Back to Work

This morning we arrived at the boatyard with a mix of anticipation and dread. Funny thing about boats: parts break, rust, seize, and/or disintegrate whether you are using it constantly or not. So we weren't sure what to expect after eighteen months of Solstice sitting idle.

The day started off with a light drizzle. It's been raining all week so when we pulled up to the boat we saw that it was perched above a shallow sea of mud and muck. We climbed up the ladder and removed our flip-flops immediately so as not to track gunk everywhere. We needn't have bothered. The cockpit was covered in sludgy slime and small pebbles. There was even a small garden of weeds sprouting on the underside of the bimini ceiling. With a sigh we went to the door. There on the doormat was a soggy dead tree frog. No joke. I think I actually said to Kevin, "You know, we don't have to go inside. We could just turn around and go back home. No one has to know." But Kevin could not be tempted.

Our spirits were lifted the minute we opened the door. First off, and most importantly, the boat did NOT smell like bilge and mildew (much). So that was a great start. Other pleasant surprises were that our new wi-fi antenna and flat-panel TV had both arrived without incident and were waiting for us in the salon. Priorities, right? So we got straight to work unloading the van with all our luggage (three fifty-pound duffle bags). Then it was time for the moment of truth: removing the new table from the crate. Kevin had packed it so well it was practically encased in carbonite. We had to rip the spray foam off in chunks before we finally got to the saran-wrapped table itself. Not a scratch...success!!!

Elated from that small victory we got to work re-installing the trampolines. The entire front of the boat is made up of two big sheets of mesh instead of hard fiberglass. We had removed both of them for hurricane season, which made walking around on deck kind of risky since neither of us wanted to start off cruising season with a nasty fall. While we were working on that, our boat caretaker Betsy rolled up and apologized for not having the boat decks clean and ready for us before we got here. She then proceeded to thoroughly clean every surface of the boat exterior. So overall we are pretty pleased with the shape the boat is in. Don't get me wrong, there are a million things to do in the next few days before we can get the boat back in the water: change about five differnt kinds of oil, run the engines, re-install the outboard, un-seize the windlass, load the anchor chain, and wax the fiberglass to name a few. Oh, and touch up the bottom paint. Which is going to be difficult since we just found out that our brand of bottom paint was discontinued at some point in the last eighteen months. Oh well. The yard closed at five and we had hot showers and cable TV waiting for us back at the hotel. There's only so much you can do in a day.