Mon, Tues, Wed & Thursday – 10^th, 11^th, 12 & 13^th June

Wish we had a bit more to report but this has been a long frustrating week with seemingly more steps taken backwards than forwards.

The weather has been indifferent at best, but daily it oscillates between searing temperatures with very high humidity to cold wet and damp – well not British cold wet and damp, but I am sure you get my meaning here!  Thursday even brought us State wide serious flood warnings due to the succession of massive thunderstorms that developed and this was topped with a tornado alert and we gather one ‘touched down’ as they say around here… about 20 miles away.

Frustration has been mainly the waiting around for things to happen or arrive. One thing has led to another and it is because we chose to try to get things all sorted before we set of cruising north to Maine that we have got ourselves into this delayed situation. We ordered some important parts from Sweden on the 27^th May and they were promptly despatched on an express mailing using Swedish Post. The tracking shows that they got the parcel to the USA (New York) on 31^st May and then it has meandered its lonely way from NY towards us here in Maryland. The latest tracking shows it getting to Capitol Heights on 14^th June so there is an outside chance of delivery soon, but we are not holding our breath – stop press, we have just had notification that they (USPS) have ‘missent’ the item by which they mean that they have sent it to the wrong area and are going to redirect it to the correct office some time.  Not covering themselves in glory here!

So with this in transit, we opted to get some other jobs done and a few other items ordered and they of course have all come a bit unstuck and so nothing actually is getting finished off, although in truth we are making good progress and with luck we might actually be ready to head off properly early next week.

We are also waiting for the sail makers to deliver the new sail they have made for us, but somehow this gets put off again and again.

Replacing a gear cable should have been an easy job, but dear Najad when putting this boat together seemed in any number of places, to overlooked the importance of protecting fittings where you use stainless steel, screwed into aluminium (lucky non-boaters might want to know that this creates a chemical reaction which fuses the parts together), so this job has taken days as we have to battle with every screw and bolt in sight – and quite a few out of sight!  We have even had to have a puller made to get the single lever control lever arm off the spline. And it all takes a long time when everyone is so laid back.

On the positive side though things have been getting done and we have some very good friends and neighbours. David and Candy have been a great source of help and amusement and their expertise has both created and solved a good many of these jobs along the way. The mast and rigging is in good shape now (famous last words) and the cracked turnbuckle is due to be replaced on Friday (we hope) – Selden at least managed to get their parts to us in 4 days.

Some great wildlife here and we have seen baby snappers (snapping turtles) and a range of birds which I have been trying desperately to photograph. But they are very media wise here in the USA and one glimpse of a camera case and they all vanish like magic.  I am beginning to develop quite a respect for wildlife photographers as there is a lot more to photographing birds in particular than knowing how to use a camera.  But if you just stroll along on your way somewhere, they come out in droves and we have seen some wonderful birds in particular and we may just have to live off the memories alone!!