Buying a House - It just ain't the same

We've bought several houses over the years. We'd look in the big, fat MLS book, find something we liked, then we'd contact the agent and have a look. If we liked it, we made an offer. We'd negotiate with the Seller a bit, agree on a price, then go sit down with our bank or mortgage lender to arrange the mortgage and the details. We met the banker/mortgage lender in person. We signed contracts and submitted official paperwork. We set a date for the closing where we sat down around a big table with the Sellers, the agents and the bankers and signed the final papers. Money in the form of checks was disbursed, hands were shaken, keys were exchanged and we had a new house.

In today's electronic world, none of what I described above occurs and I resent it. Some aspects are certainly easier. We didn't thumb through a huge book to find houses we liked. Instead, we input our buying criteria, scrolled through various sites, looked at videos and photos and searched comparable housing prices in the neighborhood. Easy-peasy. When we found a few that met our criteria, our agent set up times to look at them. That part was pretty convenient.

In the meantime, we contacted a local bank, but we didn't know anyone there and they didn't know us. We bank electronically, of course. The bank was not competitive on mortgage rates, so we ended up working with all the body-less voices at Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage. We provided a host of people we didn't know with every bit of information about our lives (only our sexual habits excluded) and then some. Explaining that we had no debt, no mortgages and lived on a sailboat for the past 15 years was difficult. It's not something they deal with regularly. They set up a “MyQL” file for each of us to which they sent endless questions and attachments. We “Docu-signed” everything electronically. We didn't get to keep the pens. All the initial work with Quicken earned us our first merit badge … a Qualifying Letter, followed soon thereafter (after we mastered another skill) by our second merit badge, an Approval Letter.

When we (the buyers) finally found the house we wanted to buy, our agent filled out an electronic form with our offer which we signed electronically and he sent electronically to the seller's agent. The seller's agent in turn forwarded our offer to the sellers. The sellers weren't satisfied with our offer, so they had their agent draw up a counter offer form which they signed electronically and in the reverse order, it was forwarded to us via various agents. We weren't satisfied with the counter-offer, so we countered the counter-offer … you get my drift. Though this was supposed to be a streamlined process, it took days and days. Had we sat down at a table with the Sellers, we could have probably ironed out the minor differences in an hour or two.

Then followed several weeks of limbo. The lenders were working on all the paperwork, dissecting our lives, snooping in all the nooks and crannies of our financial lives in order to coax any skeletons out of the closets. None found, they created 134 pages of loan disclosures and loan paperwork which they forced us to read in one sitting without blinking our eyes or falling asleep.

Inspections and appraisals took place which necessitated more electronic negotiations with the sellers via the agents. The “other” agent (depending on whether the seller or buyer's agent was talking) was the cause of all delays, mistakes and misunderstandings. That part of the process reminded us of the old days.

Finally, the big day came … closing day. We arrived promptly at 8am. We met with a notary public whom we didn't know, signed a huge ream of papers … but got to use a real ballpoint pen and our own illegible signatures. We signed early in the morning so that our east coast time mortgage lender could still wire funds to our west coast time escrow agent and they could process the purchase and record the transaction with the county clerk. We walked out of the building with no keys and a big, new mortgage. The sellers had appeared the day before and signed. We never met them nor anyone else.

What was supposed to happen next ….

All the paperwork was duly recorded. Our agent showed up in the late afternoon with the keys, more paperwork, and a word of congratulations. What was missing? I guess the personal aspects of the whole procedure. Buying a house is a big life event. Knowing the people you're working with is part of the “feel good” aspect. We also missed out on the pieces of information about the house that only the sellers would know and could have shared with us; all that's now lost. We didn't even get to shake hands with them. Totally unsatisfactory!

What actually happened … and it's probably against the rules

The sellers were still cleaning out the house when we stopped by for a final inspection the night before closing. They were warm, friendly and wonderful and certainly not the impersonal, demanding sellers that caused us angst during the negotiations. They allowed us to wander through the house, gave us some history on the house, improvements they'd made, tips on how to care for the wood floors, etc. They had an extra queen size bed that was nearly new, but they didn't have a place for it. Did we want it? (Yes!) The whole experience was wonderful. We left with mutual hugs (never mind shaking hands) and an exchange of contact information. That's how it's supposed to be!

The Blue View - A Missed Opportunity

Just a day before we were scheduled to leave Guyana, we received an email from a friend telling us of the plight of the sailing vessel Charger. Charger is a tiny, unmanned boat that had been damaged on its voyage across the Atlantic, and was found adrift off the coast of Guyana by a local fisherman. Before long, we had several e-mails from other friends who had read of Charger's plight on Noonsite and knew we were in the vicinity.

Charger is owned by the students at the John Winthrop Middle School in southern Connecticut. The 5-foot, 45-pound, self-righting sailboat was launched north of the Bahamas in June 2012 to chart Atlantic currents as part of the NOAA “Drifter” program that is helping students and scientists map the oceans' currents. Charger is not only self-righting, but self-steering and self-tending as well. She has solar panels, a battery and a GPS transmitter that sends out its position every two hours. Pretty clever.

Over the next 2-1/2 years, she sailed more than 16,000 miles. (That's about the same distance we sail during a similar period of time). She was blown ashore, undamaged, on Myrtle Beach, SC. She was relaunched and next went ashore off northeastern Newfoundland. She was banged up a bit, but was repaired by the St. Johns School of Ocean Technology Marine Institute and relaunched. Her erratic, Atlantic journey continued, going ashore in Wales, then Portugal and finally ending up off the coast of Guyana in December, 2014. She's now living with the fisherman's family, awaiting either repairs or transport home. Her passages sound quite similar to ours – sail about 6,000 nm per year, stopping in exotic ports here and there for repairs, some inland travel and visiting with the locals.

