3. East Coast USA

Happy Holidays!

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Today Bill and I are heading home to spend Christmas with our families. When we return to the boat on New Year’s Eve, our focus will be on the Blue Planet Odyssey, and leaving the USA on January 10th.

We came so close to finishing up our many projects, but unfortunately the boat is still on the hard, scheduled to “splash” tomorrow, maybe. I don’t like leaving Tim (and his family who are arriving to visit him) with the challenges of getting the boat operational again, and getting settled on a mooring as we originally planned to do 16 days ago! But so be it.

The engine has been completely rebuilt. It is running in the shop; it gets installed in the boat today. It would have cost us less to install a brand new engine last winter, than to go through all the work in Portland and now here. Oh well. It’s all “journey,” and we’ve learned a lot along the way.

For our hull repair we’re still waiting for the interior finish coat of paint; the paint should arrive today. Buffing our topsides is half done; the guy doing the work is nowhere to be found. The bottom paint for some reason hasn’t quite been finished; I think we’ll just do it ourselves. The sailmaker is supposed to get our repaired sail cover back to us. All to be done in the next day, we hope…

We purchased a new life raft six weeks ago, but we’re still waiting for delivery — Saturday, they say. We’re still working on getting insurance to cover our world cruising. There is a lot still to be resolved. But it feels like we’re very close to where we need to be.

We’ve sailed 1500 miles down the East Coast, including some challenging conditions. We’ve learned a lot about the boat — both its gear and its handling. The three of us seem to comprise a good crew (effective and generally fun). It has been a good “shakedown,” and I believe we will be ready for what’s just over the horizon in the new year.

9 thoughts on “Happy Holidays!”

  1. I am wondering with the latest political developments, whether you can go to Cuba after all? Looking forward to seeing you soon!

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  7. Hi Zeke! Half of our team got to gather and read your blog postings since our last opportunity on Nov.19th. We will have to get the others together after our two week break, as time ran out. The students enjoyed both your adventures and pictures. I had time to hear a few questions. We’ll send more later. Have a lovely time home!
    *Emma–Are you going to run out of money, since you had all those unexpected repairs?
    *Renee–How is the culture different in South Carolina?
    *Alia–What will your next stop be?
    *Ahmed–Have you gone snorkeling?
    *Katelyn I.–Will your trip go overtime since you had this unexpected delay?
    *Jordyn–Thanks for telling us about your Thanksgiving. Will you be having a New Year’s Eve party?
    *Jaden–Since you only had a few inches to spare in parking the boat, what would you have done if your boat had been too wide?

    Merry Christmas!

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