Our 3rd season going south started early on the morning of Monday Oct. 15th when we left Kirsty and Shawn’s house to start our drive to the US. We had left our house the evening before, to stay with them for the night, so that we could leave our home ready for the house sitter to move in. We had a lovely evening at Kirsty and Shawn’s. Geoff and Emily were there also for a lovely supper and it was wonderful to have the family together our last evening before hitting the road.
No problem at all when we crossed the border into the US at Calais, Maine. We took 3 days to drive to Titusville, Florida staying overnight in motels at Portsmouth and Roanoke Rapids. We arrived at Westland Marina in Titusville to find Windrush waiting for us looking fantastic though somewhat covered in bird poop and berry seeds (also dropped onto her decks by those same birds)! Hundreds of grackles perched everywhere and making quite a noise! A nasty bunch of hornets had also made themselves at home, building a nest just inside one of the rear hatches. When Bruce open the hatch and stepped back one of them made a beeline(!) at me and stung me on the finger!! No ill effects from it though. We were exhausted from the drive south so decided to stay one more night in a motel so that we were fresh and raring to go the next morning, eager to get Windrush “ship-shape” and ready to put into the water.
Work, work, work! With the Yamaha people coming in 2 days time (Friday) while the boat was still on the hard and then the Mac Sails people coming on the following Tuesday by which time she had to be in the water, plus getting her ready to live in there was much to do! We were ready though bright and early on Monday morning (Oct.22nd) When Rick, Robert and the marina crew arrived with the hoist to put Windrush into the water. Unfortunately we didn’t have any engines, as the Yamaha people took them both away on the previous Friday to repair the automatic tilt lift on the starboard engine and to give them both a good overhaul. As it turned out this was a long term project! Plenty of jobs on the boat chore list though to keep us occupied. Also provisioning to do for the season. The manatees kept us amused as well – at least 36 at one count! I really enjoy watching them – they make me smile!
Mac Sails arrived as planned on Tuesday and fitted our lovely new mainsail – cut with a fuller roach than the original so that it rubs against the backstay when it moves. This was cause for some concern, but we were assured by the rep. that this was the way they were cutting them now and they had fitted a few PDQ’s with them and that everything was just fine. So……….time will tell. We also bought a Mac Pac for the main sail to drop into each time it is lowered. We fitted that ourselves one day while still waiting for our engines. I also sewed the boat name in gold coloured letters onto each side of the Mac Pac – looks REALLY good! Another sewing project was to repair and improve the sunshade that we put up at the back of the cockpit – a big improvement in many ways over how it was when we had finished it.
Hurricane Sandy decided to pass us on Friday Oct. 26th and we had loads of high winds and rain to contend with, but nothing in comparison to the effects of Sandy on New York and it’s surrounding areas. Those poor people! It was actually quite fortunate that we didn’t have our engines as we would likely have been out on the water somewhere during Sandy. The Bahamas also were hit badly yet again by this hurricane. Our engines finally arrived back to us and were re-installed on Friday Nov. 2nd. That evening we had a very nice supper at our friend Rich Tanner’s house just outside of Titusville along with our friends Dave and Ann (PDQ Next Exit). Rich and his two cats. Eb and Flo are the owners of the PDQ ‘Feral Cat’ and we met them during last seasons cruise.We were going to leave Westland the following day, but decided to stay until Sunday as on Saturday Robert from the marina was putting on a BBQ chicken lunch and we decided we just couldn’t miss that! Bright and early though, this (Sunday) morning we were on our way! Engines purring along nicely down the ICW.