HELP FROM ABOVE ...

And below:

Manteo, NC -- Our friend Pete helping us with electronics installation. He'll be continuing his help from above and below while we drive to the Annapolis sailboat show.

Thanks, Pete!!!

GOING RETRO

Manteo, NC -- Boat projects sound so easy in theory, but the old formula about tripling your time estimate when planning a boat job seems conservative to me.

So, the new radar and GPS arrived, but the old stainless steel stand is too short, so we had to order a new one.

The new standard for a stainless steel helm stand is 1.5", but we had to order the old 1" pipe, so it would fit the current (old) pedestal. Why does it matter? All the instrument wires have to be threaded through the stainless steel tube.

The new equipment comes with plugs that are just over an inch wide, and just a little wider than our old 1" pipe. All the wires will have to be cut, threaded and spliced or traced back to their source, disconnected, pulled back to the helm, threaded through the new pipe, pulled from the helm back to their original source and reconnected.

And those wide plugs that make the new equipment so easy to just plug and go? They are wider than the PVC conduit inside the mast -- the conduit that keeps the wires from clanging around inside the mast, which is a hollow metal tube. Nothing to do about that, so now we have two wires free-ranging in there, lying-in-wait to torture us on rough nights.

Top all this off by chasing the old wires through hatches, under tanks and behind the walls -- and then threading the new wires through the same paths. We did this today, only to discover that the new wires aren't quite long enough to reach the helm, so we now have to figure out how to get them extended.

Retro-fitting. This is how sailors learned to curse.

A SCARY PLACE

Manteo, NC -- Our new GPS and radar have arrived. We're taking apart everything at the helm to make way for the new configuration to be installed.

I had the compass out and was peering down into the well beneath it. When I setting the compass back in place, I thought, "Wow, we better be sure to get the compass back in with north pointing the right way!"

I'm not making this up. I actually thought this.

Sometimes I really scare myself.

LEARNING WHAT WORKS -- OR NOT

Manteo, NC -- Before I moved onto a boat, I thought, bamboo chopsticks, perfect!

Now that we've been through two hurricanes and tons of rain, the boat is a little damp. Not because it's leaking, but rather because the air is humid.

I opened a drawer in the kitchen and found those mildewed chopsticks in the photo.

Wood is fine, it just has to be finished or heavily oiled. Lesson learned.

On another note, you might wonder if it's possible to mess up a recipe with only three ingredients. The answer is yes.

I made corn tortillas tonight. They were terrible.

Guess I'll try again another day... If you have advice, please, click on that "comment" link below and let me know!

FLOATING ER

Manteo, NC -- A marine first aid kit came with the boat, so I decided to inventory the contents to see what needs to be replaced.

I fully expected to find things like bandaids, alcohol swabs and gauze. I was not disappointed.

I was not expecting a scalpel, skin stapler and a CPR mask. The instruction booklet has step-by-step instructions for things like reviving an unconscious person and performing an amputation. Jeez.

Give us a gurney and a triage team, and we'll be a floating hospital.

I'm all about being prepared, but let's hope we only use the bandaids for paper cuts and the aspirin for rum hangovers.

SWEEPING CHANGES

Manteo, NC -- I've been looking for the perfect broom to sweep our very small stretch of wood floor in the boat.

My dreams came true at Walmart yesterday. As we were standing in line to pay for our basil plant, sewing thread and ledger book, I spotted the Slipper Genie!

Thanks to Oprah, the genies might be familiar to those who have television, but to me they were a shocking revelation.

Brilliant.

Perfect.

Cue the music!

GUESS THE CHORE

Manteo, NC -- Okay, what boat chore requires the following tools:

• 10 inches of small line
• a small grabber tool
• a paint stirring stick
• a cup of water
• a shopvac
• a sheet of rubber
• pair of scissors

We didn't know either. Well, we knew the chore: clean out the raw (sea) water filter. What we didn't know was how complicated it would get.

The housing of the filter is clear glass, but in this case it was jet black. When Chip pulled up the basket, the bottom disk broke off and stuck on the shaft.

My hand fit far enough in the opening to slide the disk up to within three inches of the top where the opening was smaller. Hmm. What now? String! We looped the string under the disk and it popped right off -- and fell down into the glass. Sigh. That's where the grabber tool came in.

With the disk out, we could now see an inch of sludge in the bottom of the glass tank. The shopvac nozzle was too wide to fit, so we put the tube over the shaft, only able to suck the water out from the middle. Paint stirrer and cup of water, er, cupS of water. We scraped the bottom with the paint stirrer, poured in water, turned on the vac. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Empty shopvac. Repeat. Repeat until all the sludge is gone.

So, now we just drop in the new basket. Wait! There's no hole in the bottom. Let's drill one.

Great. Now we just put in the new gasket, and we're done. Wait! West Marine discontinued our gasket. Let's cut one ourselves.

