Decision Time

 As I have posted before, our bow pulpit is cracked (hence no anchoring at this time) and needs to be repaired.  We had planned on getting the work done in Chesapeake VA after we crossed our wake, but Steve had his repaired a couple of years ago here in New Bern and still keeps in contact with his repair guy. Steve offered to have him come look at ours and he did that a couple of days ago. We really liked him, he can do the repair and it would cost about half as much as it would at our destination in VA.  The only caveat (and isn’t there always a “but”) is that he is leaving on vacation for a month, so could not start until July and the work will take about 2 weeks. So…. Decisions have to be made about how and when to finish our loop and still get this done.  Our current thought is to stay here in New Bern for a couple of weeks, which would give us a chance to catch our breath. The marina here has a wide slip we can move into for that time period and I think it will definitely cut down on the walk time to land for Madison, but won’t get us any closer to the marina office and laundry.  Oh well, everything is a trade-off.

We would actively try to purchase a vehicle for our post loop travels which would let us take side trips in the area and provide us with contact with stores to re-provision. We would then travel north, cross our wake and head back down here for the 4th of July. We will be traveling by car to Orlando in July to stay with Mark’s dogs and house sit for 10 days while they go on a cruise, so that timing works well.  Hopefully the repair can be done or at least mostly be done while we are in Florida, but if it needs a little more time, we will be able to live on the boat while the work is being done, so not too much of a inconvenience. Then, we would head north to leave the boat in VA until it is sold.  I’m exhausted just writing about the logistics, but we’ll take it one move at a time.

Our time here in New Bern has been spent relaxing, taking walks downtown, riding our electric bikes (yes, I’m back in the saddle since I can operate both hand brakes now) and doing laundry. Steve and Kathy have been coming over to our boat for docktails, since I can’t board their boat here due to too much of a climb from the dock and last night they stayed to watch a movie with us. Since both of us are really low on provisions we have been making dinners on our own using up odds and ends.

We had one heck of a thunder storm yesterday late afternoon and evening with strong winds and tons of rain.  Tom emptied about 3 inches of water out of Madison’s food dish this morning and the river kicked up alarmingly, slamming water into the boat which resulted in loud “booms” all evening long. I see now why you would not want to be out there during a storm - yikes! It is partly sunny this morning, but is predicted to start raining again this afternoon.  Guess I’ll stay snug as a bug on the boat!



Dewey sleeping the storm away 


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