A lot of preparation for this trip wasn’t actually related to the boat.  We had a landlife that needed to be put in stasis.  We had everything possible automatically billed either to a credit card or the checking account, forwarded the mail, forwarded the phones, but we (I) did screw up in one regard, and that was Tanya’s van.  Basically we abandoned it.

The plan had been to sell it.  Lyle, our Man-in-Bradenton, was going to handle that for us.  But then Tanya got knocked up and that threw everything into confusion.  The van was our only vehicle that had enough seatbelts for the whole family-to-be, and we were no longer sure we should sell it.  So it is still sitting where we left it 9 months ago.

Two people tried to kill me right before we left Bradenton.  One when I was driving the truck (nice try), and then another when I was in the van.  Some people may consider that a wakeup call to their mortality, but I’m ahead of that game, so all I learned was that I didn’t like State Farm as my insurance company.  Right after they denied my claim on the van (Tanya has a predilection for backing into things, and the van had some previous damage), they sent me a bill to renew the policy.  I filed that under bullshit and promptly forgot about it.

I think I lamented in another post the cost of having things shipped into the Bahamas.  Ordinarily we have a mail package sent to us about once a month, but it never seemed worthwhile to have a mail package sent to us here.  Our mail service estimated it would cost a couple hundred bucks for them to send us all the (mostly) crap they’ve received for us.  So we didn’t receive any notice of the impending bureaucratic nightmare.

Fast forward a few months and I happened to be looking in the bullshit file.  Uh oh.  I called State Farm, and sure enough, the van's policy was ancient history.  Even better, in Florida the insurance companies report policy lapses to the DMV, who assuredly does something nasty to the owner’s driver’s license.  Thankfully, the van belongs to Tanya and not me.

Lyle reports that the van is right where we left it 9 months ago, which is pretty funny considering it is right across the street from the police department.  It has no insurance, the tags have expired, and I can’t renew them online without physically showing proof of insurance.  For all I know, there could be a bench warrant for poor Tanya.

Did State Farm call or email before the policy expired?  No, they did not.

There may be other problems waiting for us that we don’t even know about.  This is a life of adventure.