We Are On the Water

Sorry for the delay in updates but it seems to be as busy here as it was getting ready to come here. No excuse, I know, but it is all I have. First the physical part of the last few days. Originally we were going to get here Monday, put the boat in on Tuesday, sails and bimini/dodger on by Wednesday and ship-shape by Thursday (I'm lying about that last one). We also mentioned that we were getting the boat polished.

In addition we had the waterline stripe re-done and the transom re-painted in prep for the new name. As a result of all of this, the launch was re-scheduled for Thursday afternoon - AND IT HAPPENED!!!

I cannot begin to describe the feelings we experienced through all of this but particularly when the big lift came along and we knew it was for OUR boat. They put the two straps underneath and lifted it and my heart was in my throat. As it trundled towards the water, all the positives I had about what we were doing were conflicted by the enormity of it all finally coming together. The little voice was saying "When the boat touches the water, you are committed", even though I knew the committment had started long before that.

As Mystic Journey was slowly lowered into the water, the closest I can come to describing it so you could relate is, for those of you who were at our wedding in July, if you remember how I struggled with getting my vows out past my emotions - that is close. (Although of course,nothing will ever by as memorable as that!!

So - are you all caught up in the emotions - down to earth time. We went to take her out of the launch area to the assigned slip and She Would not Start. Anticlimax or what. I like to think it is because we were having Steve take it over for us and it wasn't one of us doing it. I felt good about the fact I was able to direct him to the successful "fix" even though he wanted to get complicated. He finally went to the battery banks and touched one, found out that loose connections get hot (he burned his finger) and we were away.

Cheryl actually went with Steve on the ride to the slip while I walked over and prepared. I must say that at this point in time, I likely could not have backed the boat into the slip. Between the length of the boat, the full keel and a nasty breeze coming from a nasty angle, it took some real skill to bring it in.

So, since then - last night was a discovery night. Lots of things required some coaxing after sitting for nearly 5 months, chief among them the heads. But we were aboard and we slept aboard and the only thing that stopped it from being absolutely perfect was that we were in a marina and not anchored off a beach (soon to be remedied) and the rain that started coming in the open hatches at 5 am.

Today, Friday, we went shopping for things we couldn't bring because of weight - towels, tools, pots etc etc and we also picked up some groceries. Funny, we went to a store in Road Town that delivers the groceries, if you ask, even to Nanny Cay, which is about 15 minutes away. Nice thing about it, they delivered us with our groceries, free, which was great because of the other shopping we had done.

Tonight, first cooked meal on our boat. Everything is exciting and lots of firsts - most of our life now will consist of firsts. Imagine that at 65 yrs and ?? yrs old.

The pictures you are seeing were inserted by Cheryl and I apologize for not putting in a video of the launch. We have them but found out last night that using the SD slot to download pictures from my camera puts them in a .mov format that requires Apple Quicktime to see and the video Cheryl took is out of focus. We are working on it and promise that you will get to see them. Of course I didn't bring the disc to download through the cable so.

Anyway, more tomorrow. We will try to keep away from "we did this and we did that" and focus on what it meant to do these things

We have arrived

We have had a busy month since our last entry. Christmas came and went. My kids and family visited for Christmas itself and Griff's kids and grandkids arrived after Boxing Day. Everyone was gone by December 29th and then the work began - packing up the house and getting everything either put into storage or given away. We also were challenged to pack everything we needed to bring with us and still manage to stay within the weight and bag limits for our flight down. During this we were also fitting in visits with friends and family who wanted to say Bon Voyage!!

Finally on January 8th we were finished.

The first leg of our journey was spent in Calgary saying goodbye to our kids there and friends. Then we headed to Ottawa/Hamilton to visit with Griff's sisters for a few days. Finally on January 12th we ended up in Toronto where we spent an enjoyable weeksattending the musical show "We Will Rock You", a Raptors basketball game and the Toronto Boat Show with visits with the rest of Griff's kids and grandkids worked in.
January 20th arrived and we were ready to head off to BVI. After some misdirection of our bags in Toronto and almost missing that flight, we arrived in San Juan 5 minutes after our flight started to board and ended up missing that flight and being put on standby for the next flight. That worked and we arrived in BVI at about 3:30 pm only to discover that one of our bags would not arrive until the next flight. Fortunately that flight landed shortly after we had cleared customs. We were ready to get to the hotel and put up our feet for awhile - which we did.

Then we took a walk to the boatyard and looked at the boat.

She is still called the Lily Mae according to the back of the boat, but the bottom is painted except for the patches where the supports are located.

Today we made contact with everyone who has been working on the boat and went on board. (Griff writing now)There are still a couple of minor things to be done inside so it was a bit of a mess but still felt like a good place to spend the next while. We decided that since removing the old name would still leave it in a white profile, we would have the transom repainted and while they are at it, paint the waterline stripe. We are also having the white paint polished - no particular reason except for pride and vanity!!!
We have had lots of running around to do - changing launch date by a day, arranging for the name painter etc etc, so the blog this day is somewhat "we did this, we did that". We are also unable to add any pictures right now as the wifi system we are using is quite slow for some reason today. We have access to a direct plug-in in the office area and we will use that to upload pictures but we are both feeling quite lazy so you will have to wait with bated breath. Actually, there is a front moving through here so it is wet and cloudy, although WARM, so the pictures are somewhat "wet and cloudy" but we will send them anyway.
So, there we are, about to start, have started, will be starting, which is a totally appropriate phrase to use because each day is a journey and an adventure and exciting and rewarding and we are trying to live each one to the fullest