Hi from Clare, 12th Sept, 2012
We haven't had time for sightseeing this week. We have been busy taking the boat from Newport to Port Washington. We arrived here late Monday afternoon and further busied ourselves with boat maintenance, sounds boring doesn't it? But it's great when it's done.
SOMETIMES IT'S ALL BUSINESS
We had a chance to try out our new mainsail with a brisk 50 mile sail, at 60 degrees apparent, on our last leg into Port Washington. Andrew was impressed with the sail but felt it needed a little more chafe protection around the three reefs. Our new boom bag also looks marvelous but the zip is on the wrong side. So the sail and boom bag have been taken to the Doyle loft in Port Washington for modification. At this stage we can't speak highly enough of Doyle's. They have also taken away our dodger to replace the clears, our bimini to repair poor Turkish construction (no big surprise) and their rigger is supplying new white life lines along our deck. I have taken 'before' photos and so next week I will take 'after' photos and bore you all with the detail.
We are also replacing a number of fixtures around the boat which are showing signs of wear after eight years of salt water use. It's funny actually, last night we watched the DVD "The Perfect Storm" which is based on a true story that occurred in this area. All lives were lost but all I could think of while watching the horror was "this boat will never be clean again" but in the end it didn't matter as the boat sunk - probably a good solution!
WHAT WE DO WITHOUT THEM?
The highlights for the week have been social evening with Bert and Prue on 'Exuberant' and Neville and Glenys on 'Alba'. Thank goodness for the cruising community, we would go stir crazy without the company. Tomorrow we are catching up with an American cruising couple Ron and Barbara on 'Our Whim'. We met them in Maine but they live here in Port Washington. They are picking us up at 10am to show us around for the day and then we have been invited to their home for dinner. We are really looking forward to the day as we found this couple to be good company and as funny as. Oh! Another highlight for the week was catching two Blue Fish, never heard of them but they were excellent eating.
THE REAL HIGHLIGHT AND SO WHAT'S NEXT
We are spending this coming weekend with Andrew's son Mathew and his wife Mim in Manhatten. We are looking forward to catching up with them, family time is always fantastic. We have plans to do so more sightseeing with them but we will tell you about that in the next newsletter, we're excited.
Love Candy xx
At 1:14 AM12/09/2012 (utc) our position was 40°49.73'N 073°42.64'W
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