We were off the boat all summer in Maine and New Hampshire.
We had scheduled a haul out in Portland to address the shaft alignment issues that we knew about from the time the boat splashed in Argentina. One of the things we’ve learned about boat life is that some repairs just get kicked down the road until the next time you can be in the right place at the right time. Those two things have different requirements for a 44-foot catamaran than for a car or a person. One is a travel lift large enough to haul us and the other is way more time than you thought you would need.
We NEEDED to be in Annapolis for the boat show, and then in Florida and the Bahamas for the winter, so planned to haul out on our return to Maine. We took full advantage of our winter in the islands. We had nephew Alden join us in April for the end of our time in the Bahamas, and he sailed back to the US with us. Then we picked up another crewmate, Matt, from St. Louis, to make the passage from North Carolina to Portland. We arrived in mid May and left the next day for New Hampshire. After two spectacular family weddings and time to dig through our things to pack more for the boat, we returned three weeks later, to find the boat work hadn’t even started yet.
We went to the island family house house without our boat, to wait it out and prep for the first renters. Between the blanket of pollen, rampant critter infestation, purging and organizing, and a massive construction project on the house, it was a multi-person, multi-week task. The fun had just begun–we cleaned so many houses so many times over the summer…
Since the boat work proceeded to take forever and we had renters coming, we found a house on the island to move ourselves and sister Jamie (visiting from St. Louis) into–the pollen and critter infestation in that house made our first house-cleaning task seem easy. If I haven’t mentioned that my sister Jamie is a saint and a rockstar, let’s set the record straight here. Stephen and I would have lived like squatters in that house if it weren’t for Jamie’s cleaning and homemaking abilities.
We made weekly trips to the boat, thinking we could get some work done, but every time, it was completely covered in protective sheeting to keep fiberglass contained, so we had no access to any of the things we needed to do, and it was just sort of depressing. But still being off the boat and in a house right next door to a friend who lived with a diabetic cat for years allowed us to leave our cats in her care and go to another family wedding in Park City, Utah. So much silver lining.
We were able to move back to the family island house after renters left (and clean again 🤣) before high school friends of Stephen’s joined us for a weekend. We were hoping the boat would be ready in time to take our friends for a sail, but when we received the call we were hoping would be the boatyard saying they had finished, they instead said they messed up and needed to redo the entire shaft tubes, ensuring we didn’t get to bring the boat to the island at all. It took them a month to redo the job they had spent most of the summer fixing (yes, of course they paid for it, and were very apologetic). So we eventually cleaned the house again and decided to pack the cats and all our stuff up and go back to New Hampshire so other family could have their scheduled time at house in Maine. Oddly, we haven’t had anyone offer us a pity party…maybe because we moved from one amazing house with a glorious ocean view to a historic family home with a glorious mountain view.
When the boat was finally nearing completion, we wanted to give ourselves a weekend with no workers aboard to attempt to find a home for the items we’d brought onto the boat this summer. We had also hoped to purge any unwanted items from the boat. But when we arrived, the boat was still in full-on work mode with protection yet covering many of the drawers and cabinets. The floorboards were up, and all our things were piled everywhere. We had to move the cats and ourselves into the forward guest room and keep them contained there. We felt a bit like Charlie Bucket’s grandparents in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for those few long days…
It was delicious to be back to life aboard, and the cats seemed happy to be back as well, although that very well may be projection…but four days later, we arrived in Annapolis and had to move off the boat into a hotel to get the boat all cleaned for the boat show. For the second time in the boat show, we packed up all our stuff and stashed it away so it could be staged to look like a showroom boat. We’re still trying to find everything… We had a great time at the boat show, where we spent time with over 30 other Antares owners, some old friends, some new friends (including Bryan from Bryan Sailing and Mads and Ava from Sail Life, for those of you who like following real YouTubers), and we hosted 33 people for a cocktail party on Sorella-that was one loaded cockpit! You can see photos from the event here.
From Annapolis, we went to Solomon’s, MD for an oyster festival we couldn’t attend last year due to COVID. It was very different from the Schlafly Stout and Oyster Fest we were accustomed to, and only one of our star shuckers, George, was in attendance. This was a full on county-fair type of event, with live music, a beer and oyster tasting tent, vendors of all sorts, kid stuff (see video below), funnel cakes and oyster-shucking competitions. We went for the full experience…
We even had friends from the island in Maine meet us on the boat for bloody Marys that morning. All around, a great stop.
After Solomon’s, we returned to Tangier Island, and are moving on south. We’ll be heading to Florida and the Bahamas for the winter for we are now warm weather (really warm water) seekers!