Ready for the off - again.

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Fri 21 Jun 2013 04:01

Wed & Thursday – 19th & 20th June

 

Well the good news is that we have now completed all of the outstanding jobs and modifications and are ready to leave but sadly there has been a rather more significant set of issues with the sail maker. I am not going to go into all the issues here, but we are hoping that now that they have all of the missing hardware etc. that they will be turning up on Friday morning to deliver this all to us.  It has been a long and very messy saga and the less said the better, but the positive side is that we have got a lot of jobs done here whilst waiting, mostly things that would have been very hard to arrange or manage whilst on the move.

 

On Wednesday we pretty much completed the last of the big jobs with help again from David Masters who has been such a wonderful help, guide and guru! We completed the installation of the new control lever and then opted to complete the final part of the rigging inspection that had been held over, which was the dismantling and inspection of the Furlex gear and the forestay wires (x 2). We started on the forestay (despite David suggesting that we might start on the inner forestay as anything we dropped would not fall overboard).  So of course I then dropped a critical bit over the side in error and  we faced the prospect of waiting for a new part to be sent…… so we launched the dinghy, dug out the fish landing net and the 7ft extension pole and started dredging. Sarah and I both had go’s at this, but of course it was David who came up trumps recovering the small black plastic part from the deep glutinous Chesapeake mud overlaid with the run off from the 4” deluge from Monday.

 

The good news again was that both forestays were in excellent condition and once cleaned and treated, they were both reassembled and pronounced fit for duty.

 

On Thursday morning I got up early and headed off to try to get some photos of the very elegant Red Cardinal and other birds, but with mixed (read poor) results. In the evening we went along with David and Candy to a pot luck supper at their marina which was fun and once again said all our ‘goodbyes’ on the basis that we should be heading off in the morning once our sail has been delivered……. What could possibly go wrong with this plan?