In The Beginning

We signed the final papers on March 25, 1998. Once everything was finalized we made preparations to haul her out of the water so we could work on her. It was a nervous ride taking her from where she was docked to the boat yard. It was not all that far (about 2 miles) but it was enough for the inside of the boat to become filled with exhaust fumes and steam. At first we thought the smoke was coming from the engine room. When Bob opened the engine compartment, he realized it was steam. The saltwater inlet on the exhaust had corroded through and engine exhaust and salt water was hitting the exhaust system, creating the steam and the fumes. We ran the bilge pump on the way, and immediately upon arriving at the boatyard dock, closed the saltwater cooling thru-hole valve.

We told ourselves that she would be out of the water for a couple of months. Bob was living on his boat, Albion, in the Santa Barbara marina and I was living in my cottage in Hope Ranch. This is probably a good spot to insert a little background on how we met and what our situations were. Bob had been married for 24 years and was a Los Angeles City firefighter. In addition to his firefighting duties, he had involved himself in several different business ventures; including raising bees, a Christmas-tree flocking business, a carpet-cleaning business, and breeding Arabian horses. It was the horse business that began eating away at his marriage. In the beginning it had been very profitable, but when Ronald Reagan became president one of the first things he did was to end the tax breaks, which severely impacted the Arabian horse business. Often the veterinarian bills alone would approach $40,000 a year and if he could not write off some of the expenses, it would not be possible to continue. His wife, however, loved the horses and all of the other animals accumulated throughout their marriage and was not interested in cutting back on anything. Bob ended up spending more and more time on Albion while his ex-wife devoted her time to the animals. They decided eventually to end their marriage, and that is when I met him. He was living on his boat in the Santa Barbara marina.

My first marriage ended when my ex-husband decided to take up with a 20-year old young woman. Since that was not the first affair he had engaged in, we called it quits after 26 years. The day that Bob and I met, my girl friend and I had spent the day hiking in the nearby mountains. The weather was drizzly and cold so after our hike we decided to have a bowl of clam chowder and a glass of white wine at Brophy Brothers, a popular restaurant at the Santa Barbara marina. Brophy Brothers is popular not just because of its location on the water, but the upstairs area has a beautiful view of the boats and the shoreline. The restaurant tables wrap around the outside of the deck and in the center is a circular bar. Claudia (my friend) and I were sitting at one of the outside tables when Bob and his friends rather boisterously entered the bar area. It was obvious that they had already been enjoying a few drinks and were actually making somewhat of a spectacle of themselves. Bob from time to time would turn to Claudia and I (we were seated just behind them) and make joking comments. He ended up sitting down with us and pretty much interrupting our meal. I thought he was somewhat funny but Claudia thought he was extremely annoying. Before we left he asked me for my phone number and I gave it to him thinking he seemed harmless and might be fun to go out dancing with if no one else was available. As Claudia and I drove home she was livid. When she dropped me off she asked me if I was really serious about going out with him. I replied: "Oh for goodness sake, Claudia. It's not like I'm going to marry him or anything, I just think he might be fun to go dancing with sometime." As I laid in bed that night just about asleep, the phone rang. A voice sounding somewhat familiar asked if I was Margie. I replied yes and asked who it was. It was Bob. Apparently he had called information on his cell phone to see if I had given him my real number or not and the operator had automatically connected him. So his next words to me were: "I didn't mean to call you." I hung up. He called a couple of days later, apologized and asked me out for pizza. I hesitatingly agreed, thinking that Claudia's instincts were probably correct. Obviously the pizza dinner went well and we are thankfully, where we are today.