May 12, 1999 - She's Ours!
Finally, after a long week of waiting, we drove to Lynne Reister’s house to pick up the survey. Her place was nestled amongst some old evergreens behind a weathered fence between the Wallingford and Fremont districts of Seattle.
As we approached the steps of the house you could see the warm glow of the living room turned office splashing across the front steps. At the far end of the living room was Lynne researching probably another boat’s survey. The office was not unlike a nautical library, with plans, books, regulations, charts strewn all about. Even the smell of the room reminded me of the interior of an old wooden boat.
Lynne greeted us and sat us down to go over the incredibly detailed and lengthy survey report she’d taken a week to complete. I was amazed at the quality of the report compared to other surveys I’d seen. The pages were of thick, glossy, book like quality with color photos and even a table of contents. We spent about twenty minutes going over the details of the survey explaining what each section meant asking what questions we might have. I was thoroughly impressed!
That evening we went home (only a few blocks from Lynn’s place) feeling like kids on Christmas Eve. Tomorrow was the BIG DAY! And the LAST DAY we’d be sleeping in our noisy apartment. Or so we thought anyway.
The following day was amongst the most stressful of our lives. It began like a normal day, getting up at the usual time, coming to work, staring at the computer screen sipping coffee. Until 8:30am rolled around meaning that the bank was now OPEN!!! Time to head over and hand the survey to our loan officer.
Then the big scare, short lived thankfully! Sara and I had to transfer some money in order to cover the enormous Washington State sales tax. There appeared to be a problem with the amount of money to be released and I was told we’d have to wait 72 hours for a review of the situation before we could receive any of the money. Throughout this ordeal, the teller had been speaking with my other bank. In the mean time, we had given the survey to our loan officer who was finalizing the loan. After calling the bank myself a few minutes later, I managed to straighten everything out. The money was wired to Marine Title Company to be held in a trust and given to Monte.
Little did we know that the Federal Wire Agency closes at 5pm EST (2pm our time) keeping Monte from handing over the keys to us that day. So, we had to wait one more excruciated night at the old apartment. That night we barely slept!
The following morning Monte (who works across the street from us) dropped by to hand off the keys. We could hardly wait to leave work and head down to the boat! Around 2pm, nearly six hours before we normally leave work, we headed down to the marina. There she was! Proud as could be just waiting for her new owners to arrive. We sat in awe in the cockpit feeling like we were guests aboard someone else boat. The Jenny P couldn’t be OURS! But soon, the bonding began making us feel like the boat was indeed, our new home.
-maj-
