Almost Ready

It's Monday morning and we've come to the place where each part of our remaining three days is planned. Bob has gone down to the boat to meet Sean. The work on our WiFi signal booster/aerial continues. Will it work? - still not sure.

On Saturday, we packed boxes of food (mostly taken from our kitchen cupboards) and bags of clothes into the car, brought the boat into the dock by the club parking lot and transferred everything to the boat. I filled once partially empty lockers with food and clothes - we even found an empty space for my collection of books. Bob stored many of our newly purchased charts and cruising guides by laying them flat under the cabin seat cushions.

Yesterday, on the way to the boat, we stopped by the "propeller guy's" condo to pick up a special screw. Late tomorrow afternoon or early Wednesday morning, Bob is having the boat pulled out so that he can replace one of the prop screws. (He discovered the faulty screw when the boat was out of the water last week.)

We spent Sunday with Krista, Sean and Michelle, had lunch on the boat, did some biking (using the "folding" bikes we'll take with us), read some magazines and had dinner "on the deck" at the club. Incidentally - after Krista and I returned from our bike ride, Bob discovered that one of the bike tires needs the inner tube replaced so we'll add that to the list of final tasks for the next couple of days.

Sean will drive us to the boat Wednesday afternoon. Bob has his last Cruising Squadron meeting Wednesday night - and then - we're off on Thursday morning for a ten month "sail" on Sea Change. Many have questioned how we'll manage so much time together in sometimes stressful situations. Well - we'll see about that but we're pretty sure that we're equal to the task :) - and can even have a good time in the process.

Did I say that "we're off on Thursday morning?" - well yes - but since we're sailors - that would be we're off - weather permitting.

Waupoos Race Picture

Here were are in the Waupoos round the island race. This is Bob in race mode - note his race focus and intensity - and note my own. Thanks to Eileen Woolsey for the picture.

Time to Get Serious

We're back from our Waupoos cruise. As expected, this was a training cruise for me. I was more involved in more aspects of running the boat than I have been in the past. If I wasn't at the wheel or fooling around with the new GPS, I was "studying" - reading my book, Cruising for Cowards. In spite of it's title, this has proved to be one of the better cruising primers that I've read - full of information about living happily and safely on a sailboat - so much so that I passed it over to Bob to read chapters on electronics and boat maintenance. Incidentally, the authors allow that if you were truly a coward - you wouldn't be taking off to do long distance cruising on a sailboat.

As part of my trip preparation, I routinely backed the boat out when we left docks and also docked the boat a few times. I've a lot of work to do on the docking part and although I've calmed down a lot during the whole process, when I feel that the boat has "gotten away from me" and I'm not understanding why she is moving in a certain way, I still tend to panic. A boat turns differently than a car, has no brakes and is affected by winds and currents. When backing up, one also has to account for the tendency of the boat to kick to one side ("prop walk") and when going forward, in addition to the wind, and turning issues, there is the problem of peering past the nose of the boat that seems awfully far away and trying to judge where you are in relation to the approaching dock. I try to remember that Bob had his years of learning before he became as skilled as he is now at the wheel. During the first few years when we had Chance Encounter, we often came in too close or too far away from the dock, or found ourselves seemingly "stuck" in the middle of a channel between rows of boats trying to maneuver in or out. It would be easiest to just go back to assisting and to stay away from the helm - but it's safest if I learn to handle the boat confidently in various situations - so, in spite of my fears, I'll keep at it.

Using the new GPS is a different story altogether. Now here is something that I took to easily. I was fairly quickly able to figure out how to place way points, build routes and modify the various screens available. Bob got so sick of the beep, beep that announced each push of a button, that I had to turn it off. He also began to worry when I approached the navigation pod for fear that I was going to mess up the appearance of the screen that he had just carefully set up. His fears were groundless .... of course ;-)

While away, we kept thinking of things that we had to do - what needs to come to the boat, be taken off of the boat, still be bought for the trip, what needs to be installed, fixed, or added. I made a long list of "to dos" and now that we are home, we'll begin to check them off. There's lots still left to do - and we have just under a month. These will be busy days but we feel as if things are falling into place, and that we will be ready (or mostly ready) on departure day.