The Departure

We had a number of 'hard-stops' that we had to meet in order to make it to Europe this year. The most important hard-stop was the appropriate weather window for west->east Atlantic crossings. May/June seemed to be the consensus for the best time to leave. We'd hoped to be gone by mid-May on our return to the boat from Canada. We definitely wanted to be gone by June 1 as that is the start of hurricane season and although it wasn't likely that there'd be a hurricane in the very first week of the season we didn't want to risk it. We also knew we needed to be east of Bermuda by the end of June at the very latest.

This weather window drove the decisions for A to leave work at the end of April, the return to Canada to sort out our affairs (sell our vehicle, renew passports, doctor, dentist, accountant,
propery managers and all that 'stuff'). We also needed to breakdown the Savannah apartment and move things back to our home base apartment in Canada. We already had arranged most of our affairs for a travel lifestyle with mail forwarding in place, so, this was probably easier than it might have been for others.

Hard-stops on a project always lead to stress and we were no exception. Of course, we could have just stayed in Savannah and not gone anywhere, but, that wasn't an option either. Savannah, this year, had the coldest winter in twenty years with even a few snowflakes. We missed the snow as we were at the Miami Boat Show at the time. Floridians had their fur coats on! The cool weather was perfect for us with the amount of outside work that needed to be done. However, once spring arrived, the weather quickly became extremely hot and humid. Even the natives were complaining although
they indicated that the worst was still to come in July/August. All the boats in the marina had air conditioning except ours. We had just finished installing the new hydronic heater instead. The heat was incredible. Almost 100 degrees F in the boat and in the a.m., 100% humidity to go with it.

A typical May day's temperature

We couldn't wait to leave. The last few weeks were unbearable. These were also the last few weeks where tempers were fraying as the pressure to leave was mounting and the jobs to do list wasn't getting any shorter. Actually, it even led to G threatening divorce for the first time in thirty-seven years of marriage. I have forgiven him though, as this was after he had spent an entire morning hanging upside-down in the steamy heat of the nether regions of the bilges of the boat trying to get our water system to function. This was just after we filled the tanks for the first time to find that we hadn't screwed down the maintenance ports well enough and had water all over the cabin sole.

So many things weren't working close to departure that I couldn't see how we could ever leave in time. However, one-by-one, we cleared most of the issues and even though there were still quite a few things on the to-do lists (speed log didn't work, head (toilet) was leaking, foot pumps not hooked up etc.), we decided it was now or never. So, on Thursday, June 3rd, after painfully paying our rather large yard bill, sending a few emails, getting the latest Gulf Stream report and finishing up laundry, we were off!