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Firstly, the Swedish boys are safe after a bit of (one hell of) a pounding and some significant breakages. They had youth on their side and now have a story to tell in bars across the world about leaving Beaufort, North Carolina in dodgy conditions and being pitched about like a drunk pole vaulter in a malfunctioning washing machine

I have become that character in a Two Ronnies sketch this week, the one who continually confuses their words. My week has been mostly stood on a trellis removing old varnish or painting new in its place. When I say trellis, I don’t mean trellis at all. I mean platform or at a stretch, trestle, but the word trellis is etched in the front of my brain and no amount of sand papering will rid it from my vocabulary. Perhaps I need an Australian cricketer to help. Sorry, American people, you won’t understand that.

My great Aunty Gladys was a legend and occasionally confused words too. When the video player was a new fangled addition to households up and down the country,  she bought one. It never played video tapes as far as I am aware. She didn’t know how to use the machine. It was the most expensive digital clock you could buy.  But the best bit was her name for this contraption. She called it her ‘vi – day – o’. Classy.

For you boaty people, I will share with you the list of jobs we have ticked off being here when we are floating in the water. Not before. After another week and a half of delays because the main engineer here was off sick, things are moving again and our mast may be vertical on Friday after a long rest in the horizontal position. Fingers, toes and trellises crossed.

North Carolina beach

Whisper it quietly. The mast may go back on next week. That’s a definite maybe. Good to have something definite for a change. Feels a bit like dry water or still wind. A paradox of unfathomable proportions. We are closer. As I type Wilson is polishing the gelcoat he applied earlier this week. It looks fantastic. The work quality is of a high high standard. It will be impossible to tell the mast has been off, a hole has been dug in the deck and refilled.

That said, I personally prefer jobs which show a discernible difference on completion. Our varnished deck boxes (currently on coat 7) look amazing. I can visibly see the work that has gone into these. They will provide an incentive and inspiration to carry on sorting out the rest of the woodwork that needs attention. See how long that lasts!

Dave’s current wrestling project, realigning the engine is another job that will be hidden from view. New engine mounts will be in place, the prop shaft will sit quietly and precisely linking the prop to the gear box and we will have less vibration when we run the engine. I’m told.

A little personal goal I set myself was to run the loop trail that undulates around Fort Macon. I’m not a natural runner. Don’t think Mo Farah or Seb Coe with stylish leisurely bouncy gaits. Me running looks like hard work. Think more stuttery, unnatural, painful looking effort. Persistence paid off though and running the 3.3 mile loop was accomplished earlier this week and repeated again this morning.

A sailing boat did depart this week. A 27 or 28 footer which was standing abandoned in the yard when we arrived, having not moved for over 3 years. Well two youngish Swedish guys turned up, worked on it for 3-4 week’s and off they went towards Jacksonville. The weather was pretty hideous rain with a dashing of strong winds but depart they did. Emails have been sent and we hope to hear from them in the next day or so.

The speed of their arrival and departure did make me question what we’ve been doing here for an extended period of time. And how their boat was ready to go. Dave pointed out their size, simplicity ad lack of systems. No bathroom, so no plumbing needed; no fridge so limited power generating capacity required; no space so limited possessions possible. And generally little comfort or frills. Maybe when we were in our late 20’s or 30’s but we have have standards now!

Sometimes you just have to miss out on things. There are choices to be made….do A or do B. A variety of reasons help steer your choice; maybe cost, the amount of pleasure one will give over the other or simply time available.

The latter was the reason we missed out on visiting America’s Largest Pork Display. Several vast billboards taunt and tease as you drive along. Only 3 miles to go!!! Can we really miss this opportunity? Will we ever drive this road again? How BIG is this display? What exactly is on display? Are the staff dressed up in costume?

The reality is we just don’t know. And I like the shrouded mystery. It’s a delight that will have to wait for for another day. A special day trip like going to the Smithsonian or the Tower of London. I was going to write London Zoo but the sign does say Pork not Pig so comparing a live animal exhibit to large butcher’s shop is probably not appropriate.

The reason we passed ALPD was that we took a road trip to Cincinnati to visit family. Even with an 11 hour drive to get there and get back, we had a fabulously relaxing weekend away from boat chores. Included was a visit to a Bourbon Distillery, plenty of Premiership Football which made me happy, a Sunday morning walk in the woods, (too much) red wine one evening, a games afternoon and I spent two hours in the bath just because I could.

The games afternoon consisted of Dave beating me heavily at Pool. He plays with an ambidextrous flair, left handed or right handed. Doesn’t matter. On about game 7 of solid defeats, I cheered as I potted the black ball joyously only for the white ball to roll painfully slowly up the baize and drop into the corner pocket. Rats. Insert a stronger word here if you feel my pain.

