After spending nearly a year on the hard in Deltaville, Virginia, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mantra returned to the water on Tuesday, June 8. Peter and I drove across the country from west to east in May. We stopped to see my dad (whom I had not seen since Christmas 2019) in northern West Virginia before separating; I flew back to Sacramento and Peter continued on to the Chesapeake Bay to work on the boat and get her ready to sail. I only showed up when she was back in her natural environment.
Peter continues to work on the boat; the tasks are endless. I have unpacked and stowed everything (except his tools and parts), provisioned with food, cleaned the interior and some items on deck and worked with Peter on putting on the sails. Peter has enjoyed meeting and working with people here in Deltaville even though the work is exhausting. While he has been mentally engaged and manually working from sun-up to sun-down for the past three weeks and continues to do so, I have already completed my work in two days, so my big effort now is making meals. (I would do laundry in our washing machine, but there is not enough sunshine right now to dry the clothes on the life lines.) The workload is totally unbalanced, but I simply do not have his skill set.
The weather alternates between hot and humid and rainy, and, as I knew would happen, I miss the cloudless blue skies of central California and the dry heat of summer there (although I did enjoy listening to the rain pelleting the deck and the kah-boom and crash of thunder as lightening illuminated the sky).
Both of us are eager to be sailing again, but Peter will decide when it is time!
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