HE FINALLY TAKES DELIVERY....

His planning and dreaming is finally coming to fruition.  Earlier this year, Steve had the dream of buying himself a new boat now that he had retired...  One week he was, the next week he wasn't..  In the end his friend Charlie and I convinced him that it would be a worthwhile thing to do...

He loves his fishing and he has worked very hard for many many years so it honestly is time to reward himself.

In early March when we arrived back from the Sunny Coast, and whilst his friend Charlie was off work recovering from some surgery to his hands, the boys went looking for boats... 

It was a little depressing shopping for a boat in Rockhampton, especially if you want it custom built as there is a 12 month wait on new boats...

That just encouraged him to look further afield and he found a very helpful salesman at Bundaberg Marineland who was not only able to supply a new boat for Steve but also with all the modifications that he wanted as well.   The best part was though that there was only a three month wait and it was quite a bit cheaper than getting it locally here with all the modifications done.

He was pretty keen to get a Mercury motor again this time so that meant that he had to get that elsewhere as Bundy Marineland only supplied Yamaha motors.  He tried both the Mercury dealer in Bundaberg who didn't even return his call and the dealer from Yeppoon and he was brilliant, not only a lot cheaper but very helpful and trusting also....

Whilst we were at Cania Gorge, Steve got a call from  Seabreeze in Yeppoon to say that his boat motor had arrived, but his motor guide that he had ordered wouldn't be arriving until mid July now.  Then at the end of our holiday we got a call from Bundaberg to say that the boat had arrived also, so he was pretty keen to get down to Bundy to pick it up.  

The hand over of the boat.  Peter takes Steve over the boat and points out all of the features of it...

Customized boat registration...

He's in the boat.....

He's very happy...

Checking out all the compartments...

Peter the salesman was very thorough in going over the boat with Steve.  He is pretty passionate about boating and it rubs on when communicating with you...

Behind the wheel...

pretty happy chappy...

Time to get the car and hook up...   Should we have brought the bigger car down, the boat is a lot bigger than we realized.  We did have to change to hitch to make it sit higher on the car...

We're all hooked up and ready to go.. All we need to do first is fill out and sign all the paperwork and pay the rest of the money owing..

Just paying the last payment...

And there goes the final payment...

He wanted to pinch himself as we drove out, still finding it hard to believe that he has his first new boat that he had designed and had custom built.  It was so good to see him so excited.  It made me feel excited for him...

Proud new owners of a Sea Jay boat...

With all the paper work now done,  the handover is complete and we are now the proud new owners of a new Sea Jay boat...

We took it back to his parents place, and then we had to go by a safety chain and lock.  I stayed home with the boat whilst he ducked out as his parents were still not home....

Once his parents arrived home from their weekly shopping, his Dad joined him in the boat.  I was surprised that he was able to climb in...

Steve showing his father his new boat...

Checking the anchor well in the boat...

Proud as punch with his new purchase..

High duty 4WD boat trailer..

Hid Dad checking out the comfort of the new seats...

Life fish tank on boat....

Looking so good....

We had to wait until we came back to Rocky for the motor to go one.  He had another 4-5 days to go until he took it to the beach to get the motor put on.

When he finally got it to the beach, we were up at the crack of dawn as they wanted it down there as early as possible.  We were down there just after 8am and we were told they would need to have it all day.  There was no point us staying there all day, especially when I had my ladies group happening that morning, there was also no point in going straight home as the highway had been very busy with traffic heading into Rocky for work, so we thought that we would have breakfast first before heading home and leave the beach around 9am when the work rush of traffic had died down...

Much to Steve's disappointment, he got a phone call in the afternoon to let him know they had run into a couple of snags and that the boat wouldn't be ready now until tomorrow...  He had been keen to take it out on the water for a test run on the Thursday before the kids came home and went out with him on the Friday...

We had dental appointments on Thursday morning which meant that we could leave for the beach to pick up the boat until lunch time...  Just as we were ready to head off at lunch time on Thursday, we got another call to say that the boat wouldn't be ready until somewhere between 2 and 3pm, so we decided to have lunch first before going down.  They also asked Steve to ring the spare battery down so that they could set it up for the Motor Guide.  That was a bit of a problem as we hadn't bought the spare battery at this stage, so he had to duck down to Battery world and buy a battery to take with us...

When left home around 2.30pm to head to the beach and when we got there, he was in for a masive surprise...

He couldn't believe it when he arrived.  The motor guide was already installed on his boat.  It wasn't suppose to arrive until the middle of July, so this was a huge surprise for him and meant that the whole ordering process was just 3 months instead of the 6-12 months we was warned it would take... Now he can start playing with it early...

Learning how to use his Motor Guide...

Having a lesson on who to attach and use his Motor Guide,

The hand over now on his new Mercury Boat Motor....

His new Merc motor...

This has been a big day....  he is super excited, but also a little nervous as well, as this boat is a lot bigger than anything he has had in the past... 

I am sure we are going to have a lot of fun with it though.  We just need to get it out on the water now...