Getting Ready

When my sister Mairead told me earlier this year that her husband Francois was planning to sail from their home in Connecticut to Newfoundland and back again by September and there might be a place on the boat for me, I immediately said i was interested and to keep me in the Loop. As I was finishing fulltime work from January, I was pretty sure i would need to fill up my days with something other than DIY.

F is planning to leave mid June and head up through long island sound, via Marthas Vineyard, Halifax-Novascotia, StPierre and Miquelon (French territory) and then to St Johns in Newfoundland where I will depart the boat late July and my place taken be an old sailing buddy of F. I will fly back to my lovely wife Ali and go straight to Egypt for a little well earned  R&R. This retirement life is a tough gig. 

 

Skip forward 6 months, it is mid June and here i am in Connecticut, doing DIY on the boat getting it ready for the trip. Be careful what you wish for…the boat was on a stand about 45 minutes north from home and we commuted each day to work on it. 

Francois has been working all winter to fix some leaks in the internal freshwater tanks which appeared after his trip from Madeira last year. This was a major job as it involved disassembly of some of the internal bulkheads to access the tanks. When i arrived on the scene, all the heavy lifting was done but there was a long list of smaller jobs to do which were not difficult just just time consuming. I was tasked with all the electrical jobs and got to work whilst F handled the structural stuff. Anything that looked like it could be put off went on the list to be handled in Halifax. 

At times, it looked like we would be setting sail with a lot yet to be done. The day came to put the boat in the water again and bring it back 20 miles down the coast nearer to home and shorten the daily commute. 

The boat lifter came and picked Selune up and dropped her in the water where she obliging stayed afloat (crane operator ably assisted by his dalmation apprentice) Having Selune  closer to home would speed things up enormously as we avoid the crappy jams along the I95 each way. A quick day sail down the coast in champagne conditions to a marina in Stamford and we were all set. 

….then the dread Covid struck. I am not sure whether me or Yves arriving by plane brought it but F got the dose and that delayed us a few days. Certainly I was feeling a bit crap for the first 5 days after I arrived so I suspect I might have been the source. I got to drive the family wagon to the new marina each day on my own…I was not super confident of avoiding an accident having seen the quality of the driving in the week to date. Scary is a word I would happily use to describe it. Some very cute geese families would cross the road in front of me most days. 

Two weeks later, we are ready to go. Sure there are a few tasks on the Halifax list but it’s a lot shorter than it was.  I have wined and dined excellently courtesy of my family for two weeks and now I have itchy feet again. Not sure what the nautical equivalent of that expression is but I am ready to set sail. The boat is loaded with food, everything is stowed and we are ready to go.