Preparing for the Journey

I've quit my job again! I love quitting jobs, it's the finding a new one that really sucks, but hopefully, I won't have to do that again for awhile. We are currently in the process of getting the boat ready for the sail south. We plan to leave the Bay in approx 6 months, we'll see how that goes, originally we were hoping to leave on Nov 1st and then we had planned on leaving a couple years ago too. So, this time I think we might actually make it out of here.

In May we hauled out at the Berkeley Marine Center. We replaced the 3 thru hull valves that had failed, the handles broke right off, and the rest of them while we were at it with new industrial strength valves. We modified the rudder to be more stream lined, which required cutting out a section and rewelding it into a point instead of the flat surface it had been. That was a good call and worked out really well for us. The boat actually moves though the water, and turns better, which is good when you're trying to move our tank of a boat around in a marina. We had to do a bit of sandblasting to remove some failed paint and of course, prep the areas that had been welded. Then we reapplied the barrier coat and then added a fresh coat of bottom paint. We ended up spending about a week longer in the yard than we had planned due to our boat 'breaking' the yard. Arctic Tern is so heavy, that it sank right though the asphalt. Anyway, they had to come in and dig up some and replace some broken water pipes and then resurface the driveway.

The projects that we are hoping to get done before we leave include: installing a water maker, hooking up the new SSB radio, new covers for the cockpit cushions, something to shade the cockpit and of course we need to stock the boat with fuel, food, rum and whatever else we can think of that we might need out there. Still need to purchase a life raft and EPIRB, but those should be the last big things.

It's getting cold here, it's been raining a lot and the days are far too short, it's definitely time to head to south! We're really going to miss the people here though, the E'Ville Marina has been by far the best place we've lived at so far. We're going to have to have at least a couple more parties here before we go.