We've been living on SCOOTS for about a month now. On land, our house was indeed emptied, painted, carpeted, cleaned, staged, shown, and traipsed through, as planned. We received an offer, did a couple rounds of the Counteroffer Dance, and are now currently in escrow, which is due to close in about a week. Things move fast around here.

We've been spending most of our time getting SCOOTS--and ourselves--ready for our planned September departure. Here's a sampling of some of the jobs we've done or started since moving aboard last month: rebuilding the watermaker; cutting and installing a new hatch (a shout out to Wayne from Capricorn Cat for giving us the tip about using alcohol to remove excess Sikaflex--it works great!); cutting our mattress topper to size; stowing, stowing, and more stowing; replacing our old crusty anchor chain with shiny new anchor chain; replacing our 66 lb. anchor with a 110 lb. anchor; replacing our vinyl-covered steel jacklines with new high-tech Dyneema jacklines that Eric cut and spliced himself; getting our liferaft inflated, inspected, tested, certified, and repacked by Sal in Alameda;



cutting and installing new cockpit seat cushions; fixing the clock so it doesn't ding 31 o'clock anymore; replacing the shower sump (the pump had stopped working and it was stinky); sewing a mesh bag for our 600 feet of polypropylene shore tie rope and stowing it in the aft seat locker...And did I mention stowing?



In between all of our boat projects, we've also been taking items to the nautical consignment store; helping a friend move into a new house; listing our vehicles and some other last items for sale; hosting dinners, lunches, and a drop-in open house to say goodbye (we've made a few friends here in the past 30 years); getting new passports; making the hour roundtrip to our house every couple of days, to get the mail, fill up the bird bath, and generally check things out at the homestead.

Yeah, life is pretty crazy right now. I'm longing for a quiet anchorage somewhere...

Last weekend, we took a day off from our preparations to take some of our friends sailing, which was a blast! Most of the people had sailing or boating experience and it was a treat to have a crew! San Francisco Bay was windy enough for SCOOTS to have a good romp. It was nice to get her out of the slip for awhile. We were pleased to learn that our stowing job had been about 99% effective: only a couple of items ended up on the cabin sole, despite our guest helmsmen's best efforts to dislodge them.



We're very excited that our daughter has moved aboard! She'll stay with us for a few weeks, and sail south with us as far as Santa Cruz, where she attends college.

With only a few short weeks left before we leave, I'm feeling a complicated mix of emotions at the prospect--after six years of planning--of finally beginning our cruising life. I have a saying on my computer desktop that reads: "Accept what is, let go of what was, and have faith in what will be." I've been living by those words for the past few months, as we've navigated all the transitions that must occur, to make our cruising life possible. I know that soon we WILL find that quiet anchorage, and there, with nothing but the sound of the wind in the rigging and the waves lapping SCOOTS' hull, we'll finally take some deep breaths, release all the tension of the past few months, and begin our next adventures.