A Star is Born! Introducing Serenity, KK AE Hull Number 4850

Hi friends!  Sorry for the long interlude between posts, but it was very hard to say good-bye to For Us.   I'm a person with fierce loyalties and can't just walk away after saying my farewells. Now that For Us has a new family, I now feel free to welcome our new boat, Serenity. Since nothing we do is done simply, you need to know that once we decided to purchase Serenity, we soon had everyone at Kadey Krogen Yachts following her every movement and I mean every movement!  We have photos of workers in their socks hanging curtains, finishing the teakwork and making final checks of everything.  But I digress.... Serenity was "born" in Asia Harbor Yard in Taiwan in mid-2010.  She was crafted to KKY's finest standards, just waiting for the right family to come along.  As I mentioned in a previous post, deciding to buy her was arrived at in 2 ways: by intelligence and by our hearts' desire.  Let's face it, one never wakes up one day and decides to buy a boat - a big, expensive boat at that.  Since we we've been guided by our dreams to this point, some honest conversation with the folks at KKY helped us take this leap of faith.   Since Serenity was due to sail from Taiwan to Washington State in late November, we had to move quickly to make our dream a reality.  With the help of the KKY team (who now seemed like family), the deal was made following a long conference call on Monday night, October 11th.  Ironically, this magical moment arrived one night after our 39th anniversary ( I was married right out of the cradle - I know you're calculating here).  That night and the next days passed in a blur of frantic activity.  Tom and I were flying high and scared at the same time.  Who were we to be buying this fabulous boat?  How did we get so lucky that this opportunity of a lifetime landed at our feet at this moment in time? Within a matter of weeks on November 22nd, Serenity was completed and loaded onto a cargo ship, The Beluga Favourisation, for her trip across the ocean to the US.  What a thrill to actually see photos of our new baby sitting atop a giant freighter heading for her new home!  Every couple of days we received a progress report from the ship as it headed for Seattle. It seemed to be going sooo slowly.  Then came the report we had all been waiting for - the ship was docking in Seattle the next day.  After about 18 hours in Seattle, the ship was once again underway and heading for the Panama Canal.  Since Tom has a friend still actively involved in marine transportation, he kindly offered to try to capture photos of the ship carrying Serenity as she transited the Canal.  On a Friday night in early January, we got the call that Serenity would be going through the Canal late that night.  True to his word, our friend called us, told us to log onto to a particular website and there she was - our girl sitting like a spun sugar flower atop a giant birthday cake going through the Canal on the cargo ship.  What a thrill to see her.  Luckily for us, her position on the ship gave us a clear view of her starboard side and stern.  We were told that though many owners try to catch a glimpse of their new boat at this point, they are successful only 50% of the time. Now that Serenity was through the Canal, she was scheduled for arrival in Port Everglades 4 days later.  Tom and I could talk of nothing else.  I was on the phone with my friend Laura from KKY several times a day.  Finally, on January 11th, Laura called to tell me that the ship could be tracked on a website that included a live webcam view of the inlet.  Several minutes later, Laura called to tell me to maximize my screen, that I would be able to see Beluga Favourisation enter the harbor with our girl in clear view!  Moments later as everything in the office came to a halt, the ship entered the webcam's range and THERE SHE WAS!  I had my first stateside view of the newest member of our family! The excitement of seeing our girl for the first time was too much!  I jumped up yelling and crying and trying to get Tom on the phone.  To experience such excitement at this point in life is truly a gift! Now the craziness really began in earnest.  Serenity was going to be offloaded that very day.  She would be wet for the first time since her "birth" and sailed to her temporary home at Four Fish Marina in Jensen Beach, FL by one of KKY's very competent (and brave) captains.  She finally splashed down (well not splashed, but daintily entered) the water around 9:30 that night.  Sharing in our excitement to date, KKY didn't fail us now.  Her welcoming committee was there (after waiting hours) to not only greet her, but take pictures with cellphones to send me the very moment she was floating. After all this excitement, more was on the way for us!  Now that Serenity had safely arrived in Florida, Tom and I could book our flight to finally meet her - in just 3 more days!

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2/5/11