Bostin' Boston

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sat 13 Jul 2013 02:24

Wed, Thurs & Fri – 10th, 11th & 12th July

 

This is our last marina stop for a while and given that we have a few days before our friend James Robinson flies out to join us, we settled down to complete as few more items off our ‘jobs to do’ list, which just continues to grow despite everything.

 

The weather has not been very helpful in all of this and it has been cloudy and muggy most of the time, but sometimes very wet and sometimes really quite chilly. This is normal/unusual depending on who you are talking to locally.

 

I rushed round to the small Aussie bar on site to find out if they knew the result of the Lions Rugby  tests…….( I was just keen to enlighten them), but I was told that they were in London at the moment. I don’t believe it myself and feel sure that they were just hiding – especially seeing as how the they were not going too well in the Ashes cricket either at that point.

 

We have decided that to make a bit of room on board, we should ship our largely unused Cruising chute (sail) back to the UK. This seemed a simple task to organise whilst sitting here in Boston, just a mile or so from Logan Airport. Sarah started to research this online  and we also chatted to a freight company onsite here. We soon found wildly varying prices ($200 to $1200) with all sorts of issues about packing etc. Sarah quickly settled on an English company called Excess Baggage, who were really helpful and the cheapest by far, but we needed to get the sail packed up suitably which was less easy to manage. FedEx offer just such a service and you can do it yourselves at some of their sites, so Sarah contacted the office at the airport and they confirmed that they would help us pack the sail even though they are not the carrier.

 

So we loaded the sail up onto our very practical trolley (a new purchase in the UK last winter) and having researched the quickest route on foot to the airport using Google earth, we set off. This was a success in that it allowed us to walk the one and half miles dragging the trolley to the huge FedEx facility on the edge of the airport. The bad news was that they had no idea what Sarah was talking about and most certainly do not do ‘packing’ as they are simply the air freight depot. But they took huge pity on us, especially as we had walked there (in the land of the car – they were incredulous)) and also because we had sailed all the way to the USA in the first place, so they all tried to find a solution to the problem. In the end, as the office staff phoned round to see what they could find out on our behalf from all of their competitors, Mike took us into the huge warehouse to see what could be done. We immediately saw a huge stack of heavy duty  cardboard and so armed with a big reel of their packing tape, we set about making our own box with Mike’s help and his sharp knife. In due course the job was done and we were able to return to the marina (with our freshly boxed sail) and make the arrangements for its collection and transportation to the UK.  Along the way we found that the car hire companies have a new ‘offsite’ airport facility very close to the back of the boatyard. The thing is that on Tuesday we have to go to the airport again to meet our friend James Robinson and so Sarah popped into the car hire depot and asked if we might be allowed to ride into the main airport terminal on one of their courtesy buses. The answer was yes, so that is a bit of a bonus!

 

On Wednesday we went out to dinner with Craig and Karene and their two daughters. They are here at the moment staying in an apartment and so they were keen to meet up with us and show us a bit more of the city. We had a great night as ever, but once again I fell victim to the American portion sizes and am gradually (Sarah says, rapidly) changing shape and waist size. We keep telling ourselves that ‘next week’ we will be sailing alone and can eat less, but there are too many boats out there hoping to meet up with us in Maine and these meetings always end up in much the same way, with too much food and far too much drink.

 

Not sure what the weather has in store for us this weekend, but we are reliably informed that we can expect temperatures in the mid 90’s all next week. Sounds like the UK which we gather has been basking in unbroken sunshine…. depending on who you talk to!

 

A quirky feature of this shipyard are all of the sculptures situated around the site. Artists have been encouraged to think big and so there are a host of wonderful (and not so wonderful) installations all over the place, including some huge features up on the roofs of buildings as well as smaller ones randomly situated almost everywhere.  There are a lot of new ones for us to find and enjoy and the whole project is very much a living thing.  But the biggest asset of this location is the incredible view just across the river to the clustered, towering heights of the city of Boston.