Yesterday I sent him an email with a list of things my wife and I discussed on the trip back home. He sent a very detailed reply addressing everything.

We are really getting a good feeling about this guy. I feel a LOT better about all of this.

In a really weird turn of events.

I think I touched on it, but prior to the pandemic, my wife worked almost exclusively at one large assisted living facility. When things got bad, her and the physical therapist at her company were told they could not work there because they did not want third party health care workers in the facility due to covid concerns.

The whole thing seemed really bad when she started to learn other things about this. There are other physical and occupational therapists from another company that were allowed to stay.

There are a ton of details that I can't remember. This has been going on for weeks. But there has been a lot of lobbying for her to be brought back but the upper management of the facility refused. In fact, the therapists from the other company have been very vocal about bringing her back because they cannot handle the case load. Again, lots of other stuff has been going on behind the scenes as well.

The muckety mucks at the facility had a meeting with one of the muckety mucks at my wife's company. Included in the meeting is the head doctor at the facility who lobbied pretty strongly to get my wife back.

And, she's baaaacckkkkkk!!!! This is great news. She has been struggling and has taken a second job. But she now won't have to worry about her next paycheck anymore.

Turns out the entire thing was some sort of corporate political nonsense that had absolutely nothing to do with coronavirus.

Congratulations to biggerwife!

From the way you've described her, she seems really dedicated to her work, and that is a huge part of her life. Glad to hear she's able to go back.

Standard? Glad to hear she's back

Oo, very cool on the boat and that your wife can get back to doing what she really wants to.

How are you paying for the boat? He drops it off and you xfer the $ to his account? Is it possible to escrow the funds (at a bank or escrow.com or something) or most of the funds for a period of a couple of days to try it out?

he structured the deal correctly, as long as he got the title he is covered.

Thanks!

I paid him for the boat. He overnighted the title to me but the postal service hasn't delivered it because, lol postal service. It is stuck in NC somewhere.

I will pay him for the upgrades when he delivers the boat.

I took a bit of a leap of faith on all of this. We just got a good feeling about this guy and don't think he will let us down. I think if anything goes wrong it will be that he's a small operation and the job is bigger than he anticipated.

Although this is an old boat, the hull itself is solid as a rock. It will have not very old motors, a fairly new set of very good electronics, a brand new trolling motor, brand new gas tanks, and completely rewired. The final cost to us is about $2,000 more than I paid for my current boat. But the final product will be a substantially better boat.

Ahh, sounds good. I should admit I did not read all posts carefully - I just have so little time to do anything these days. I really wanted to catch up on your thread, though, lol.

Sounds like all-in-all it is very good value and cool purchase. I probably missed it but are you selling your current boat (and/or already have?) or hanging on to it for a bit?

stay on top of that title. act quickly if it doesnt show up.

your sea hunt will bring top dollar so you will come out great and have one of the best boats made for what you do. i had seen his ad and the boat is good.

i just put mine up for the summer. cover on it. tied down on trailer. strapped in with yellow 10,000 pound ratchet straps into those in ground eye rings.
then tied in all four directions to solid posts.
its in a protected area of the yard. next to concrete block house. but i dont know if a big hurricane will take it out or not.
ill take my chances i guess.

Doubtful. Although Irma didn't give us a direct hit, there were some hurricane force winds here. I decided to trailer mine and it was fine, as were all the others, both on lifts and on trailers.

Our boat is listed, although at the high end of market right now. I think we will probably drop the price when the guy starts the work. Kind of a balancing act right now. Don't want to be without a boat, don't want two boats.

An added wrinkle is red snapper season opens in less than a week. Hate to miss that.

Title arrived yesterday.

Hopefully we don't have too much trouble selling. There are a few out there for sale right now.

put it on treasure coast and miami area cragslists. sell only in person at a bank. put that in your ad. and follow it no exceptions. and of course the hull truth.

Looks like the title transfer is going to be a major pain in the butt.

The office near me is closed.

I tried figuring out what I need to do online, but it isn't all that clear to me because it is out-of-state and there is a sales tax issue. My god, Florida sales tax is 6% of the total sales price. YIKES!!!! However, it is not clear what needs to be paid and where. North Carolina sales tax is significantly less, capped at $1500.

I can set up an appointment at an office very far away from me, but the soonest I can do it is July 2.

I'm currently on hold to get some more information. Been on hold for an hour now.

Is insurance on a boat like auto insurance? You have coverage against accidents, damage, uninsured, etc?

Do you have to pass a test like a driving test and have a license to legally take a boat out?

Boat insurance is similar to car insurance. Additionally, I have to have an addendum to cover things at my condo since I keep it on a lift here.

You do not need to pass a test to drive a boat. I kind of wish you did. Most boaters are fine, but there are definitely really bad ones out there. There are rules for boating, but mostly it is common sense. My completely unscientific observations have found that the bigger the boat, the worse the driver.

