Well, I'm home in the UK now, and Dan & Lotus are still in Oyster Bay. Shelton & I left yesterday, and having just spoken to Dan, the priorities are the hydraulics, and getting her off the water after Jari at least has the chance to go for a sail.
Its really odd being back in the UK. The Long Island folk are really a good bunch, and we have been working in some serious heat recently, but made some good friends, who I will miss. The OBYC guys like Bill, Amanda, John etc (plus the folk on the pass boats we nattered to every day). The guys from Mengercat, Canterbury Ales, UB Swiggins, and of course, Nobmans.
England seems very quiet & cold today, but its home for me

Finally Sailing

Armed with new runner blocks, and very frustrated with sitting on a mooring, we finally put up sail & headed out. Lotus is quite remarkable, she trucks nicely at about 5 knots with only the self-tacker. We made it to the Captain Islands CT., when a squall hit. We got a bit thrown around, and I cursed the windshifts. We headed back to Oyster Bay, but the weather seemed odd. We decided to drop the sails and motor in. Dan, in a moment of inspiration, switched the VHF and we discovered that a thunderstorm was heading our way. It hit minutes after we had the boat secured with sails down & motor on. Sadly, some other boats in the area got into trouble & needed rescuing. Unable to see the next buoy as we worked into Cold Spring Harbour, we worked off the chartplotter, and popped into Oyster Bay Harbour, on bearing, with only the rain stinging our eyes.