Oh one more thing…

Another thing is…

We also have to…

Don’t forget to….

We need to add…

We are trying to get out of here. But there seems to be JUST ONE MORE THING.

We have shifted gears in the last week or so and, emotionally, we are feeling ready (or as ready as possible) to slip the lines and sail south. However, logistically, we are not quite there.

In fact just as soon as we feel ready, we begin to feel stuck. We were hoping to be out by now - the kids had a blast at their Hallowe’en party and that was the primary thing we were staying for. But between delayed deliveries and unexpected troubleshooting we find ourselves still tied to the dock.

We are aiming for Saturday morning but here is a quick breakdown of the current situation:

The upside:

• Fridge was broken down all last week and the weekend on either end, we were expecting someone this Friday but he made a surprise (and very welcome visit) Monday instead; fridge is fixed and now we can finish provisioning

• Oil changes are happening today and tomorrow (Thursday) and that is the last engine maintenance item on our to-do list

• All spares have been delivered, received, and miraculously, stowed away

The upside down:

• Bimini delivery is also delayed until I’m not sure when so we are thinking either to have them send it to Greg’s parents house to bring down in 10 days or have them ship it to Bermuda for us to pick up there

• Life raft delivery was delayed from early this week to Friday this week; we can’t leave without our life raft so for this we wait

• It’s bad luck to leave on a Friday

So we are hoping the life raft arrives on time and we can slip the lines. We need Friday to do some running around with our friends car (thank you for the offer Brian and Trang!!!) to a few grocery stores (yes, we need MORE food…it’s astonishing I know) and get some diesel in our jerry cans to store on the deck. We also need to fill up the water tanks, fill up the diesel tanks and then I think we are ok to go…

But just one more thing….we also should:

• get rid of a few spare sheets that we have to free up room in the aft locker (we have 4 sets of spinnaker sheets and 3 sets of jenny sheets and that’s just the start of it)

• do laundry

• make thank you notes to our friends….really that’s force the kids to make thank you notes to our friends

• download videos, audio books, podcasts, books and other things we might want while we still have fast and free internet

• figure out where we are going to anchor along the way down the Chesapeake

• print the boat information and put it up by the VHF radio in case of an emergency

• order courtesy flags for the countries we are going

• and

• so

• many

• more

• things

We don’t want to rush down the Chesapeake and we do want to have more than a few seconds in Norfolk before we leave the mainland (Greg wants to see the big naval ships and stuff) …throw in a few slush days to accommodate for unfavourable winds and boom! We need to leave this weekend.

Now most sailors will tell you that sailing with a schedule is a bad idea. It can result in making journeys when maybe it would have been better to not leave your safe harbour. It can lead to people being more stressed, or seasick, then needed to be. If we don’t leave this weekend we will begin to feel like we have our 3 day journey down to the Norfolk fairly tightly scheduled. Stressful feeling.

Sooo…come hell or high water…clearly I would prefer the high water….we are out this weekend. We’ll see how many downloads we get to.

Much love,

M