The good part is that a number of people emailed us with tips and encouragement. Some just from concerned fellow cruisers, folk I didn't even know were reading the blog.
It's true we did hit a low point, but we sat down and re-studied cruising guides and weather charts.
It was encouraging to confirm we've made the right decision as far as the North Atlantic sailing season is concerned, as related to our particular circumstances.
Setting our new departure date was also a major step in blowing the boat blues out of the water.
March first is the date, weather permitting. It's early for the season but a whole lot better than December!
We can plan and schedule boat projects and in fact we have been back at it with a lot more of our usual 'bounce'.
Having said that, we are losing more days to bad weather now. In fact we are sitting in rain and fog at the moment, but we are much more philosophical about it. No point stressing over things you can't change, like weather.
One of the major projects was to get a davit system that would raise and lower the dinghy easily and securely enough so that we wouldn't be tempted to leave it floating off the back, particularly in areas where dinghies may be inclined to find new owners overnight.
Sandy and I tinkered with the measurements off the transom last week. We really didn't know if we were going to be able to adapt the old system, which was totally impractical, or start again from scratch and design something totally new.
Roger has designed a great system for his boat and I expected to copy it. I even bought an electric trailer winch the same as he has used. The downside was that it was going to take removing the lining inside the aft cabin to run heavy gauge wire from the battery bank to the back deck.
In the end we could adapt the old system, so we now have a brand new trailer winch with nothing to do!
I swapped a seldom used self tailing winch from the main mast with a non tailing winch on the mizzen mast that should always have been a self tailer.
We bought a WinchRite, (battery operated winch winder) at the Annapolis boat show, and with the lines all just the right lengths, we can feed one line onto the self tailing winch. The Winchrite grinds away and up the dinghy comes, right up to the davit arms. We've designed extra securing lines for when we are doing ocean passages. There should be no chafing or swinging.
Now we have to get all the bits... thimbles, swages, shackles etc and put them together and it will be done. At the moment it's all done with rope, but it works.
This week we got an addition to the family on board.
We had a day of shopping and went to a part of Middletown we don't usually get to.
On the way we drove past an old building that had a small guitar shop in the corner.
With no tv on board I've thought on occassions it would be fun to buy an old cheapie and get familiar with a few chords again. I actually have a great guitar, being thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated by my son back in Australia!
We went into the shop and asked the owner what the cheapest, half reasonable guitar in his shop would be. After much haggling I have an early birthday present. It has to be the ugliest guitar in christendom, a make so rare that even the best musicians have never heard of it.
But it actually has quite a reasonable tone and is very comfortable to play.
It's not new, but has no warping, the strings are close to the frets, and in a couple of days we will have discovered if it stays in tune. If it doesn't we may have to return and swap it for the second most rarest masterpiece.