People often ask us, "What do you DO all day?" We just shrug our shoulders.

TUFTING

Manteo, NC -- It finally came. Our wonderful mattress topper that makes the V-berth bed feel like a mattress.

After making fun of their ad for the last five years:

It seemed only fitting to make our own:

p.s. -- Chip asked me to add: That is NOT me in the first photo. That is the ad for the topper. Chip did not ask me to add this: That IS Chip in the second photo.

GOING SOLAR

The solar panels. They arrived today!!!!

Two big ones that will be over the bimini, one of each side.

And a little guy that fits between the backstays -- or will when that rack is built.

HURRICANE EARL

A note to my blog readers:

I'll be busy the next few days getting the blog up to date, but didn't want to keep you in suspense about this hurricane. We are tied up at the docks in Manteo, ready to weather it.

What we've done:
--Doubled up all our dock lines
--Removed the jib
--Secured the staysail and main
--Removed the bimini
--Secured the dinghy on the davits
--Dropped two 5-gallon buckets on each side to arrest rocking motion (a new theory we've never tried before. Stay tuned.)

What we'll do tonight during the storm:
--Stay onboard and adjust to changing wind and water levels
--Monitor Channel 9 with all our dockmates in case anyone needs assistance
--Keep an hourly log that will eventually show up here.
--Play cribbage.
--Not sleep much!

What we didn't do:
--Remove the staysail
--Remove the main
--Haul out
These decisions will be evaluated here after the storm.

All told, it's nice to weather our first hurricane in familiar waters with friends all around.

God speed, Earl.

DINGHY: DONE

Manteo, NC -- Our long-awaited engine has arrived. You might recall, we took it in for repair, which took two weeks. They called to tell us it was ready as we were leaving town for two weeks. So, now, four weeks later, the engine has come home to roost.

Chip paired up the dinghy and the motor (with the help of a small crane we found onboard), and we're in business.

The dinghy will serve as our car, sort of. For the most part, we'll be anchoring out, because, well, anchoring is free. We'll lower the dinghy off its davits (brackets that hold it up on back of the boat), use the small crane to move the engine from the cockpit rail to the dinghy, and off we go. The dinghy will wait for us on shore while we're messing around on land.

BACK IN THE SADDLE

Manteo, NC -- We're feeling a bit wistful on returning to an empty beach. Our kids, Casey and Dylan (and Brett!), left for college while we were in New Mexico. We had hoped to be here to send them off. Instead, once we get things situated here, we'll be heading west again, this time to Asheville and Boone.

In the meantime, we're hard at the last-minute preparations for our watery departure, the one that has now been delayed by at least three weeks.

The big items on our short TO DO list:

--Order the Tufted Topper for our bed
--Get solar panels and install them
--Buy and install electronic navigation equipment
--Fix the water filter
--Sort out my folding bike

For that first item, we had to cut a pattern in the shape of our mattress. That sounds easy, right? Few things associated with boats are easy. Since there's no space big enough to lay the mattress out on the boat, we had to get it off the boat and onto the dock. Fortunately we were able to manage this without dunking either the mattress or ourselves, although not without making ourselves look silly. The pattern is now wending its way to get us a poofy pad to soften our sleep. So long aching shoulder!

Our work was done in time to avoid this:

ON THE RAILS

Drop boards in bad need of refinishing.

Waiting doesn't have to be unproductive. Today we taped the toe rails and I slapped on another two coats of finish -- and while I was at it, I decided to sand down and coat the companionway drop boards (our front door).

Could someone please remind me to take "before" photos? I'm lame at that, but the photo there shows pretty much how bad they were. Now they're shiny and lovely along with the toe rails.

Today was not a good day for mom. They opted to do another emergency procedure to clear some of the blood clots from her left lung. The lung collapsed on Wednesday night and has not recovered.

Drop boards refinished.

After a tense (on my part) hour, they emerged successful. Our hope is that she will now stabilize. We've purchased one-way tickets to Albuquerque leaving on Sunday, two days from now.


p.s. -- "You know what happens tomorrow," I told Chip yesterday. "The dinghy motor will be ready." Sure enough. The doors are opening.

THE GRIP OF THE LAND

Perhaps we underestimated the steely grip of the land.

Little things pile up and together become big things. Chores that should take an hour grow extracted and take many times that. Others get done but create five more in their wake.

We each had a list of people interested in buying our cars, but when we were ready to sell, the people disappeared.

The damaged grill had to be sent back and a new one shipped (slowly) to replace it.

The topper we ordered for the mattress will be here in three weeks.

That engine for the dinghy? Still waiting.

Ah, we wait -- a wait riddled with good times and good friends and no schedule. We are not suffering.

MAKING MUSIC

For the last three months, we've been stuck with old technology on the music front, since the stereo on the boat did not have an input to play music from our iPod.

