Shalako, who will be on board with us for a month, arrived around 7 a.m. yesterday. I would have liked to have been up to greet him and meet his nephew, who brought him across the bay in his power boat from Annapolis in the early morning hours while the water was calm, but I simply could not arise after staying up so late the night before doing laundry and then not being able to sleep soundly and being awakened by the watermen at 3:30 a.m. talking loudly to each other from boat to boat on the other side of the fairway from us.
We gave Shalako a little time to settle in, then Peter put him to work! His first job was taking the caps off the eight durade boxes, cleaning the threads and installing the durade cowls (before drizzle began). He fixed the reading light in the aft cabin, did other odd jobs and helped Peter get many dock carts full of stuff off the boat, either to put it in the huge boat yard shed to be sorted the next day or in the dumpster. That took hours. Before that job, Peter was working to make sure the instruments were behaving properly and the new wiring for Starlink was attached to the boat structure with zip ties, among other things. I was busy all day with several jobs, including making five phone calls to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Baltimore until I finally reached someone who could give me the email address where we could submit the required form for departure. Peter had attempted to do this several times unsuccessfully the last few weeks, wasting precious hours. It took me about 20 minutes, either due to my superior skills in administrative work or sheer luck. Also, I spent time resupplying and organizing the ditch bag, making meals, and cleaning out storage boxes in the lazarette. Like Peter I found things there to discard, such as leaky containers as well as bottles of cleaning supplies and polish with not enough left in the bottles to be worth keeping. Many of the supplies in the lazarette were purchased and stowed by the original owners. If I had never used them in seven years, would I ever use them?
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| Shalako on his first task |
In the middle of the afternoon, Shalako and I walked to the Oxford Market to get final provisions such as milk, eggs, bagels and, of course, Diet Coke. We also bought a couple treats, but we didn't consume them yesterday because we noticed as we walked by the Scottish Highlands Creamery that it was open. Since Memorial Day has passed, summer hours have begun and they are open every day. I insisted that Shalako indulge in their delicious ice cream, and we each had a small cup, with two generous scoops.
Shalako, after talking with his wife Patty, called it a night around 9 p.m., but Peter and I stayed up doing small tasks until 11 p.m., focused on last minute preparations for the surveyor.
Todd, who has surveyed Mantra before, came on board around 8:30 a.m., and he and Peter reviewed all the new additions, modifications and corrections of previously cited deficiencies (according to the standards, which Peter does not always agree with). Apparently, the official survey includes three levels of priorities, and Mantra met all the requirements for A and B, with C just being recommendations and not necessities. This is not surprising given the amount of time Peter has worked on the boat, from rising early each morning to going to bed late at night, for six weeks last October and six and half weeks this spring. In addition, an exorbitant amount of money has been spent on parts and labor from the boat yard and on new items such as the batteries, Starlink, safety equipment, a 6-person life raft and almost innumerable other things that Peter installed. Mantra is in much better shape than when we purchased her, thanks to Peter being a master of many trades including electrical systems, mechanics, rigging, composites and sail repair (none of which I have any deep knowledge of or expertise in).
With the survey completed around 11 a.m., we could focus on our immiment departure. I have been making a diagram of the boat (not yet completed) showing the location of all the through-hulls, fire extinguishers and blankets, manual bilge pumps and emergency beacons. Not only is the boat in great condition, but Peter and I have taken an on-line course on Safety and Sea (as has Shalako), which has provided a comprehensive understanding of things we may have known, may have overlooked or never realized. We actually have been somewhat cavalier in the past about some potential safety issues, and I need to practice more in particular because there are so many aspects that Peter understands and tasks he can perform that I cannot.
We have only one mishap in our preparations for departure. When the rain let up around 3 p.m. today, Shalako seized the opportunity to fill the water tanks from the tap on the dock. However, he accidently opened the wrong cover and started to put water in the diesel tank. Luckily, Peter was in the cockpit and noticed almost immediately, shouting, "Stop, stop, stop!" The clamor brought me on deck, and we all stood there with the same idea: "Oh, *&*@! What will we do now?" I went to the boat yard manager, who was still here even thought all the laborers had left. (They start work quite early.) He loaned us a hand pump with a long tube and a large-capacity container to pump the water from the bottom of the tank, where it would have sunk. Peter and Shalako worked on this project for a couple of hours, having to make modifications to the apparatus with extra pipe to reach the bottom. Peter ran the fuel polisher after they believed they had extracted all the water and then turned on the generator, which worked! It could have been worse, and Shalako and I agreed that Peter had handled the situation with great equanimity.
While on the dock before dark, I saw a beautiful green heron, which walked along ahead of me, perched on a line and then flew off in the drizzle.
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| Mantra on the dock in rainy weather |
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| Green heron perched on a dock line |
Peter has spent hours in the shed today mulling over what to keep and what to discard. He took a break for dinner, and then went back at 8:30 (after finding another job for Shalako), working some more until 10:30. Shalako was in the forepeak until almost 10:00 dealing with an oil leak in the windlass. I made cheese potato soup and a salad for dinner and then cleaned up afterwards while they performed their jobs. It is now 11:30. Shalako has gone to bed, Peter has gone to the club house to shower off grease and grime and sweat, and I am getting ready to end this blog post.
It will probably be another early morning. Eventually, we will relax into the cruising lifestyle, but we are not there yet.
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