On to table tennis. More my game. A moving ball. Thankfully I restored some pride and he walked away from the table with a big fat zero after a few games. I was immediately brought down to earth as I played cousin G who with his ‘chippy choppy spinny’ game took two games off me in quick succession. I did try to demolish the Tower of London Lego model which lives on a shelf at one end of the table with an over exuberant wind up to a forehand smash. You can see it in the picture behind Dave playing pool. Thankfully the damage looked to be easily repairable. Not an incarceration offence.

Boat news…blah blah, waiting for gel coat application but it needs to warm up a bit first, prop shaft back in, engine alignment tweaking, blah blah….

We holidayed one summer for two weeks in a boatyard in Jersey. Super sexy ‘eh. Well that pales into insignificance now as we scurry into the start of month three here. It’s a microcosm of life. Workers come and go during the day…the team of Mexican painters, Wilson and his wife, the fibreglassing specialists from Brazil, the North Carolina Boatyard Boys who haul boats, work the engineering shop and provide an array of other boaty services. Smiling as they go.

We are now wearing shorts. How long the warmth will last we don’t know but to think a month ago we were watching tennis court size pieces of ice swirling down the river.

I hope this blast of early season warmth doesn’t awaken the range of unpleasant critters that live in the woods here. Fire ants, copperhead snakes, mosquitos and black widow spiders are just a few I have read about. Don’t much fancy a rendezvous with any these creatures. Keep sleeping till we’re gone please.

Other ‘unpleasant critters’ that I’d definitely like to see less of are single use cups from coffee shops and detritus from takeaway joints. I’m not an ardent flag waving Swampy environmentalist. I am clear however that I like to live in a clean place and take a care of what we have. The world produces waste but let’s bloody well reduce it where we can.

I read about Starbucks in the UK levying a 5p charge for disposable cups. Double it, triple it. The world needs less single use cups. If you go to the same coffee shop every day, surely you can take your own cup along. You know you’re going. Its the coffee you want to buy not the cup. Try washing up. It works surprising well.

So endeth my small rant.

Off on a road trip to Cincinnati this weekend.  It’ll be 10 or 11 hours to get there. Gotta do a road trip when you’re in the States.

You have money for 5 beans. You eat 6 beans. You have to sell your soul or wash up to pay for the extra bean. Grace is eating beans rather too hungrily. She’s one demanding vessel who obviously hasn’t listened to the ‘Austerity Measures’ mantra.

What does this highly complex explanation of bean economics mean? Well it’s coloured and influenced our plans for what’s next. And also the fact we’re careering into mid Feb still on the hard in North Carolina when we’d hoped to be down towards Panama.

Panama is still most definitely on the agenda. New Zealand is still the goal. But we’re now a year behind. Or maybe more accurately, another year behind. We’re operating on Grace time, we go with the flow.

So what does this mean? We still plan to head to the Bahamas for some R&R (rest and recuperation…don’t laugh). Then as hurricane season ramps up again, we’ll head north to Canada. Definitely Nova Scotia, maybe Newfoundland. I plan to come back to the UK for a couple of brief blasts of work to replenish the Grace coffers, once in mid May for just over three weeks then once again in late September for two weeks. Currently the thinking is Dave will stay here and keep moving the boat. If anyone fancies helping him during that time, do give us a shout as he’d love to have some company.

Think that’s about it for now.

PS. If anyone needs a bean economist, count me in.

With the post in place

There are demands from our readership. Well to be strictly accurate a grand total of one person has commented on the lack of blog activity. They are of course absolutely correct. You know who you are….Julian 🙂 Did I write that? I planned to only think it! So this one is for you. Think of it like a Simon Bates love song, but with John Peel overtones. We are after all in the United States of Amnesia.

So here we go, catch up time.

We met someone who appeared to have no connection at all to any banks and dealt only in krugerrand gold coins, selling them occasionally to a dealer to realise cash to buy food for himself and his cat. I was disappointed he didn’t look like Johnnie Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. I’ve never come across anyone like this before. In practical terms I guess this means no electronic trail is left behind unlike when the vast majority of us get cash out of a cashpoint or use a credit or debit card to buy stuff.

Made me think about why you’d choose to live like that. Could be a variety of reasons; you don’t trust the banking system, (fair enough), you don’t like big brother watching, (I found myself being filmed in Walmart buying shower gel this week so I took offence and my trade somewhere else), you want to live under the radar, (that has to be very possible in North Carolina), your default setting is suspicion or maybe you followed a treasure map and dug up a box of coins, negating the need for a bank. Who knows.

My default setting is not suspicious. I like to trust and believe in others, looking for the good that’s out there. Perhaps there’s a naivety to this approach and I will get burned big time one day. I’m also hopefully not that stupid to fail to notice the pure fruit loops, whackos and the odd ‘nutter on the bus’.

