Evidently, we thought we were buying a boat to go explore, but apparently its to practice....

....our skills in carpentry, electronics, plumbing, you name it.

We were THIS close to getting our boat fixed up and ready for the season when I get the call....hey, Kim, at the marina, the boat next to you got struck by lightning.  Just thought you'd want to know.
(Side note: By season, we mean thumbing our nose at potential hurricane threat)

#(*@&#

Tim was already heading down to put the final touches on some other projects, so he bumped up the trip by a day to see a) how bad the damage could be for us and b) deal with insurance if needed.

Turns out it could have been worse.  We did have to replace the control unit for the auto pilot, replace some wiring on the the thruster and replace thruster control.  Oh, the big thing was the comms network between the inside station and the cockpit was fired.  Since it was a combo of the old Raymarine Seatalk and NMEA 2000 it was sort of blessing to get it all NMEA now.

But as we have learned from our Hunter lightning strike....it's the ghost in the machine that can bite you in the butt.

Besides the step aside for lightning, the latest boat updates:
New windlass
Rebedded the midship cleats (well, we didn't, our awesome buddy Jorg did)
New dinghy
New propane sensors/alarms, one in galley and one in lazarette,  all remote connected, so if something goes weird, propane gets shut off
FINALLY GOT OUR MMSI!

...and there's tons other stuff, but since I can't get my Chief Engineer to write them down, there's no way I can remember.