Day 5 on the Hard

Today, Monday, Oct 17, is DAY 5 on the Hard.  I am slowly adjusting to the fact that we are not living and travelling on High Spirits. I miss it already. Only 8 months to go.
But there is lots to do and friends to spend time here in New London plus visiting our kids in their homes over the next couple of weeks.

We have trips planned to DC and Baltimore in two weeks and then the weekend after that it is off to NYC.  Then Thanksgiving out in Columbus, Oh plus a visit to Cleveland at the end of Nov for doctor and dentist appointments, and then back to New London for Christmas. We are looking forward to our Christmas visits by our children and grandchildren. 

Joy has her midweek ski pass ordered, and I have connected with my IRS tax volunteer group.
We played dominoes at the senior center on Friday afternoon, it was like playing with our parents. The other players were 85.  I signed up to be a volunteer driver for the senior center.

So far, I have made some progress in dealing with all the stuff we brought back from High Spirits. The table in the barn room is almost cleared off.

Joy has been super busy cleaning the rental side of our house. For those who have not been to New London the house is actually two separate full size houses connected with a room in between, we call it the barn room because it was built with old barn timbers and planks.  One of the houses has always been rented out.  We are preparing it for hopefully some Colby Sawyer college students to move in around Jan. 2012 for the second semester of their school year.  Most of the work needed is cleaning and some painting.

Attached is a picture of Astor, Mike and Susan Todd's new puppy.  Spent the afternoon yesterday with Susan down at Colby Point. Mike was rowing in two person shell in a tune up race for Head of the Charles which is next weekend.  We plan on having a dog sometime in 2013 after we do next year on the boat.

Since we are not on the boat, I will be not writing as often, but will write when things happen

Joe

HAULED OUT - S. ELIOT, MAINE

Hello Everybody,

This is most likely going to be our last blog for this part of our sailing adventure.  We are officially on the hard as they say.  High Spirits was hauled out today and will be staying at the Kittery Point Yacht Yard's Eliot, Me facility.

We were fortunate to be able to stay at Sara Funk and her daughter Willow's house in Dover, NH which is only a 20 minute drive to the boat yard.  They have a lovely apartment over their garage.
We had a wonderful talk with Tom Allen, Owner/President of KPYY.  We were in the office and he came down the stairs and asked me if I needed some help. I asked him what was his job, and he said
"Help my management team".  Knew he was the owner right then and there.  He is the 9th of 10 children and is from Westlake, Ohio and went to St. Ignatius graduating in 1984.  He was in the financial service industry and bought the Kittery Yard first and then the Eliot yard.

So here are several pictures as we have spent the last 4 days working on High Spirits, or should I say Joy has worked harder than I have. She really gets into cleaning the mildew.  Has to be done.

So after 15 months, the paint job does not look that bad, we are going to have it repainted as we have a gallon of Trinidad Pro (costs $245/gallon) left over and should be fine. 

Other minor repairs include Cutlass bearing replacement, fix the front head smell and shower sump drain. 

The biggest one is moving the radar unit to the mast.  We had discussed that before and it became official when we took the unit off the back stay .  Just want everybody to know I was holding the ladder when the other person on the team, dropped part of the support strut into the water.

We were able to do a lot of work ourselves and cut our bill down.  Saved about $400 at least by doing the radar unit, taking off the boom, sails, and all the lines.  We left the yard with pulling the boat out of the water, taking off the mast, and pressure washing the bottom.

So now we will be in New London starting tomorrow until about June 5th or so.  May post once in a while but Joy says nobody is interested in our ground life.

However, if you are in New England this winter, call us and come and visit us.

One of the cranes at the Portsmouth Naval Ship Yard

Stripped down and ready for hauling

Centering High Spirits on the haul out truck

First Bath since Stuart, FL

Check out the Barnicle growth on the prop shaft.

Joe

Isles of Shoals

We made it to the Isle of Shoals around lunch time today, Oct 6.  Left about 8:30 am and rode the current out of the Merrimack River.  It was a little rough outside on the way to Gosport Harbor, Isle of Shoals but we got here in good shape.  It is about 6 miles east of Portsmouth, NH.

Last night we went to the Screening Room, a small arts style movie hours right in downtown Newburyport, Saw John Tuturro's Passione.  An Italian movie about music and Naples. Very interesting, I thought it was very good.  However, 4 people out of the 18 in the place walked out.
Then we went out for dessert, Joy had carrot cake and I had chocolate dipped coconut macaroons.\
Newburyport was a great stop for us and I liked being on the municipal dock as you were right where everything was.
Joy loves the Isle of Shoals because she came here as a kid on Primrose VI with her grandparents, parents, and siblings.  Also there was a famous murder here long time ago.  It is too rough to go into shore at this time. We are bobbing up and down.  Hopefully tomorrow morning it will be calmer and we can go ashore.  Need to leave around  1 pm so that we can catch the flooding tide to carry us into Portsmouth Harbor.  Here are some pictures we took from he boat.

