Catching my Breath

Lots to catch up on over the last week or so, each of which merit their own posts, but I'll give you the cliff notes version here. On Tuesday we packed Dawn's car full of boat-stuff boxes bound for Windbird (assuming we end up buying her, otherwise they'd eventually find their way to whichever boat we buy), on Wednesday and Thursday Dawn and I drove her VW Jetta the 1400 miles from Minneapolis to Myrtle Beach, on Friday Windbird had her survey, on Friday night I flew up to BWI, over the weekend I attended a Marine Diesel Engines class at the Annapolis School of Seamanship, and then I finally flew back to Minneapolis tonight. Whew! I won't keep you in suspense, the survey wasn't perfect but there were no dealbreakers, just lots of little things and a couple bigger things that will require a little more negotiation once we get the official report, which is pretty standard. I learned a lot from the very knowledgeable and personable surveyor, Neil Haynes. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do the full survey. We had arranged to be short-hauled at Grande Harbor Marina in Little River SC, and showed up just prior to high tide, but there wasn't enough water to get the Travellift straps under Windbird's keel no matter how many times we tried. We think the slipway has silted in recently. So now there will be a delay while we try to get another surveyor to do the bottom survey (Neil is booked up for weeks) and haul Windbird at another yard further away from Little River. I've seen fairly recent pictures of Windbird on the hard and don't anticipate a problem; it's just the delay that's a bit frustrating. Oh well - as always with boats, patience and flexibility are the name of the game.

I got home tonight to find that Piper's inflatable PFD has arrived! It's the first of its kind and is made by a small mom-n-pop operation called Critter's Inflatable. It appears to be a great design and very well made, and Piper didn't put up nearly as much of a fuss over wearing it as I thought he would (less than his walking harness, actually). Dawn and I haven't bought our own inflatable PFDs, or really any equipment yet, as we're waiting to inventory what's on or coming with Windbird first.