Alright!

Busy day yesterday, running about, a flying trip to Bridgewater for more cruise purchases, and fixing a few details on the boat, and one or two small jobs to help our new friends aboard Beyond. They have told us that there is another boat coming that left Liverpool this morning trying to make Shelburne Harbour. I sure hope they’re OK. I’m pretty sure that it’s a nasty day outside. It’s certainly not so wonderful in here and we are six miles from the open ocean. I am also a little concerned about Outlander and Belleaventure who left this past Monday. We gave them boat cards and asked them to email us when they arrived in the US. I expect it is merely a matter of slipping their mind and not due to anything wrong, at least, I sure hope that’s the case.

After a rip snortin’, wind bashing, wave humpin’ day, around about 17h00 the wind simply disappeared and the harbour became as flat as piss on a plate, as old Bluenosers used to say. Then it picked up again after dinner. Almost as if it needed to take a break.

The first group of the dock team arrived here yearly yesterday morning and pulled the power off the dock. Not just a matter of flipping a switch although that gets done too. The biggest part of the job is to unfasten the yards and yards of power conduit, coil up the wire and put on pallets, and detaching the power stantions and laying them down on the docks too, ready to be picked up by a forklift once the docks are brought ashore. I don’t think that everyone knows how much work it is to set up and tear down the docks each fall and spring. Without the volunteers it simply wouldn’t be possible without adding a big expense to the club budget. SHYC is a volunteer club in which all members are expected to participate in the various jobs. You would expect the boating members to jump in but what to me is most interesting is how much the social members get involved as well. It’s a great way for the club to exist and to enable the membership fees to be kept very low. It’s the least expensive yacht club we have ever belongs to.

We had our meeting with our friend who will be checking in on our place while we are away. He gave us a pumpkin loaf, which is a tad backward since it should be us giving him gifts to repay his kindness. We will be on the hunt for something while we are away. He is a photographer, a health care technician and a musician so we have an eclectic field of interests from which to choose.

While I have been doing the wiring and re-wiring, the plumbing and re-plumbing, the splicing and rigging, the messing about and jigging, Barb has been steadfastly soldiering on making Nelleke habitable again. I don’t mean pink versus blue jobs, more that she has some skills like canvas working that I can only dream of copying. We both cook but even there we each have our areas of expertise. She is the pontiff of pastry whereas I can’t make a cake from a mix. I am the master of sneaky tricks in the galley and she follows recipes to the letter. I believe that I am the Emir of the entrees, but so does she. It makes for some memorable dinners for our guests as we try to out do each other. But I digress. Nelleke is now clean and shipshape, thanks to Barb, and I have been shamed into being more neat when I do my jobs and into cleaning and tidying up when I am done.

The weather forecast software is starting to show Sunday afternoon or Monday as a lot more benign than the weekend will be but that is still four days out, and it, as yet, won’t show us what Tuesday and Wednesday will be like. Although this morning’s download shows that a Sunday or Monday departure could give us as much as 4-5 days of acceptable conditions and I am starting to think that we should look at a destination further south than Cape Code, such as Norfolk. Maybe we will leave and head for just south of Cape Cod and when we get within range we can download another forecast to confirm the original. If it’s still good – tally ho! If not we can tuck into Cape Cod or Cape May. We have our fingers tightly crossed. However, the idea of getting almost there and having to heave to for 24 hours to let a storm go by isn’t very appealing. If we can only get as far as Onset and have to hunker down there for the next window, so be it. At least we will be underway.

Today we were to have moved off the dock that has been Nelleke’s home since she launched and moved over to the fuel dock but as it happens Beyond was to have gone over to the Town Dock but with the north winds howling up the harbour they have asked for and received permission to stay on the dock tonight and go over early in the morning. As they are sort of a cork in a bottle for us leaving we will have to stay too. Oh dear!

We had our first cruising guests aboard for lunch. Our good friends, Louis and Bob, came down to visit, tour the boat, and wish us a good cruise. This was an excellent motivation to spruce up the main cabin, put the last hangers on away, scrub the floor and break out the first class melmac as opposed to the army issue stuff. We fired up the oven for the first time and Barb made a warm roasted vegetable salad with feta cheese and balsamic vinegar.

Slurp.

We even managed to get the home entertainment system running and played some nice background music.

We will be going up to the club for dinner tonight. Looking forward to seeing our friends and tomorrow we will move out to the mooring and do a last laundry and get ready to a potential departure on Sunday if the forecast agrees