The Hand of God

Close your eyes. No, really, do it.

Now…say “God, send me a sign”.

Please don’t say “I don’t believe in God”. Let’s set that aside and talk later. Switch it to “the force” if you have to.

Ok, got it? I bet that most of you have the exact same visual.

It’s probably not stone tables, parting of the seas, or detailed plans of a big ol’ boat that can carry two of every kind of animal (except unicorns).

It’s probably lightening. If so, I’ve got a story for you. If not, I still do, but your brain is weird.

It all began a couple of weeks ago. I get anxious, Mere is more even keel. Don’t close on a boat in October. There be hurricanes.

Pish posh. If we don’t get under contract, there is not possible way that we will ever, ever, be able to get a boat. WE MUST ACT!

K.

Sept 8. I’m flying high with smiles for everybody. We’re under contract on a lovely Lagoon 450 in Fort Lauderdale.

It has everything that we want! Except for Air conditioning. Oh, and the dingy is about to sink. Oh, and the lifraft is for four (sorry small boy, you have to stay). Oh, and the batteries are homemade. Literally. They bought 42 differnt cells, wired them up in series and parallel to form four 300ah batteries. I know, I was lost too.

I WILL NOT BE DETERRED. These are all just details we can work out later.

Oh, there’s a significant bulkhead issue that will cost $20k to fix. whatever.

I fly to Fort Lauderdale, ignoring the growing pit in my stomach. This is going to be great. right?

I check into my hotel over looking the canals, go get a nice seafood dinner on the waterfront, watch the Broncos (barely) beat the 49ers, go to bed. Great night!

3:00 am. BOOM! CRASH! MAYHEM!

Yawn. That thunder sounded close. I wonder how close? Oh well, back to sleep.

6:30 am. I’M UP! Let’s go survey (that’s what boat folk call an “inspection”) this boat that is going to be our home!

It’s about .3 miles as the crow flies from my hotel to the boat. 1.1 by foot, because of the canals. I decide to take the foot route. Because I’m not a crow, and I can’t fly.

It’s about 1.1 miles later that I found out how close that lightening/thunder was.

.3 miles.

Yup. The night before I was to go check this boat out, lightening literally rained down from the heavens and struck it down.

All electronics fried. And a lot of the electric. Shore power didn’t even work.

Excellent all the brokers say! That means that insurance will buy you all new electronics.

Well, that’s pretty groovy. Let’s sail.

We spend the day sailing around, pulling the boat out of the water to look at her bottom, and eating fish tacos and feeding the tarpon.

Pretty great day. Except for that during the fish tacos, my broker mentions that she thinks she just might rememmber that maybe the insurance docs the seller had given her were expired.

Huh? oh well, probably just a misunderstanding.

I didn’t sleep very well that night. In the morning, I find out that my suspicions were confirmed.

No Insurance. No new electronics. Still no A/C. Still $20k of bulkhead issue.

Reluctantly, we pass on the boat.

It turns out, that when your as bull headed stubborn as I am, God literally needs to strike you down with a bolt of lightning to get you to pay attention.