Tabitha’s Tales

We have settled in Urbanna for a few days while we are waiting for the new
radio to arrive. I got a second chance offer on the Icom M710 for a good
price so hopefully our radio problems will be over soon. The local Auto and
Marine store is going to accept the delivery on my behalf. It is a good
chance to get on with the very long list of jobs I have to do and also to
get to know a little of small town American life.

Sue and the girls went ashore this afternoon which gave me a chance to get
on. During their visit they met everybody we know in Urbanna. There is Karl
from the little boat anchored nearby. He bought his boat (looks around 20′)
about 20 years ago in Sweden and then sailed it home across the Atlantic. He
is one of only two other boats in the anchorage. They also met up again with
Roger and Jane who are doing up a centre-cockpit Westerly Centaur (built in
Waterlooville just a few miles from where we used to live). Roger is hoping
to sail to Nova Scotia this summer though he will be later than us. They
also met Deena who lives on a boat in one of the marinas and sailed across
the Atlantic when she was a small child.

Peta was amazed to meet a boy of her own age in the park who is an uncle and
was there with his niece. It makes such a difference that the natives speak
English. In France on the last trip the girls found the lack of a shared
language inhibited play enormously and mostly the French children lost
interest very quickly. Elspeth and Peta went 5 weeks without playing with
any other children.

We arrived in America with some ridiculous deficiencies in our clothing and
equipment. Each of the children has only one pair of footwear of any
description and we had only very light summer duvets. I think we thought it
would make sense to buy things in the States rather than carry them across
the pond. So far that has certainly paid off. Urbanna has a useful ‘thrift
shop’ where we were able to buy Peta and excellent pair of wellies for $2
and I was able to buy the most unusual sleeping bag for $6. The sleeping bag
is clearly designed for sleeping out under the stars on hunting trips and is
stuffed with Dacron which amazingly is the same material from which our new
mainsail is made! I find it a lot more comfortable than the modern bags.

We had a great triumph today when I conquered my fear of the refrigeration
system. We have a fridge and a freezer which are driven by a compressor on
the engine. It uses R12 refrigerant and needs all sorts of care of a kind I
have not had to administer before. It was not performing so I had to bite
the bullet which involved lying on the battery box in the engine room
holding a mirror to observe the sight glass on the dryer while Sue started
the engine, bought it up to 1500 revs and cycled the fridge on and off while
I anxiously waited to observe the combination of clear flow, foam or
stationary bubbles which would help diagnose the problem. It was apparent
that the system charge was low which entailed the use of the Yellowhammer
charging system with its red, blue and yellow pipes, its two pressure dials
and two valves. On the third attempt the foam cleared and the fridge
chilled. What a glorious thing. It’s not so bad at the moment with moderate
weather but once the weather heats up the chilled water becomes a necessity
for crew moral.

The family’s absence also gave me the opportunity to bury beneath the bunks
up for’ad and find out a little more about what we have bought. I pulled out
and rigged a nice, high cut, working jib and storm sail both of which I
rigged. They both looked in reasonable condition given their age.

Another technological success was the wind generator. It has never performed
well for us and in April found it was wired in the most peculiar way. I
consulted the makers in England and came out to the boat armed with a
circuit diagram. Suffice to say when the wind blows the battery now glows
(well 2 amps in about 12 knots of wind). I am not sure the noise and
vibration is worth the power it produces. Especially as I also, (what a
day!) fitted the new larger alternator which means less time running the
engine to charge the batteries. I am sure that Karl will be delighted.

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the town-wide charity ‘yard sale’ so we are looking
forward to more bargains!

Thanks to Gill and Sophie for emails received.

I won’t deny that being stuck at the delightful Yankee Point marina with no
cell phone signal and no internet access has been quite enjoyable. We took
the opportunity of returning the car to Dullas airport to call Mum and tell
her that all was well before we slipped back into the communications black
hole of Yankee Point. We fortunately took also took the opportunity to stock
up with food as the marina has no shops and is a long way from anywhere.

We planned to stock up for around three months while we had the use of a
car and had lists prepared but in the event we were far too tired and just
ended up doing a very large shop instead. We will pay for it now by having
to carry huge quantities back to the boat whenever we are near a
supermarket.

Still, here we are in Urbanna 2hrs travel time into a journey which will
carry me 10,000 miles!. We came to Urbanna because we knew that it has
public internet access in the library and also a good supermarket. We were
very anxious that people may have been trying to reach us with business
issues but found that we just had a lot of very welcome email from friends
and family including Rachel, Sophie, Rob, Annett, Elise, Dad and John.

