Preflight, continued

Not too good, but not as bad as it could have been. Several stitches in her lip, near the scar she got teaching at Brunswick High while breaking up a fight between two girls, one of whom hit her in the face with a wooden handled purse. So, maybe both scars will blend nicely together. Her chipped tooth is sore but no issues with the tooth's nerve. She can drink, bite and chew, but she will stay with yogurt type soft food for a couple of days. She also insists that she can and will be able to perform on the boat, and do it safely. Some boat maneuvers just require two people. So, the show will go on.

We are in a foreign port (from our perspective); there are boats here from many countries: Canada, France, many of the Caribbean islands, as well as a bunch from the USA. This boat was a surprise, home ported in Asheville, NC, maybe on the French Broad river. NOT!

In the interim, I sit on the balcony and watch the boating activity. Around lunchtime a large catamaran arrived from a cruise and tried to moor, stern in. These are huge slips, able to accommodate two catamarans side by side. A catamaran should be easier to handle... it has two motors; with one in forward and one in reverse pivoting should be very simple, easy for me to say never having piloted one. This poor guy was over matched. He tried and tried, backing off to try again. The first reaction is to be snarky, "I can do much better than that." Then, after a while, when you remember some of your terrible boat handling experiences, you feel a sense of compassion for the man, embarrassed in front of everyone for such a long time. You want his agony to be over. It stops being funny, anything said would be cruel. After an hour, or more, he came back to the marina and moored bow in, and did it reasonably well, his travail over.

Had our boat walk-through this afternoon. It is a boat, has all the usual stuff in unusual locations that don't much seem to work the way they did on our boat. Maybe it's that age thing again. This boat is a Beneteau, a French company; the boat is home ported on the island of Saint-Martin, which has French as its official language. So... why was I surprised when the manuals and panels were all in French, with, maybe, English subtitles? It's name: Niou Dem II, which translates as, well, Google cannot say. Maybe something from Senegalese creole, or not. But, what's in a name anyway?

Carol and I have been married for more than 50 years and of us it can well and truly said that opposites attract... and then they drive each other crazy. So, we have come up with three general principles to attenuate the crazy part: (1) separate cars, (2) separate bathrooms and, (3) no wallpaper. For all the miles on all the boats we have never had separate heads (a.k.a. bathrooms). This boat has two heads an even greater miracle is electric toilets. Our cruising friend Bruce had them on his boat and cussed them several times a week. Maybe our luck will be better. The second head, while nice, occupies the space that would have been the navigation station a place I used a lot. This will all work out. But Beneteau forgot to put in the freezer, and that is a disappointment.

There is some safety equipment, jack lines, tethers and harnesses, that are pretty important to have, in my opinion. So we have always brought our own. None of the three previous charters had these. This boat does. None of the three previous charters had a chain snubber, used while at anchor, so I made one and brought it. This boat has one. That was a lot of the volume and weight we had in the piece of luggage for the boat. Still, better safe than sorry.

Moved a lot of stuff onto the boat today. I just don't get it. The Moorings used to have a place to leave luggage so it would not take up space on the boat. That customer centric policy is no more. So our boat is planned to have two couples plus their luggage plus provisions for at least a week. No way on any day would that work. The two of us will be stressed for space, Carol more than me since it takes a lot of stuff to be Carol, and all that stuff has to go somewhere.

Had a couple of rain showers the past two days, a warm rain that only lasts ten minutes. No thunderstorms or high winds, just wet and, then, not wet.

I decided to stay one extra night in the hotel, just in case Carol was having a rough time. Today, Thursday, we are supposed to board the boat in the early evening. Rather than staying onboard we will load in supplies. Today, some more pharmaceuticals and non-refrigerated food. Carol has express instructions to take a cab to and from everywhere to avoid any encores.

Carol has an appointment Friday morning at a clinic to check for infection. After that is done, we will be off. I haven't decided where off actually is, but it won't be too far, one of the near islands, Peter Is. or Norman Is. probably.