It’s done; Earendil is sold. Here she sits loaded on a trailer getting ready to go to Seattle, Washington. Her new owner, Dartanyon, is the guy in the blue shirt. We couldn’t have sold her to a nicer guy. Standing behind him is his friend Scott, who did the survey for him. We learned more about the boat and sailboats in the day Scott was aboard than I realized there was to know. All in all, things went fine. We had a great sail on the sea trial (doing as much as 7.3 knots in a nice breeze) and though we didn’t get near what we wanted for the boat, we struck what I think is a very fair deal.

Getting Earendil ready to sell and then the survey and preparing her to ship was so much work that all we are feeling is relieved that we no longer have to deal with her. In the three weeks between when we thought we had everything as ship-shape as possible, when Dartanyon visited the boat, and Wednesday when he came back for the final deal, we made four more repairs. One of the fans that has worked steadily for 30+ years quit. Shot, caput, bad bearing in the motor or something similarly fatal. So we replaced that fan. Meanwhile, the rheostat on a second fan went, so we took the rheostat out of the dead fan and put it in the working fan. Then the freshwater pump that’s been rebuilt at least three times got so tired that it couldn’t empty out the lowest water tank. So that got replaced. Finally, the freshwater foot-pump in the galley that had been leaking a drop here and there finally started leaking enough to get the floor wet. No rebuild to that, so that got replaced.

Dartanyon brings fresh enthusiasm and fresh capital to the boat and so I’m sure Earendil will continue to sail and even improve for years to come. I’m sorry we never got to meet his family, but I hope they sail and enjoy Earendil. She is, in the end, a very fine boat.

As for Bud and I (and Matey) everything we own is packed in the land barge and a rented mini-van. We are going to mosey back to Texarkana, dump our stuff, return the van, visit Jamie, replace the land barge and do some traveling. Before long we will probably buy a small and simple house, get a small and simple fishing boat and have fun in less stressful ways. This is the end of the blog; for updates you’ll have to catch me on Facebook, like everyone else.