September 11th, 2015.  Where were you on 9/11/2001?  I was working at IBM and I vividly remember that day.  It is now 14yrs later and we are making our final preparations for our long awaited / anticipated trip down south on the ICW to Florida and beyond.  Right now we are in Maine for a wedding for Joan's cousin's daughter.  We came back from Groton (SYC) last Saturday after having hauled the boat (and unstepping the mast) for work.  Some of the important stuff we did while on the hard all week:

1.  Finished stripping off the last of the old varnish - that was peeling - on the cap rail trim.  We have finished converting our boat to Semco.  No more peeling varnish or stripping for us - ever!
2.  Painted bottom paint on all the leading edges, waterline and places where it had chipped off.
3.  Cleaned and waxed the hull where needed.
4.  Installed new transducers for depth and speed on hull. We now have all new instruments for the boat. So now we have, at the helm, a whole new array of instruments that should all talk to each other and to the A75 chart plotter!!!

5.  Had repaired and installed the port side life line stanchion that was bad.

6.  Cleaned dinghy and put 303 on it as well as having installed our new numbers on it.

7.  Had replaced the aft holding tank macerator thru-hull and valve which was leaking!   Now we have a brand new Apollo ball valve!!!

8.  Tried my hand for the first time at a bunch of gel coat repair - matched pretty well but I had some nasty gouges in a few places and some old gel coat repair (from before we bought the boat) that needed fixing.

9. Re-caulked some of under the cap rail where it had lost a bunch of the teak tone caulking.

(We must have gone to Defender on a daily basis!)

So, after this weekend in Maine, we return to Vermont to collect the last of the stuff we need, close up the house, and head down to the boat to depart.  Alan and Janet Botula are going along with us in their Cabo Rico 38, so we will rent a car to leave Vermont together next week and drop them off after having helped with their final provisioning in Barrington, RI.   Then, we continue down to Groton, CT (Shennecossett Yacht Club) where we will do our final provisioning and wait for the Botula's to catch up with us (probably Friday) to make our departure.  We expect to start our trip on Saturday, Sept. 19th - which, by the way, is International Talk Like A Pirate Day!!

    Where's our mast?!!!

Here it is!!! Along side of our boat while we were on the hard doing all the work on in Aug 31 to Sept 4th.