Does mean though you’ve got to remember where you hid your secret stash. That may be tricky…for Dave who occasionally seems to dedicate his life to forgetting where things are. Cruel wife. We have not got a stash of Krugerrands.

And brief flurry of boat news. Still here. Still working on jobs. The mast compression post is now back in situ. Peripheral work still needs to happen to finish it off both inside the cabin and on deck. Dave is installing a wash down pump on the foredeck. Be a boon to be able wash down the muddy anchor chain as it comes up or fish detritus when dinner arrives. My job has been the hull. The small holes have been sanded and epoxied and sanded and cleaned, all in preparation for copper coat wash down.

Each generation creates and enjoys its own entertainment. It’s all too easy and judgemental to say things like, “when I was a kid, we did x, y and z, not like today’s youth!”
On our trip out to Cape Lookout this weekend I was reminded of a Sunday back in Northumberland when I was a kid. We had taken the small passenger ferry out to the island and enjoyed walking the beach in solitude on what we’ve called our ‘Out of season tour of America’. The local wildlife was prolific and alive, mostly….dolphins, pelicans, wild horses, plus a slightly stinky dead shark. It was this that evoked the memory.
A badger had been hit by a car along the road from where The Pearson’s lived so a small party of us kids set off on an expedition along the road to see the dead badger. Now that’s homemade entertainment. The creature was quite hefty, stiff but wholly intact as we poked it with a stick and examined it’s impressive digging claws. Expedition complete and with lunch calling we headed back to base camp.
Bellies full, the question was how to spend the afternoon. ‘Let’s go and see the dead badger again someone suggested’. “Brilliant idea, yes let’s” There you go, that’s how we filled our time before Netflix, Instagram and a world of non talented allegedly celebrity, celebrity’s. I think I’ve just contradicted my opening paragraph here. Oops.
Boatwise, we have many half finished jobs, more than have been fully ticked as boatyard life continues. The mast compression post is getting a makeover, the main reason we are here. Other ongoing jobs include…new cutlass bearing, new fresh water pump, new window seals, new zips on the cockpit tent / dodger, new holding tank, various bits of epoxying, new solar panels, cleaning the water and fuel tanks, new sea water deck wash, servicing and overhauling the alternator and starter motor and on and on.
A departure towards the Bahamas at the end of this month seems less and less likely. Ah well, it’ll still be hot and sunny when we get there I’m sure. .

Sometimes time just disappears. We’ve been here in the boatyard since 21st December  and I find myself thinking, what have I actually done or achieved over the last three weeks or so? We’ve been here over three weeks? Really. Yes Helen.

Control over our timeline is not in our grasp. We are reacting and relying on others.  We are not able to dictate the speed at which the work gets done and also the weather can hold up play. But we do have progress to report. Mast is off and a we have a hole in the fibreglass and bucket loads of rotting wood have been removed.

Next stage involves removing the post that sits underneath the mast in the lounge. In boat speak that’s the saloon, but it’s a lounge to me. There may be rotting gremlins in there too.

It’s hard to remember actually being on the water or indeed journeying. The boat sits in her corner of the yard overlooking the intra coastal waterway, The yard is about 8 miles from the nearest town. There are upsides and downsides to this. The yard comes with a good reputation, is secure and has great facilities for people living on their boats.

Downsides, there isn’t anywhere to walk. That leaves me feeling a bit cooped up. America really does run by car. I still haven’t got my head round how people shop here. Drive to a shop, park outside, shop. The next place to visit may only be 150m away but the protocol is to get back in your car and drive to it. I’ve been frowned at walking across carparks and access roads. Pavements are a rare species.

We did escape the boat yard one day last week and went to New Bern, a town with a pretty centre and the birthplace of Pepsi Cola. I had one little moment which made me smile. We were in a shop and the phone of the person serving rang. The tune was recognisable to me. Ah the West Wing I said. Yes, she said. That’s how I learn about and understand American Politics. Oh, you don’t want to do that was the stern response, as I forget that we’re in Republican territory. I smiled and left.

Its been chilly.

The mast came off this morning. Grace seems naked without it. The compression issues will be investigated this week. By necessity, a hole will be cut in the top of the boat where the mast sits. Only then will we start to fully diagnose and understand what’s going on. It’s a bit daunting the prospect of having a hole cut into your home. New year…new experiences….

What else… It’s pouring with rain. Due to turn to snow later. Then freeze. Apparently a weather bomb cyclone is going to hit the US over the next few days.  I feel like I’m turning into a weather spod.  “A dull or socially inept person especially someone who is excessively studious”. Must stop. Not cool. Note to self.