve been keeping it to a minimum only doing one or two trips per week. I just don’t want to borrow a boat any more than is absolutely necessary. Doing so is very time consuming for both me and the person that allows me to borrow a boat. So, in case you’re wondering, yes, I am still currently guiding.
Ok, so now for what the heck has been going on with my personal boat situation. Since the accident with the boat back on May 29th, I have dealt with nothing but hurdle after hurdle in obtaining a new one. There’s been a lot of hurdles to leap over, but I’ll just mention two. The first one was getting the insurance company to pay up. It took nearly a month to go through the entire claim process before I received my check. Up until about two days before I got my check, my plan was to go out and buy a used boat as soon as I got my check. I’d gone through several options and decided that was the best one. So what happened two days before I got my check?
Well, while I’d been waiting on the insurance company, like I said, I had been putting my feelers out and looking at all of my replacement boat options. One of those options was searching for a possible boat sponsor just to see if that was a possibility. I had spoken with several companies and none of them sounded very promising until all of the sudden one of them seemed very possible just before I got my check. Now, with the sponsorship possibility coming into play, I realized I needed to try and see it out before I ran out and bought a used boat.
Therein lies my second hurdle. It’s been a very slow process in trying to make things work. As one of the managers with the company told me, “big wheels turn slow.” I don’t want to go into details about it just yet in case things don’t work out, but I will say it’s with a great company that I have some good experience with and am a huge believer in. If we can make things work out to benefit both of us, which it looks like at this point we will, it will be a great partnership. So at this point, it’s simply a waiting game. A bit of an agonizing waiting game, but hopefully it will all turn out to be a very good thing in the end and will make the wait worth it.
Just one quick note, I want to thank all of my clients, supporters, friends, etc for also being patient through this whole process. I’ve had to turn down a lot of trips due to scheduling limitations with borrowing boats as well as a few clients who I actually “owe” trips to that have been patiently waiting for me to get my new boat. Thanks for that patience everyone, and it will hopefully all be worth the wait in the end.
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