First let’s cover some background and history.   The old story goes that sailors transition from their sailboat to a motor trawler to an RV.   When sailing becomes too difficult as we get older, the trawler is close to the same without the sails.  It goes about the same speed and the interior is large and very comfortable.  But we skipped that step and decided to go directly to GO and get the RV. 

We looked at many over the years, went to some shows and searched on-line of course.  Thought we had picked the right one but after a last look, we decided it really wasn’t.  Finally, we selected the Thor Delano FB model.  Besides the obvious as stated in the first blog, it had 3 other features we really liked. The queen bed had access on both sides, the fridge was almost a full size with a large freezer, and the genset also ran on diesel instead of propane.  And it was new with a decent price and delivery.   And it is plenty big but not overly so.  Just right for the two of us.

We picked it up in October and had a baptism of rain and heavy rush hour traffic for the 125 miles from the dealer back to Miami.  And one almost very big problem, in all the excitement, I forgot to check the fuel gauge and the handover tech didn’t mention anything either.  Halfway home, I finally looked at the gauge and the little red gas pump was flashing!!  I immediately pulled off I-95 with Gail following and with no clue about what was happening.   A $100 later we were on the way again with a good lesson learned.

Next, we started getting it rigged up.  It had nothing on board.   But we had stuff that we had kept in storage from the boat.  So out off one boat and on to the next.  Sheets, towels, dinner wear, galley ware, silver ware, tools, and stuff.  You get the picture. 

And also next, our salesman had mentioned a favorite RV park named Jolly Roger in the Keys on Marathon.  So we decided to make that our first long trip for practice.  Turned out to be perfect.  We were in “the Boat” anyway while our house was being tented for termites.  So it was an easy run down from south Miami to Marathon.