At Willoughby Harbor Marina, our work continued May through July with more preparations for offshore cruising. We had hoped to travel north up the Atlantic Coast toward Massachusetts during July and August but we had to defer those plans when other family circumstances intervened. So we used the time instead at Norfolk working on the remaining projects to make our November journey to the Bahamas (our first crossing!) safe and comfortable.

We installed a bridge and wireless router equipment, along with a WiFi antenna on the port side davit, to improve our chances of picking up remote WiFi/hotspot signals during our travels . This permits us to receive shore based WiFi signals from a moderate distance (such as while in an anchorage) for internet access for our two laptop computers. Access is never guaranteed, and may be intermittent, but it has been tested with success while at Norfolk, so we will be thankful for any connection we can get to shoot off emails to our loved ones back home!

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The salon window project - finally completed!

A major task was replacing 3 acrylic salon windows and resealing those and 4 others due to crazing and leaks. A detailed report on this project is available upon request by email for those who may be interested in the intricacies of handling this without professional labor! (Yes—it can be very detail oriented and time consuming, but it is possible to achieve!)

Some of the other important tasks we've been accomplishing:

In order to repair the main halyard rope clutch, we installed a Beckson access port in the rear crossbeam to gain access to Spinlock rope clutch attachments.

We replaced a broken SSB antenna feeder cable.

We replaced deteriorated Southco deck hatch latches on four forward deck hatches.

We replaced both Jabsco heads with Raritan heads .

We re-tightened the trampoline.

We switched deteriorated teak bow seats with starboard.

We replaced cockpit hatch sealant material in an effort to resolve a water intrusion problem in our cockpit locker.

We removed and cleaned the bimini, treated it with water repellant (the stuff really works!) and re-installed it.

We replaced the top load refrigerator lid gas spring which had "expired".

We've got three months left before our departure for the Bahamas in November. We want to get out sailing again on the Chesapeake after all these maintenance and upgrade tasks that have totally consumed us are finally out of the way (along with completing a kitchen renovation back at our house on land).

Over the next few months, we’ll wrap up a few more tasks related to our offshore preparations. We expect to replace coated stainless steel wire lifelines with 6mm Dyneema™ line. We will re-commission the Spectra water maker we inherited with the boat and have yet to use. We also hope to spend some time compounding and waxing the hull and topsides gelcoat – just to put some “icing on the cake”. Donna has been working for months on all the “provisioning” and “storage” aspects of our planning. We expect it to all come together quite nicely over the next month.