After that long slog of putting all our CDs onto the iPod a few years ago, we were down to one CD that actually belonged to Dylan: Nickel Creek's Nickel Creek album. Now, I love Nickel Creek, but one CD for two months was getting REALLY tedious.

So Chip bought a new car stereo for only $59, (why didn't we do this three months ago?) and we toughed through installing it ourselves, a task that could have been ridiculously easy if the billion-wire plug was the same on the old stereo and new. No, of course not, so we spent an hour or so splicing wires while sweating (we had to turn off the power and thus the air conditioning).

Now thanks to technology our musical repertoire has exploded without taking up an entire room.

Thankfully the new stereo has not exploded -- at least so far.

INTO THE DEEP

Our life seems to be full of meaningful moments these days as we take our last steps to the water. Today our newly named boat was set free.

According to tradition, there are appropriate steps to follow in changing the name of a boat. Even though we are not particularly superstitious, we do love a nice ceremony, so we read the lore and then constructed our own version using rum and a metal washer with "Good Company" written on it.

And in the slant of the sun's early evening rays, following the long-held tradition of seafarers, we retired the name of Good Company by dropping the washer in the water and thanking her for many years of faithful service. 

Then Chip offered a tot of rum to the gods of the deep, and, with a toast to the four winds, we entered the name of our new sailing vessel into the log of the sea.

And, in another long-held seafaring tradition, we passed the cup of rum amongst us, our boatyard friends, our new boat and the setting sun.

OURS NOW

Naming a boat is a challenge and not one easily conquered -- at least for us.

I've already written about all the things we will NOT be naming her, but the list of what me MIGHT name her topped out at fifty-five names. When we went to stay on the boat for the first time in April, we took along our short list of candidates, but the second we stepped onboard, it was apparent that most of those names simply did not suit her.

She is no Willow nor Sunflower. She is not sweet or lacy or in any way a Waterlily. No, this boat is substantial, regal, royal, graceful, grande in a very French way.

We abandoned the initial list and started over, scouring our family trees, lists of flowers, birds, colors, queens and goddesses. We considered foreign languages, characters from literature and lyrics of songs. But the name came quietly one night in May as I was reading in the V-berth. It was not a book title nor an author but a simple phrase that made me turn my head and say it to Chip.

For a week, we called her the new name and agreed, it was perfect.

And today we went to the boatyard to meet our boat with her new name.

I was all nerves. The artwork, we knew, was beautiful. The color we chose was perfect. But despite my confidence in all the components, I was shaking.

We approached at her bow and walked all along the mirror glass hull. Together we walked past the stern and slowly turned together to meet our new boat.

Sheer perfection. 

Tears of joy.

But for now, it's just between the three of us, our little secret until we officially introduce her on Sunday.

THE BOAT WITH NO NAME

Sparkle and shine...

GOOD COMPANY'S FINAL VOYAGE

Good Good Company carried us safely this morning to Bayliss Boatworks in Wanchese, a one and a half hour trip from the dock in Manteo.

It made me reminiscent of the same trip with Isabella last fall. Once again we passed the long row of identical houses at Pirate's Cove. Once again we slipped under the bridge and down the narrow channel beside Roanoke Island. But this time, nine months later, even though we follow the same path, we have come so far. This time we are so near the finish line, making one final victory lap before heading out.

Since moving onboard, this was our first time to take Good Company on a trip. As we were traveling, I went below to get something from the bedroom. Here we were, underway, and here was our beautiful house just below. Perfect.

We're pulling her out of the water to do some work. First, she'll be getting a new stainless steel rail around the cockpit, in part to sport our shiny new stainless steel grill. We're also having her light blue bottom painted a darker blue, the first baby step in moving away from the blue theme (I promise it will make sense later).

Tomorrow her old name will be removed, and the hull and transom will be cleaned, buffed and waxed to a $7 million Bayliss shine.

And just before she goes back in the water, she'll get her lovely new name to be unveiled at the christening and bon voyage party next Sunday.

TOOLING AROUND

With parts sorted and stowed (except for that one bin), today was tool time. We bought some soft-sided tool bags at Home Depot, forever liberating ourselves from those cumbersome plastic tool boxes that fall apart, or worse, open at inopportune moments. Besides, the soft-sided ones conform better to boat life -- and boat hatches.

The tools worked themselves into fairly obvious categories: wrenches, pliers, screwdrivers, etc., and my favorite category, "McGyver tools." Things like a telescoping magnet, weird grabby tweasers for picking up small objects in hard-to-reach places, a bendy screwdriver and a telescoping mirror for those impossible to see spaces.

Everything went without incident into the three bags leaving us with a short list of items glaringly missing from our arsenal, like flat screwdrivers and wire snippers.

The tiny things went into tackle boxes:

Whew. These lazy days.