What an eventful few days! As Mike has said we arrived making good time but poor old Nelleke was not up for having her engine turn over with watery oil. There is nothing for it; an engine replacement is in order. The folks here think it will take less than a week to get the swap completed. It is a good thing we had planned to stay here in Deltaville for a while. They will not likely start until next week so we can use the time to sort things out and get settled back into life onboard. Perhaps when Nelleke is having her heart transplant we can play tourist by visiting colonial Williamsburg, Yorktown, and Jamestown and we still have to take that day run to Baltimore to take care of the cruising permit.
We made a major logistical oopsie in rushing to unload the trailer. Mike was all fired up to unload everything into the boat and I did not think it through enough to talk him out of it. Well, everything ended up on the boat and even with my best efforts to keep up there were boxes and stuff from stem to stern. It would have made a LOT more sense to unload gradually, putting things away where they go rather than what we did. Around about then I was having some seriously negative thoughts about this living on the boat thing and I have to admit that I was ready to cut and run especially once everything was out of the car and trailer and I started to try to unpack. The only thing was there was nowhere to run to! It was really cold on the boat and there was not enough room to swing a cat so I excused myself and retreated to the aft head and had a weep and a chat with myself while Mike found one of the electric heaters and dug out the wine glasses. Then came the universal cry of the boat male - "Hon, were's the..." Argh - he could not find a corkscrew so I had to emerge from the head and spent a successful 10 minute search. I tossed back a glass of wine, treated myself to one of my hoarded sleeping pills, and burrowed into my sleeping bag hoping all the while that the boat fairies would arrive and unpack and tidy all of the mess overnight - lazy boat fairies never did show up.
We also did another "stupid" today. We filled the water tanks and flipped on the pressure water pump without first checking all of the hose clamps - duh! We had leaking under each of the sinks and at the pump that could have been avoided. After all of these years of boat ownership you would think we would know better.
I did manage to unpack and put away about 30% of the gear today so that's not bad considering the conditions on the boat and right now I feel a little less like running back to Canada. I'll finish organizing the galley tomorrow and then sort out the stuff that I put in the v-berth and the middle cabin. Mike has to figure out why the port scupper is draining but is not splooshing out the through-hull fitting - such fun. That's of importance and can't wait too long as it has been raining for a bit.