After some investigation, the fisherman that found Charger was located. The battery and GPS unit were dead, making repairs difficult, and the plan was to try and find a way to transport her home. Andy Colloton of Shipwright Technical Services in Connecticut has been assisting the school in its efforts to get Charger back. He's been getting the word out to the seafaring community and is coordinating the effort to get her home. Lots of people have offered help. The U.S. Coast Guard offered to deliver it back to Connecticut if someone could get it as far as one of their Caribbean stations. Other yachties and even a pilot offered to help get the vessel from Trinidad to Puerto Rico. All that was needed was to find a way to get her from Guyana to Trinidad.

Since we were in Guyana, only 40 or so miles from Georgetown where Charger was currently residing, and were heading to Trinidad, we were obviously in a position to help out. It wouldn't be difficult to lash Charger down on our aft deck and bring her along on the passage. The only issue was the timing – we had already booked a flight out of Trinidad and the time was getting short.

We contacted Andy and the school teacher in charge of the project, and got very enthusiastic responses in reply. They fired off an email to the fisherman and we waited for his response on how best to get Charger to Nine of Cups. When there was no reply, they sent another email and we waited. And waited some more. Either the fisherman wasn't checking his email or was out fishing. We delayed our departure another three days, and when there still wasn't any response, we reluctantly checked out of Guyana and headed for Trinidad without Charger. Too bad – Charger would have been well on her way to completing the Atlantic circle following the route of the early explorers, and we would have had a couple of great blogs.

If you know anyone in Guyana or heading to Guyana by boat that could help, contact Andy and perhaps they'll be able to help transport Charger back home for repairs. She is surely getting homesick for her old friends and family.

Road Trip to Dolan Springs

According to a lottery executive and the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. Powerball lottery jackpot is the largest, single ticket jackpot in world history. We were deciding where to buy our out-of-state PowerBall tickets when Mary came across a thread about the tiny town of Dolan Springs, Arizona for purchasing tickets as an alternative to the 3-5 hour queues just over the Nevada-California border in Primm. We googled it. Dolan Springs was only about 80 miles south of Las Vegas, just down US93. What the heck? Road Trip! We piled into Mary's car around 8AM and headed down Boulder Highway. Dolan Springs … here we come. Just on the other side of the Hoover Dam, we saw the Welcome to Arizona sign.

It was a cool, clear, blue-sky morning. The Mojave Desert spread out before us. The Black Mountains, the River Mountains and the McCullough Range lined our route and provided an interesting contrast to the bleak, flat desert land. It's easy to see how this area was once the bottom of a warm inland sea millions of years ago.

We passed by a couple of small stops along the way … Rosie's Den Cafe, usually a lazy, convenient stop on US93 on the way to Grand Canyon, was inundated with cars and serpentine lines extended to the far reaches of the parking lot and into the desert.

We turned off the highway onto Pierce Ferry Road and headed east about 5 miles to Dolan Springs. There were a few cars, but not all that many. A bus was heading towards the Grand Canyon. Dolan Springs proved to be a one-horse, one road kind of town, just what you'd expect in the middle of the desert.

We pulled into the Wishing Well Saloon and Restaurant, touted on FB just hours before as an outlet for PowerBall tix and a great place for breakfast … selling tix from 6am-midnight. This had been our Dolan Springs destination. The empty parking lot and the big CLOSED sign on the door was a surprise and a disappointment, to say the least.

Luckily, across the street was the town's only other restaurant, the Canyon Cafe. A much-harried waitress told us to find a table wherever we could and handed us menus. The service was slow; the food was mediocre and pricey; and they did not sell lottery tix. Conversation with a couple of locals, however, pointed us to the only gas station in town which did sell PowerBall tix. We finished breakfast and headed to the Dolan Station, just down the road.

We hadn't even noticed the station on the way past earlier, but the lines and full parking lot caught our attention this time. Comparatively speaking, the line wasn't all that long; but it was growing. We weren't really sure of the rules of play, but veteran players were happy to give us pointers. Quick picks ... computer-generated numbers … were easy. We had a couple of “custom” orders to fill for friends which required blackening dots on a lotto card which were then fed into the PowerBall machine by the counter attendant. We waited in line.

We found lots to entertain ourselves while waiting. We chatted with other folks. We took turns standing in a Western miner themed“face in the hole” board. That took up 5 minutes.

I'd noticed a fun mural on the side of the nearby Double D Market and popped out of line long enough to get a photo.

After about 40 minutes, we finally stepped into the general store. Once inside, there was all sorts of interesting stuff to check out.

There were rubber band guns with extra ammo, dream catchers and coyote ceremonial headdresses ($225 … Do not remove or put on!). There was Indian jewelry and cactus candy, gold nugget gum and tequila lollipops complete with encapsulated worm. We bought nothing, but appreciated the amusement value of the local souvenirs.

Finally, it was our turn. We bought our tickets, convinced that they were the winners, and walked proudly back out of the store. We noticed the line had expanded and stretched quite a ways further back. Timing is everything.

We waited with bated breath for 7:59pm Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday evening. We watched the balls drop and the numbers immediately displayed on the screen. The bad news? Hard to believe, but we didn't win… nada … nothing at all, but someone did! The good news? Luckily, we've saved ourselves a trip back to Arizona to cash in the winning ticket plus all the angst and aggravation associated with having to figure out what to do with all that money. Whew!