Almost Chewed in Two

We have been shore (at home) for 22 days now and today is supposedly the day the mast ships from Gainesville, Fl to the yard. We are not sure how long it will be in transit but every day on the truck leaves room for damage or outright destruction. We will keep the optimistic face on this one and hope for a delivery the first of next week.


We will have been ashore long enough to require almost full provisioning of our house plus some supplies for the boat. Now, we start winding down the house and its provisions and start the transition to the boat once again. That goes for the mental side of things too. I almost have the leash chewed in two and am really looking forward to boarding Why Knot again. It so happens that during our time at home, several sailing magazines have arrived. There were several articles reflecting the transition to the liquid world. Most of them discuss built in “holds” where the crew stop for a rest or to make repairs. Hopefully, by the time Why Knot swims again, we will have eliminated many of the failure possibilities. Although one cannot foresee mechanical challenges or even crew needs for furthering experiences, we learned a great deal over the past month. As one fellow put it, get over the last incident and move on to make others. I am guessing here that, as we said in an earlier post, there will be at least one challenge per day that does not appear in the frilly articles about cruising.

While we do not have a dog or cat aboard, we do have a pet, of sorts. I have been trying to catch it to no success. I thought I did him in about a month ago but noticed him (guessing gender here) just as we left the boat in the yard. He is quick, quiet and demands nothing of us. Certainly he takes up very little room and he likes to play hide and seek with me. He is a spider that lives in the cockpit. He is not one of those messy types and as far as I can tell, does not do webs. He is fuzzy and sort of cute although one never knows which eye to look into. Having said that, I do plan to unship him when go aboard again. Why, you ask? One such critter tried to, as the Captain of Rima once said, liquefy his face. It was the cause of a medical hold while they were on the East coast.