1/23-1/29: Commuting between BLM and SAV

Saturday, Jan 23 – Tuesday, Jan 26.
With no boat work demanding our time, we are free to relax and enjoy the sites of Savannah! After breakfast, Craig and Dan went to the gun range and I went to the grocery store. Dan returned with a proud smile and a target full of great shots (he was hoping to not embarrass himself shooting with an Army Ranger!). A quiet nite with lasagna for dinner. On Sunday, we got out for our first long walk thru the historic district in Savannah … such a treasure that Sherman did not burn this city during the civil war, or as it is known in the South, "The War of Northern Aggression". The historic district is laid out with a 'square' at almost every intersection -- the city planners wanted to keep green space in the heart of the city, and it's a natural traffic control b/c cars have to slowly maneuver around the squares.

Dan cooked his famous roast beef and we dug out all our Viking bling in preparation for the big game…which as everyone knows by now, got off to a fabulous start only to disappoint thru fumble/recovery/fumble/fumble/fumble/recovery/fumble. And that’s all I’m going to say about that!

On Monday, we spent 5 hours walking thru the historic district and down to the Savannah River, where we got to see first-hand the power of the 5 knot current! Wow … I guess that explains why it can take anywhere from 5-10 hours to reach Savannah via the river from the ICW. Ditto for Tuesday – although we’ve discovered that our comfort level definitely starts at 60 degrees! It was chilly today with a 25k wind.

Wednesday, Jan 27.

We got a call from the boatyard at 7am that the boat was unwrapped and safe to reboard, so we packed up the Suburban and headed back. We’ve decided to stay with Craig thru the week, and see if the 60mile commute is worth not staying at a motel and deciding which fast-food joint to hit for dinner (KFC vs Taco Bell vs Subway ... hmm? Waht would you pick?). Craig has been incredibly gracious in continuing to let us invade his one-bedroom apt, and we hope that cooking for him every day is some compensation. It was a lovely day in the boat yard, even though we were the only ones working on Maja. We spent the day with Clorox in hand, cleaning all the inside surfaces – even though the ‘bug guys’ assured us that the residue from the fumigation was not harmful, there’s still something unnerving getting back inside, knowing that the boat had been full of poison just a few days before! We took all the bedding and galley-ware back to Craig’s for washing. I took pictues of the paintings on the hull so we can replicate them when we have to repaint.  We've been told that they will help draw fish to the boat -- so now we've got two good reasons to keep them (#1 reason is that we think they are soooo cool!  And dolphins under our hull is a reminder of our dear friend Reaux).

Thursday, Jan 28.
Dan drove back to Brunswick by himself today since there were no chores for me to do there. I spent the day washing and cooking … as you can see, we’ve definitely settled into a traditional man/women division of labor when in it comes to the boat. Unfortunately, the yard workers are working on projects for the boat yard owner (it pays to be the boss!), so no progress on replacing the prop shaft, prop and stuffing box. However, Dan always manages to find things he can work on … and he feels good after spending a day cleaning the bilge and crawling around in the dark spaces looking for signs of corrosion and other icky stuff that happens in a salt-water environment. He noticed that 6 key bolts that secure the bobstay fitting (the thing that holds the wire from the front of the boat to the bow pulpit)to the boat are corroded (one had even sheared off) so those are on order (another delay, but another potential diaster averted!). Craig works long hours, so it’s like we have the apt to ourselves – and he’s off for special training at Ft Bragg next week, so he said we can stay as long as we’d like. It’s been sooo nice, but we are still ready to celebrate the day the boat goes in the water and we can start unpacking the GMC….but that day won’t be tomorrow as we had hoped when we showed up here a week ago. My accomplishment for the day was finding the Starbucks downtown and getting there and back w/o getting lost – gotta celebrate the little things!  Loving life in Savannah though -- and we highly recommend that others add it as a future vacation spot.

Friday, Jan 29.
TGIF! Dan replaced the fuel hoses today, and they got the prop, prop shaft and stuffing box reattached. It’s kinda funny b/c when we started our trip down here from MN, those 3 things were the only tasks we thought we had to get done b/f getting the boat in the water! My, how the to-do list has grown since then. However, the list of things that must be done with boat out of the water is definitely getting down to the final tasks; once we get the boat in the water, we can still get work done by the boat yard, but at less than half the cost. The last of the ordered parts should arrive on Monday (fingers crossed), the final caulking and painting will be done (24hr dry-time), so they are optimistic that we will be ready for our final check out and SPLASH DOWN by Wednesday.  But who's holding their breathe at this point?  Certainly not us! We’ll celebrate tonite with our “Friday-nite-martini” tradition that we started in Rochester, except that we won’t be searching for prospective boats at yachtworld.com like we did back then! Maja still is the boat of our dreams, even with the delays and unexpected costs. It’s a constant learning curve, but one we are enjoying. Funny, but we don’t miss work a bit (and by that I mean work at Mayo Clinic -- b/c work is certainly part of our daily life as sailboat owners).  While we both enjoyed our careers (on land!), there's no doubt that we look forward to this 2nd career on the water.  Even sitting on the ground, in the boatyard, scrubbing bonding plates on the keel with a brass brush for 3 hours was more fun than sitting inside an office working on a PPT slide show for 3 hours!).