The week of preparation had its frustrations. I managed to do something to
the HF radio which means that it won’t now transmit which is very annoying
as it is our means of getting email. On the last day out of the water the
shore charging equipment stopped working. I am not too worried about that as
we only ever plug in to shore power when we are out of the water but it is a
shame as it is an expensive system. We won’t want to spend any money
repairing it as it works only on the American 110v supply.

We had been buying large bags of ice to keep the cool box chilled as the
refrigeration is run from the engine which only operates when the boat is in
the water. Unfortunately when we launched yesterday we found that the
refrigeration system is not working properly so we will still be buying ice
every few days until I can get it fixed.

There is a enormous list of jobs to do on the boat. She is looking quite
sorry for herself with varnish peeling from the capping rail but she does
have a new mainsail which we tried for the first time today. It was
brilliant. Such a beautiful shape. BIG thanks to Bob and Mona for their help
with it. We were going much faster than under the old canvas.

The only difficulty with it is that our boom cover was designed to fit the
old sail which was 20 years old and soft as Andrex and the new sail is so
wonderfully crisp and crinkly that the sail no longer compresses
sufficiently to fit properly beneath the cover. Also, last year we bought
new reefing lines. I allowed a few extra feet on each one in case the new
sail had reef points higher up the sail. They work fine except of course for
the number three reef which is so deep on the new sail (as we wanted it to
be) that the reefing line - the longest and it just a couple of feet short.
There is nothing to be done but to buy the whole rope over again and keep
the old one for a spare for reefs 1 & 2.

Other new goodies this trip include a completely new set of four large deep
cycle batteries three of which are linked to form a domestic supply and one
of which is in reserve for starting the engine. On the last trip, in the
heat of the Mediterranean we were able to run an electric fridge and light’s
etc for up to three days using only the batteries and a solar panel before
we had to run the engine again. (We turned the fridge off at night and had
to be very frugal with our power demands). A bigger boat like this with a
bigger crew wanting to use computers and other gadgets will probably use up
the advantage we have of an engine driven fridge system.

We do have a 32W solar panel and also a wind generator so we should be okay.
Especially as we also have a new large alternator. As we are so dependent
upon the engine for power we have bought all sorts of spares including a
spare alternator. The new 110 amp alternator will go into use and the old 80
amp can become the spare.

Before we left for the library I checked to see if we could link to the
internet via a wireless network within reach of the spot where we are
anchored. There was nothing so we descended on the library on mass and
occupied three of their computers for emailing and web research (Peta just
looked at books in the children’s section). It must have been quite an
invasion as Urbanna is only a small town and has only a very small library.
>From the library I bid on a marine HF radio for sale in America on ebay and
later back at the boat, tried another new gadget. A high gain antenna for
the wireless networking. Sure enough I found three available wireless
networks and so this evening I was able to connect to the internet from the
cockpit and ‘listen again’ to the latest episode of the Archers. What it is
to be connected once again!

I was outbid on the radio though.

Sunday 23 April. It is not often nowadays that you find yourself in a
complete communications black hole but that is us for the next week or so.
Yankee Point Marina is a beautiful spot but there is nothing here at all.
There is a ‘Ships Store’ which sells a good range of boat bits but no milk.
There is no mobile phone signal and no internet access point. Worst of all,
the HF radio that would give us email access is on the blink. It has
absorbed quite a few hours of frustrating effort. Apologies if you have
emailed us and not yet received a reply.

There is a payphone that doesn’t take international calls and I guess that
the office would post a letter for us but I bet the ‘Ship’s Store’ doesn’t
sell stamps. People are kind and someone did offer Sue a lift to the local
store yesterday but they had left by the time she showed up.

We are still out of the water and have already delayed our launch day by a
couple of days. The first day was sunny but it rained so heavily yesterday
that the boat became an island amid a huge shallow lake. The forecast is
better today so we should make some progress.

Once we can move the boat we will be able to make our way into mobile phone
coverage and perhaps find some internet access.

We found Tabitha to be in excellent condition after being abandoned for 9
months. All was amazingly dry below but the varnish work on deck has
suffered badly from the scorching sunshine. We also found a burst copper
water pipe - a result of my failure to buy enough non-toxic anti-freeze with
which to flush the system last year. Happily it was easily repaired with a
short length of plastic pipe and some strategically placed jubilee clips.