I took almost 2 hours to get through, but the lady that answered was extremely helpful. Turns out that the motors are not taxable and they are about half the value of the boat. I needed a bill of sale so she sent me a blank one to fill out. She gave me all the info I need and hopefully I'll only need to make one trip.

I was on my way to work yesterday........

I'm on a fairly untraveled road that comes to an intersection with a high traffic (4 lane) road.

I am behind a city of St. Pete utility truck at a red light. Fairly large - about the size of a large dump truck. The light on the 4 lane road turned yellow and I notice a handful of cars stopping.

The truck in front of me starts to turn right when the light turned green. He has to make a fairly wide turn. All of the sudden a blue car comes flying in and slams into the concrete pole that holds up the stop lights. I noticed the lights and the wires swing around. He really creamed it.

I'm speculating on this part. As far as I can tell he swerved to miss the cars stopped at the light, then swerved some more to try to avoid hitting the truck, which put him right into the concrete pole. He actually hit the truck as well but the brunt of the impact was on the pole.

There didn't appear to be any air bags deployed. I was dumbfounded when the guy got out. People had gathered pretty quickly and were urging him to just stay put. He had a huge knot on his head and was definitely dazed. He reached into his car and grabbed something although I couldn't tell what.
At the time I thought it was his phone. Then he started to stumble away from the car. Everyone was trying to get him to lay down. He stumbled back between two houses into the back yard of one of them. Then he got on his hands and knees and appeared to be trying to bury something.

Then he stumbled back to his car. He stood there for about 10 seconds then fell back and went unconscious. By then, the knot on his head covered almost his entire forehead.

The paramedics got there very quickly. They tried to get him to wake up but he never did. They took him away not too long after.

The police got there about 5 minutes later. I talked to the first officer and told her what all happened. She asked me to show her where he buried something. She (and I as well) assumed that it might have been a gun. Not sure why I assumed that. It turned out to be an extremely small bag of pot. I'm not sure what possessed the guy to worry about that.

More police showed up and eventually I was given a form to fill out with my statement. One of the police came over and asked me if the man they paramedics took away was definitely the man driving the car. Seemed like a strange question to me.

The whole thing was pretty surreal. This is the route I take to work. I can count on one hand the number of times I've been behind another car at this light. Had the truck not been there, I'm positive I get t-boned here. And, if he hadn't stopped at the pole, there is a good chance he gets me anyway.

good for you for stopping. but you might have to testify in court and face him.
that is the bad part.

boat update

I still don't have the trailer title.

However, my wife follows the guy on facebook and the day he replied to me that he was getting it, he had a bad wreck that totaled his truck. So, the delay seems reasonable.

I need to make myself be patient here. It may be a long time before I actually get the finished boat.

in florida i dont think you get title for a trailer. not sure though. but i think you just get a registration. most get the electronic ones.

Nice catch Ray. Apparently if it is under 2,000 lbs (which this certainly is) it is just registration.

Based on this I think he just needs to sign the bill of sale.

The boat guy called me today.

Obviously, he's sort of a mess due to the accident. He told me he did actually get hurt and was advised by his doctor to take it easy, but it doesn't appear that he will heed that.

He told me he is getting a replacement title for the trailer. Although I don't technically need it, he needs to get it out of his name. I would feel better if that happened anyway. Should be coming soon.

He said he has ordered 2 trolling motors for me. One from each of the main manufacturers. They are really pretty similar and I would be OK with either one. The manufacturers of both brands are really backed up but he hopes to get them mid-July, which is fine. The boat wasn't going to be ready by then anyway.

He told me that he now only has 2 boats ahead of me, both of which are almost done.

He said his normal requirement for work is to get money for parts and 1/2 labor upfront but told me that because of everything that has gone on, he is only asking for parts money up front. I'm fine with this.

My mind really goes around and around with this. If I don't hear from him on things, I get really nervous. Then I talk to him and it is all good. That is pretty typical behavior for me, though. I need to be more patient.

I think this should work out well.

Same way. Whenever I'm interviewing people for a project, I make it clear that communication is key to me.

Things happen. If I have to contact you to find out the status, that's not o.k. with me. Make sure to be proactive if stuff comes up, and we'll deal with it.

Of course, when I contact them, it's almost always something I didn't have to stress over. Too type A I guess.

Maybe it's something around us software people.

I got a bill from the boat guy for the full amount of the restoration. I immediately texted him to ask him wtf?

He had some sort of weird explanation that I didn't quite follow, but he said it was incorrect and he will ship me a bill for the parts only.

I asked him again about the trailer title/bill of sale. He said it just slipped his mind and he would get it to me asap.

I am really going to have to be vigilant and patient at the same time. I am positive he is not screwing me around. He just has way too many irons on the fire and is unable to juggle them properly. I am pretty sure the boat will take longer than he first indicated, but I'm also pretty sure that it will be done well and for a reasonable price.

My wife follows him on facebook and he posted that he just finished a restoration he has been working on. It looks great, and it puts me that much closer in line.