The 2025 Plan!

Every year I have a few goals or plans for the upcoming year that I talk about here. This year is not a lot different; Andrew and I will be making moves during the winter season to build up our travel war chest for the warm season, and I can't wait to share every trip with you all! We have a few short weekend plans coming up soon, but I am really itching to get back on the boat! You can call these resolutions I guess, but I think of them as more of seasonal goals for the year.

In January we are looking to go to the Cleveland Boat show for a quick weekend trip. This is always a great show to attend, they usually have one or two "dream yachts" that can be toured, as well as a ton of other resources, and fun boat life stuff to take a look at. We are looking to invest in a new tender for our boat or some people call these a dinghy, so that we can take that out to the sandbar occasionally instead of always taking the "big boat" out which is quite a process... I will try to remember to show you guys all the work that it takes each time we take the boat off the dock for a trip it's quite a process... but anyway, we thought having a smaller tinder to take out would be a lot of fun and in many ways a lot easier for short trips.

Cleveland Boat Show at the I-X Center

The Detroit boat show is the first week of February, we will likely go there for that show as well and maybe have a stay at the MGM hotel and casino in Detroit. We thoroughly enjoy that area and can easily make a fun weekend out of both!

MGM Casino Detroit

Burning Snowman fest returns to the Port Clinton area in the end of February, we are waiting to see what the weather is going to do around that time, but if we are able we may head over to the lakeshore for that event! We have attended before and it's always a great time, very busy, but a great time! Sadly, the Dock trash yacht club winter boater's party is not happening this year, there was some issues with coordinating a hotel that also had a restaurant of bar venue for the entertainment. Hopefully next year that party can make a comeback.

Burning Snowman Fest

Along with these weekend trips we will start visiting the boat again soon, to get all of the cleaning and seasonal maintenance work done. We have to change the lower end fluids, change the zincs, update one of our underwater transducers for the depth sounder, a small gel coat repair, make some decisions about what we want to do with our canvas repairs/replacement, and of course start all the buffing and waxing. There is plenty to do before we drop her back in the water in early April.

We are looking at a couple of Las Vegas trips this year, as well as our usual Put In Bay visits and other island get aways, it is shaping up to be fun year, and I can't wait to get everything going! It always seems like January moves so slowly and then all of a sudden, it's July lol!

At the Park House we are going to start on the master bedroom/bathroom remodel and start paring down the collection of "stuff" that we have stored in the basement, we will continue the front yard landscape refresh, and I plan to start working on the gardens in the backyard as well. There is still plenty to do!

So far this year we have successfully gotten all of the holiday decor down in the house and put away for the year. We got some cleaning done and have been participating in the "dry January" trend, I will share some reviews on some of the non-alcoholic drink options that are out there soon... some of them are... interesting lol. I got a new vlogging camera that I am learning how to use, it's SO nice, I can't wait to really get out there and start using it! We also got a new GoPro style camera that Andrew has been learning all about. This will give us a waterproof camera that can be mounted on the boat for our travels and maybe get some footage of the guys out working this winter, Michigan winters can be crazy!

I can't wait to see what this beautiful new year brings. Whatever it is I'm sure that it will keep us running, and busy, and before we know it I'll be sharing another year in review post! I hope everyone is having a fantastic start to 2025, we will share some more soon!

~ Courtney

NYE at Amber and Eric's! Cheers 2025!