The girls cope with the lack of entertainment enormously well. This is
helped by the fact that Elspeth bought herself a copy of The Sims computer
game which absorbs both of them for hours. Then of course there is school
which is running well and in which they currently participate with apparent
enthusiasm.

Converted from Rich TextThe first crisis of the trip has occured. What do we
do about Peta’s 4 foot crocodile?
Having won the arguement over Barbie dolls (she is to bring five of the
seven - not the three we argued for) she now insists that Croc must come
too.

We had a similar soft toy situation last trip when we said no to Elspeth’s
large fluffy Tiger and suffered for months until my brother Rob was able to
bring it down to the South of France on the night bus.

There is little point in doing these trips if you aren’t prepared to learn
the lessons they teach. In this case, don’t try to argue with a seven year
old about soft toys, so I guess we will have to capitulate. Off to Millets
tomorrow to buy one of those compression bags so useful for getting large
sleeping bags into tight rucksacs or in this case defeated parents out of
tight corners.

So much for the skippers word being law!

..

It is difficult to pinpoint the time when we decided to do this. Perhaps it
was inevitable since that conversation on the last trip when, anchored in
the ancient harbour of Bonifacio in the South of Corsica, we talked about a
two year trip. It was the point, perhaps two months in to the trip, when all
troubles and anxieties had resolved themselves, we had me other cruising
families and the trip was working well for all of us.

Now, here we are, on the eve of a new adventure. It is the middle of the
last night in our little house. A home we have nurtured for 14 years. The
studio in the garden is packed with all of our belongings and the house
echoes with the emptiness. Sue has woken every night recently overcome with
a sudden rush of homesickness. I have been feeling it too. It certainly
helps us understand how much our home and our life here mean to us.

Close friends and neighbours have been calling in to say good by. We seem to
have been saying nothing but farewell for weeks. It is, at once, sad and
joyful. People are excited for us which is great because we have little time
for excitement right now and it serves to remind us that this trip will be
exciting and fun and interesting and not just scary and rather overwhelming.

No doubt there will be trying times but hopefully, like the last trip, we
will discover that, together we are happier, healthier and life is richer
than it has ever been.

Thank you again to all the people who have helped recently, in particular
Caroline and Rachel who have provided such support and Virginia who has
occupied the girls for so many hours and fed us all so well this Easter day.

This is the weird time. Getting ready to go is 90% tying things up
this end and only 10% preparing for what is to come. The travelogues
never mention sorting out phone lines, post redirection, pay for a
year ahead, notifying the bank and pacifying the tax man. Yes, this
morning’s post bought my tax return and it was back in the post
completed within two hours. I don’t suppose that will happen again!

Its a limbo time. We meet friends on the street and say goodbye for
the second or third time. People stay away because they know we are
busy so we don’t get the chance to say goodbye properly. None of us
can wait until we are gone and all this limbo stuff is behind us.

Sue had drinks at work today and her work friends gave her two audio
CDs of tracks they had selected and called ‘Sue’s Desert Island
Discs’. She has to guess who chose which tracks.

It is all becoming a bit too real. The spring term has ended and Elspeth and Peta are now officially old girls of St Mary’s, Woodbridge.

The Head Teacher gave them a really sensitive and encouraging send off at the end of term school service and their class teachers managed to make them feel very special which makes our job so much easier. The school has been supportive to the point where we have had to enlist help to carry out all of< the teaching materials we have to take with us.

The girls are not the only ones who have been made a fuss of. We were made to feel quite special at a lunch hosted by Heidi. It is a great feeling to realise that you will be missed. It kicked of a pretty successful weekend.

We have found someone to host Sue’s grand piano, someone to foster the cat and we’ve finished the main tranch of house decoration. We were up at the crack of dawn on Sunday morning to run our final boot jumble. In theory these combine the two aims of helping to dispose of stuff and of raising some money. Profit from each one represents the treat of a night in a marina or a meal ashore.

I took some time off the preparations on Sunday afternoon to attend a talk by Paul Heiney at the Royal Harwich Yacht Club. Paul recently competed in the OSTAR. The original single-handed transatlantic yacht race. He sailed in the family boat as a Corinthian entry and has written a book about his experience ‘Last Man Across the Atlantic’. He left his boat on Mystic River opposite the Mystic Seaport Museum which is the largest maritime museum in the world and the place where I hope to be spending my 43rd birthday at the end of next month. With his wife Libby Purves he will, like us, be heading north to Nova Scotia. The chances our our tracks will cross at some point.