This morning Sandy and I took the dinghy in to a marina that operates out of the Holiday Inn's property. We needed to get rid of a couple of bags of rubbish, fill a propane bottle and get some groceries. John, who runs the marina happened to need some propane himself, so he bundled us into his pickup and dropped us at the local Food Lion, then took our propane bottle with his and went and filled them, then picked us up again from the supermarket and ran us back to the dock where his garden guy loaded our stuff into a cart and wheeled it down to the dock. In the season he obviously couldn't be this helpful to everyone, but the season is just starting and the help was very welcome.
We've been using the delays in our journey south to continue doing little jobs on the boat, and some not so little.
That way the delays aren't so frustrating and at last we do feel like we're living the cruising life.
Yesterday Tom and I worked on getting the spinnaker pole properly rigged and in position on the mast.
It sounds simple, but this pole is 20ft long and the ring it pivots on from the mast is 23ft off the deck. The topping lift for it has to go through a pulley, so it was back into the bosun's chair and working near the top of the mast again. And I thought those high wire acts were a thing of the past!
Because of our heads'l design (Yankee), the pole operates high up and also needs a downhaul to be able to recover it. I do believe we will only have a little more tweeking to do once we've tried it out.
In the mean time Sandy scrubbed the entire boat's topsides (hull) from the dinghy. It had black rubber marks from the dock we were at for 8 months, and the tannins in the Sassafras River water had built up making much of the hull a blotchy beige. It was a huge job but I think the results speak for themself.
Tomorrow is shaping up to be a good day to plunge on south and with a bit of luck we'll be be in Norfolk on Sunday before the wind returns from the Southeast.
We expect to rest up there for a few days waiting for the right conditions to cross the Gulf Stream. It will take a few days to cross and is a strong current flowing north. What we want to avoid is strong wind from the north... wind and current in opposite directions result in high, steep seas... not the kind of conditions we want.
Next week we should find that elusive window.
Until next time...