It’s not goodbye – its see you later.

The last few days have been a whirlwind of projects, errands and friends and family.

We did our big provision run. First we made a list of meals we planned to make. Second we made a list of all the ingredients we would need to make all those meals. Then we made a list of things we already had in the boat. Then we crossed the list of things we needed for the meals with the list of things we had, and we came up with a big shopping list.

Tristan came to the store with me, and its a good thing he did. The cart was chock full with one section left to conquer. We grabbed a basket and filled that to the brim as well.

We also got a lot of projects done. I finally fixed the hole in our bimini, where there was a view hole to see the mainsail from the helm, but the plastic had broken out months ago. I created a removable view hole, as we have found that we enjoy being able to stick our heads through the hole from time to time.

We got the Yankee headsail up again, which involved another trip up the mast. We had to bridge the distance between where the Yankee reaches up the fore-stay and where the top of the furler should sit (so it doesn’t wrap around the stay and chafe through again.) The distance was almost 4ft! We then purchased some Dynema line, and spliced one end to attache to to the furler, and spliced the other end onto the top of the Yankee sail. This way we will never have to go looking for the piece of line if we ever take the sail down again. It is attached until we cut it off. Dynema is so much easier to splice than the double-braided halyard I spliced last time! Dynema is a single braid line, but is built with over 9000lbs of tensile strength!

Then came the project we didn’t except. The leak in our propane line. We almost had to delay our departure because of this. We couldn’t leave without a means to cook all the food we had just bought. We needed to fix the propane line. The old line had been spliced together. Our tanks sit on our back deck because they are too big to fit into the ‘propane’ locker. The boat came with two 10lb tanks, that do fit in the locker. The previous owners had kept the original tanks, but also added two 20lb tanks on the back deck. Since these tanks don’t fit in the locker, they then had to run the propane line through the deck, into the locker, to the regulator and solenoid. This meant splicing the line together, as neither of the fittings on the end of the lines would fit through the hole.

Turns out the line was 1/4″ spliced to 3/8″ spliced to 1/4″. Right at one of the splices was where we found the leak that we hunted for after the smell of propane permeated our cabin. While we first thought we would just replace one part of the line, we ended up replacing the whole thing. We did have to splice it again, to get it through the deck, but it no longer leaks and we can cook again! Success!

The other major project we had planned was getting our outboard motor working again. Despite taking apart the carburetor completely, cleaning the spark plugs, and getting new gas, we did not have any success with this project. So we are leaving the dock with a no non-functioning outboard motor. We have oars, and the kids gained a new affinity for rowing, so we will be fine.

• 

We had an open house today, where we invited anyone who wanted to say goodbye, or sea our boat, to come down and do so. We had a steady stream of people from about 10:30am – 5:00pm. It was wonderful to get to see everyone one last time, and to show off our home to those who had yet to see it.

This is not goodbye – but see-you-later to Maine and our of our friends and family who are here. We are off on an adventure – but we will be back.