This is a stressful period in our life, making life changing decisions. This decision is whether we should buy the house in St Pete. We decided to put a low offer into the sellers. The house has been on the market for 80 days. The sellers started out asking $825,000 and recently reduced it to 775,000 and we offered 685,000. They countered and we settled on 700,000. The house needs work: new garage roof, fence, paint, landscaping refresh, new flooring in some rooms. The survey was very thorough and brought many other smaller items to our attention. We are a tad overwhelmed. Doug wanted projects and this will keep him busy for a long time. Meanwhile, we got our COVID Boosters and I reacted worse than usual with headache, chills & nausea for a day. Maybe stress had something to do with it? We have enjoyed spending time with Mike & Sue who we met @ The Harborage last year and they continue to live there on their yacht named Sun Dancer while they prep to do the Great Loop.
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In early October, when we were packing the truck in Ohio, Hurricane Ian blew through Florida. Ft Myers was hit really hard, many buildings flattened. Marinas & boats destroyed. It was forecast to hit St Pete but luckily for us, it went south. Our friend, Esther in Punta Gorda sustained property damage. We drove down to help Esther with clean up. Her pool cage was all twisted, some roof tiles had blown off of her new roof and she had water damage to her ceiling in her great room. The worst damage was to her seawall and newly installed dock. On our drive south to her house, we passed many trees down, Palm Trees stripped of their fronds, road signs leaning and blue tarps on houses. We helped take down her pool cage and clean up the debris. A corner of her pool deck is sinking due to the seawall being blown out.
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| Ft Myers, FL |
The next few weeks were filled with inspections from different contractors giving us estimates for the 4 Point Inspection, which needs to be completed before the Home Insurance Company will approve us. We need home owners insurance because we will be carrying a mortgage. The sellers are responsible for fixing all of the 4 Point issues. One step at a time.
We walked often and biked to the house almost daily. We supervised the repair of the issues at the house. We rode the Sun Runner express bus to the beach, took 30 minutes. We walked the pretty, white sand beach and enjoyed lunch at a cute cafe. Over the month, we checked out many of the nearby city parks. We discovered great consignment stores in the area which will help us fill the new house. We met another couple at Camden: Boushra & Brent. Brent is Canadian & owns property on Manitoulin Island in Ontario where we have cruised in Day Dreams and where we hope to visit again summer 2023.
The cruise we booked pre COVID finally became a reality, the cruise line wouldn't let us postpone any longer. We drove our van to Ft Lauderdale to board the Celebrity Apex. A very large, grand ship. Of course, COVID is still all around us and people are still dying daily from the virus so we masked constantly on the ship. Masking really puts a damper on friendly conversation with other passengers. Only about 10% of the guests were masking, which makes dining in the public restaurants impossible if you want to be safe from the free floating virus. Breakfast & lunch were OK because we could use the buffet and they had outside seating but the dinner buffet was just the same as lunch and not appealing. We arranged to eat dinner in our stateroom ordering off the dining room menu and utilizing room service. Our cabin was very pleasant, we had been upgraded to an Infinity Veranda. Our view was unimpeded. We attended the evening shows, sitting away from everyone and wearing our masks. The entertainment was top notch. We really enjoyed the young, lithe female violin player and the aerial acts. The lighting and special effects were amazing.
Our first stop on the cruise was in Costa Maya. We paid for an excursion to beach snorkel. We boarded a bus to a small beach where there were many vendors. It was very disappointing, the snorkeling was only for 45 minutes and the area was limited with few fish and little coral. We were there for 3 hours. The rest of the time we were hounded by vendors and waiters while basking in the hot direct sun, which was not fun.
Belize was our favorite stop. Our excursion picked us up in a boat and took us to Hoi Chan Water Preserve to snorkel. The water was pretty clear, the coral had some color and there was a wide variety of fish to see. There were also large Rays, barracudas, a shark and a large turtle. They fed a school of very big Tarpons. The next stop was Cozumel, we have been here before so we didn't venture far from the ship.
Our last stop was Grand Cayman, the ship anchored out and took us in by Tenders. We didn't spend much time on shore. We walked around town. Back on the ship, we checked out the Casino which was open because we technically were not in port. I played Blackjack and turned my $20 into $50.
We hit a slight glitch with our apartment lease. We thought if we gave them 60 days notice and they were able to find someone to rent the place, we would be able to get out of our 7 month lease which was from October 1 to April 1. We wanted to move out the end of January, cutting the lease 3 months short. We found out that when we signed the contract, we were supposed to check a certain box for that specific exemption and we did not. The Management was now telling us it was going to cost us $9,000 to break the lease. If we paid our normal rent for those 3 months, it would be $9600. Talk about stressful. For a short time, I considered the option of sub-letting the apartment to friends who would want to come visit for a month each. I found 1 couple wanting to do that but Doug put his foot down and said we can't because it wasn't allowed by Management. We ended up meeting with the General Manager & begging her to let us switch to the other option and she relented thankfully.
Our Staple friends, Jill and Glen invited us for Thanksgiving to their beautiful home in Deland. The drive took 3.5 hours. They put together a delicious feast and we met their British friends, Jeff and Paula who came for dinner.
Doug and I rode the express Sun Runner Bus again but took our bikes with us this time. We got off before the beach stop and rode our bikes to Treasure Island to see the Sand Sculptures. They are always amazing.
Thanksgiving weekend, we watched the Christmas Parade downtown and saw all the Christmas lights and trees in Straub Park lit so prettily from the Birchwood rooftop with an adult beverage in hand.
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Come to find out, my Great Uncle Louie lived in St Pete as a snowbird many years ago
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The last minute details of the house purchase did not go as smoothly as hoped. The Plumbers took longer than planned, still working, the day before closing. Janet and our Mortgage broker were great and the insurance broker too. We ended up having an addendum added @ closing to hold $1,000 in escrow to get the rest of the needed work completed: sink leak, ductwork under the house, upstairs AC unit.
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| Our house is under the yellow arrow |
It became official the end of November-we closed on our new house! Now the work begins & the money slips away.
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| The new home owners |
