Pursuit of Mast Happiness

This part of my life is called, driving. You might only get that if you have seen Will Smith's movie the Pursuit of Happiness. But that was the saying that was perpetually running through my head tonight as we took off on a last minute hunt for our new main mast. The time was 3:00pm and it was going to take an hour to get to the Marina in Bradenton. Matthew decided to use some of his time today to call Marina's for the chance that someone may just have a huge mast laying around. We did realize today much to our surprise that the new mast only needs to only be 46' 10", not 50'. What a relief! You would never think that 3' 2" could cause so many problems and cost you so much more money, but it does. Anyways, Matthew was able to talk to a guy on the phone at this Marina, an hour away, and he said "Yep I have one here". Matthew proceeded to try to find out the length of the mast but the guys response was "about 15 paces". I kept wondering upon our arrival if this guy might be a dwarf and his 15 paces would be from our own. But off we go. I am so sick of driving. Seems like that is all we have been doing since we left Texas. Look for a boat here, look at a boat there, find a part here, look at a part there. Ugh, it's exhausting to say the least. One really nice thing about the drive is the view on top of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. Sometimes the water is so crystal clear you just wish you could jump right in and today was defiantly one of those days. But train of thought back to the task at hand. We met with Jimmy, who was not a dwarf, and measured the mast. Sadly too short. The guy apologized for the long drive we made to take a look at it. Of course we didn't mind the drive, but it would have nice of him to have measured it, instead of saying 15 paces. We hop back in the car and traveled over a few blocks to another Marina. Asked one of the guys if they knew of any masts around. Now you have to understand that typically you are not met by the friendliest people in the world when you arrive at most of these Marina's/Boat yards. Especially when you arrive at closing time. The guy said "yeah I might have a mast laying around here". He walked inside and grabbed a tape measure, cause we left ours in the car and walked us out to a few he had on some stands. Measured the first one, no luck. Measured the next one on top and DUH Duh Duh! IT WORKS!! It is 48' long and has tons of hardware already on it. Now the big question at hand "How much?". The typical answer lately seems to be around $2,500 and that's on the lower end in some places. Seems that anytime you add the word Marine to something the price just sky rockets. That's why they say B.O.A.T. (bust out another thousand). Good thing we are very creative people and have found ways around many of these things. However some things you just can seem to get away from paying for. Then the words came from his mouth "$500". YES!!! what beautiful music to our ears. Of course we kept our heads cool and did not give him the knowledge of our excitement. Got his card after some pictures we took and parted our way. As a treat for the long drive back home we stopped at the best Custard place in the area, SweetBerries Frozen Custard. What an amazing day and here are a couple cool pics from the day. Just in case you were wondering why in the world that crazy purple & gold car was doing here too. I just happen to see this thing every time we are in the area, today I had to take a photo.