This is our last night on the boat for this part of our sailing  adventure.  Tomorrow we pull into Kittery Point Yacht Yard's Eliot boatyard and start pulling off the sails, and  removing stuff off the boat for the winter.  Warren said he would deliver the Rav4 today.  Then we will drive to Sara and Willow's house in Dover, NH to stay a couple of nights while we spend the day time working on getting High Spirits ready for her winter rest.


Joe

Rain in Newburyport, Trying to stay dry!

Well we are back from Joy's Simmons reunion/lobster weekend up in Bremen, Maine.  Had a great time with her classmates and spouses. Everybody seems to enjoy being with each other, and every body's politics are about the same. As Joy says, No Tea Party people here.  While they had lobster on Sat night, I had a ham and salami sandwich with an ear of corn.  Joy had clams to start with and then her lobster. Monday night we went  Mexican

We moved from the yacht club to the city Dock for a couple of reasons. The main one is that the current is extremely swift when it is running and if you fell out of the dinghy while the current is running out, you would most likely get swept out to sea.  So Sunday night we came back about 10 pm, very dark and very fast current.We got in the dinghy and out to High Spirits and had to tie up straight into the stern of High Spirits, not sideways which we usually do. When we tie up sideways, we can tie two lines and get out very easy.

Going in straight means only tying up the front of the dinghy and having to crawl out the front. While you are trying to tie up, the current is pushing the dinghy away from the back of the boat so it is not that easy to get a line tied to the stern hand rail.   So after doing that again ( we did it once before) Joy said we are moving to the city dock which costs a little bit more but is right downtown and we get free power to charge up the batteries instead of having to run the Honda generator or diesel engine.

So Monday we washed clothes as the laundromat is right off the square, about 100 feet from the place we are tied up at. Good thing we did as now, Tuesday morning at 10:30 am it is pouring like crazy.

Weather does not look good until Thursday, Next two days are winds approaching 20 knts and seas 5 feet or so.  Looks like Thursday for Kittery or early next week if we go to Isle of Shoals first.

Paperwork is moving along for the Rav4 lease. Warren, the owner, received the papers to sign and is sending them to me for delivery n Tuesday. I have to sign, get a bank check and send them in. then I think we get the final approval papers  and then we get the car.  Warren has volunteered to drive the Rav4 to Kittery Point Yacht Yard and is going to leave it there for us. We will mail his plates back to him so he can get the car off his personal property tax bill.

I think tomorrow I will be going to the other historical museum here in town.  .Joy is going back to a consignment shop to look at winter shoes.

We have started to sort out the clothes we no longer need and will be donating them to Goodwill up in Portsmouth.  We will be staying at Sara Funk's garage apartment for a couple of days to get the boat cleaned out and ready for shrink wrapping.


Joe

ps  Sorry no pictures, hopefully after it stops raining.

Reunion in Maine

No, we haven't gotten the boat to Maine yet....., so we rented a car and drove to Lisa and Steven's house in Bremen, ME.  We were joined by two other college friends, Peg, Harry, and Oliver (the dog) from Manchester, NH and Andi, from Silver Spring, MD.  In the past 6 years we have had our little mini-reunions, enjoying time together with good friends from college days.  What is so nice is that not only can we talk about the good old days, but can still solve the current problems of the world, with similar views- no Tea Partiers here!

Lisa and Steven live out along the coast about 50 miles north of Portland, which is very rural, with 750 population, and 2500 in the "large" town of Damariscotta.  Their street dead ends at an Audubon camp in one of the thousands of Maine coves.  By next summer we should be able to visit via our boat.  Although the weather was dismal, rain and drizzle, we enjoyed Saturday, poking around Damariscotta shops (the women) and gathering at the coffee shop (the men).  Our goal was to have lobster at night on the docks, which we did, along with corn, and clam or mussels.  Luckily, there were sheltered picnic tables, with Christmas lights in the shape of lobsters, and candles to shed light on our meal.

Three pictures- #1 around the table at Lisa and Steven's, #2 the four of us Simmons women on the dock at Round Cove, and #3 Oliver.  We will be dog sitting Oliver over the Christmas holidays for Peg and Harry, so had to include his picture.

We got back to Newburyport in the drizzle and dark and had a hairy dinghy ride back to the boat.  The weather is still not too cooperative, as Ophelia is several hundred miles east, but delivering swells to the coastline, so we are staying here until probably Thursday.  We have decided to move to the town dock which is only slightly more costly ($45/ night), where we can access shore power and not have to dinghy in strong currents and more rain tomorrow.

Joy