We’re SAILING!

First, I want to thank everyone who has asked me to continue writing this blog. Your appreciation means a lot to me, and now that we are done with the heavy lifting of boat prep and are actually ON THE WATER, SAILING, I will endeavor to entertain with occasional posts. Some will be straight reporting (“We did this today…”), and some will be more narrative in style- turning our real-life adventures into a story. I want to share as much of this as I can, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and it’s easier to tell some of the more difficult passages if it’s a story, “based on real-life”, rather than a memoir. You’ll see what I mean soon enough.

But “f’now” (*), we are happy and excited to have finally made the jump, from construction/prep, to being out here sailing the boat! It has been a long, hard haul, and not without costs- financial, emotional, and physical, and we’re glad to have put that phase behind us. We still have lots to do on the boat, but it’s smaller, fun projects, and really more just daily maintenance and continual upgrades for safety, convenience, and cosmetics. We are trickin’ this boat out, and I’m getting to put into place things I’ve dreamed of for years. Kate has been planning to do a video tour of Gabrielle, but we’ve got to clean her up from our passage yesterday- it got windy, we heeled over, and stuff that wasn’t stowed properly below got scattered all over the boat (learning curve!).

More to come soon.

(*) “F’now”- We got to be quite good friends with the guys in the boatyard in Salem, particularly with Tom P., a genuinely nice guy, always helpful and friendly. During our first year there, as we were sorting through all the stuff we were putting on the boat, he walked by and told Kate, “Oh, I see you are using the ‘Pilot Program’.” She asked what he meant, and he grinned, and said (in his thick New England accent), “You pile-it heah f’now, then pile-it theah f’now, then make anothah pile, f’now. ”

F’now, weah goin’ sailin’.