Susan, Sequoia, and Todd go sailing

For anyone gearing up for a cruise to Mexico, I’ve put together a list of things to cram onto your boat.

Special thanks to Milt and Eva on S/V Bellavia for giving us their list of must-have items. It was extremely helpful to us, and is the basis of the list I’ve posted here.

This past weekend, we took an important step: we moved out of our house and onto the boat! We kept one very small bedroom of our apartment, into which we put all of our furniture and things that won’t be setting sail with us. We took 4 days (Friday – Monday) to pack up, thoroughly clean, and move. It was enough time that although busy, we never felt rushed or overwhelmed by the work. Click the image to see a bunch of pics from our move.

20070807 Move to Boat

Emotionally, it was hard to leave 68 Douglass, because it has been such a great place to live! It was almost exactly 3 years ago that we initially moved to Douglass, and those have been 3 fantastic years! We will miss our comfortable home, the neighborhood, and having great friends living right upstairs.

We also said (temporary) goodbyes to Komodio (our lizard, a bearded dragon), and Flame and Spot (our goldfish). Komodio will be living with Sequoia’s good friends the Herbertsons in Ukiah, while the fish will live with Kelly and Zai on 16th St in SF.

Although it is probably one of the easier challenges we’ll face, moving to the boat seemed like a big hurdle. Now that we’re here and getting settled, the trip seems so much more real, and immediate. We have two months to finish our preparations.

Three years ago, we bought a building with our friends Jay, Jody, and Naresh, and created a TIC (tenancy in common). We had one tenant, Richard, who bought his unit and joined us in ownership.

We couldn’t afford to leave our place empty (with the mortgage and homeowner’s association fees to pay), so we wanted to find someone to take our place for 7 – 11 months. The problem is that in San Francisco, you can’t require a tenant to leave just because the term of the lease is up. So theoretically, if we had a 10 month lease with someone, at the end of that time, our renters could choose to stay in our house and we’d have no recourse! This is due to rent control.

We came up with a solution that had been suggested on a craigslist forum: keeping one bedroom of the place, and signing a ‘roommate agreement’ instead of a lease. When I ran a bunch of ideas past the counter man at the Rent Stabilization Board, this was the only one he said would be legitimate, because rent control does not apply to roommate situations.

Another benefit of keeping one room is it gives us a place to store our furniture and things that we won’t be taking with us.

Luckily, we’ve found Omar, a great guy with whom we are totally comfortable! He’s going to be a visiting professor at UC Hastings so the timing is perfect.