I think this concludes the unfortunate story. The boat is under plastic on Long Island, still with much work required.

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.

Major Setback

We still have no mast. There is a lot to do on the boat, despite Dan's hard work. We sat down on Thursday morning & assessed the situation. There was a lot that needed to be done, and realistically, we could not do it in the timescales which would allow us to return to the UK before two of us needed to get back to work. A hard decision was made - to delay the departure significantly.
The pressure of trying to sort everything out had got us all down, and we were all becoming frustrated. Once the decision was made to delay, the pressure was off, and we could all relax & just get on with fixing the boat without an awful deadline looming.
Suddenly, things have really started to happen. All the damaged floorboards have been replaced. The forepeak bed is complete. Today was a major event, as we finally pressure-tested the gas system last night, and this morning fired up the cooker. Spurred on by this, we also re-built the refrigerator, which went icy about 2-00pm Friday afternoon EST.
We also had to leave the pontoon we had "Borrowed" at Oyster Bay, so as a birthday treat for me, and as we have eaten in about every restaurant in Oyster Bay, we motored to Huntington Yacht Club, to spend Saturday there.


Part of me is disappointed that we aren't making the trip straight away, but being sensible, when we do make it, Lotus will have been sailed, problems sorted, and we will be less of a hazard to ourselves and the US Coastguard.

Minor Setback

The guys at Oyster Bay Marine have not managed to get the mast up. Inevitably this has caused a delay. I’m really disappointed here, as they have had plenty of time to sort it out (two weeks), but haven’t. Hopefully they can redeem themselves by doing a good job, but their inaction has caused a lot of stress to most people involved. As a result, we may not have as much time to work the boat up as I’d have liked.

Still, we trust them to do what they said they would, and hopefully we should be off after only a couple of days delay.

Tomorrow, the UK contingent fly to Newark

Hello World

Today the Iridium was switched on momentarily. For people who know the number, its (00)+ in Europe, and (011)+ in the USA. If you don't have the number, leave me a comment or email me. The Iridium will be on constantly from May 27th

Bloody Squirrels

We have had "Guests" in the mast. The running rigging has been thoroughly gnawed whilst it sat on land for three years. Every single rope, in exactly the same spot. Luckily, we didn't find this out somewhere east of Nova Scotia. So, new standing and running rigging.
Still, its all on track, and looking good.
We also get a liferaft today, that's a relief.
I'm washing my sister's gear for the off. Hopefully my stuff will arrive in the next few days