The Retirement Wake on S/V Imagine

Imagine was suppose to have a departure date of  August 26th, 2017 around 11 AM.  Hurricane Harvey had other plans for us.  This storm had been tracked for a long time, and I surely thought once it hit Yucatan Peninsula it would die.  Harvey is a Zombie, came back to life with the very warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and headed for Texas.  One thought was to leave now, but the fear of being sucked back in was to great.  We prepared for the storm, uncertain of the exact landfall and continued watching weather and models of the storm. Landfall was between Corpus Christi, Rockport , and Port Aransas, the pictures have been devastating of the damage. Homes, marinas, boats, and families destroyed by the power of the storm. For Imagine, we are on the dirty side of the storm about 150 miles away.  Wind max for us was 40 kts, most of the time it was between 20-30 kts., caused no problems for us.  Galveston Bay was stirred up and had very large swells....

A big part of leaving for new adventures is leaving behind family and friends you love.  Luckily our family tolerate our sometimes adventurous portions of our lives.  Our friends mostly being in the boating community get it.  This is a report of our great trip with family. We had debated about getting a SPOT or inReach or some other satellite tracking device.  All have various reviews, pros and cons.  We settled on the SPOT for simplicity and cost. The Spot allows you to set up custom messages. https://www.findmespot.com/international/ We noticed other friends who got it at the last minute and really did not play with it to figure out the device before leaving.  Thus leaving it hard to track and weird default messages.  The SPOT has an on/off button. A custom message you set up (Imagine is on the move!). A button to activate the tracking. An Ok button that you can customize also ( Imagine is done for the day). A reach out for help button, I am ...