New Boat

M/Y ESCAPE

  We bought our 2002 DeFever 49' Cockpit Motor Yacht November 1, 2010. The previous owners, Dave and Sandy, were nice enough to let us keep the boat in their slip behind their house, until we both retired. We moved onto the boat on January 18, 2011 and started preparing Escape for her long trip to her new homeport at the Morehead City Yacht Basin, in Morehead City, North Carolina.


This is a map showing Niceville, Fl.

We did a variety of work on the boat, including repairing the Raymarine electronics, changing the raw water cooling pump impellers, checking heat exchangers, and general cleaning and moving stuff aboard, including a lot of tools and a new toolbox. When we thought we had the boat almost ready to go, the refrigerator quit. It wasn't practical to repair the old refrigerator, so we ordered a new one. That may seem like an easy thing to do, but on a boat nothing is easy. You can't go to Lowe's and buy a refrigerator. The refrigerator must fit into the same space as the old one and also fit through one of the openings on the boat. We spent hours on the internet looking for one that would fit. We finally found one, ordered it, and a week later it was delivered.

  We practiced backing the boat out of and pulling it into the slip. We also dropped the anchor in Shirk's Bayou one day, just to make sure that we knew how to do it. We practiced maneuvering the boat at low speeds using the engines and transmissions.

  One of our major obstacles in leaving Niceville, Fl is a sandbar that blocks the exit from Shirk's Bayou where the boat was located. The charted depth of the bar is 4' and Escape draws 4'7". During the winter the wind blows from the north and blows the water out of the panhandle of Florida. We had to wait for a period of  southerly wind in order to get over the bar.



Picture off back of Escape when the fog was moving into Shirk's Bayou.

One of the beautiful sunsets we saw at Dave and Sandy's dock while waiting to leave. They  are probably used to seeing such beautifuls sunsets since this the view they have off their dock everyday. They are gracious hosts and we will miss their company, but it is time to cast off our lines and  start our adventure.