May 12, 2009
The Cruise Countdown is accelerating toward the end. Suddenly we have less than three weeks until departure. For several months, we've had checklists taped to the door of the den and, surprisingly, most of the items on them have been accomplished. The biggest item was the haulout and that, thankfully, is now behind us. Dreamtime returned to her home slip late in the afternoon of May 11. Now we have a few minor mechanical items to finish before the HUGE job of loading gear can begin.
Departure is scheduled for Sunday, May 31. Friends Keith Langford and Denny Bailey have signed on as crew to help Charlie take the boat to Friday Harbor, where it will remain for a few days. Charlie has to return home for the June 3 TYC meeting(s) so as to be there for (a) Diane's installation as Shipmates President and (b) the installation of our new Bridge Officers. We'll return to Friday Harbor on June 4 and head north. John and Lenora, aboard Night Music, are leaving a few days before us and we plan to rendezvous with them at Telegraph Harbour.
From that point on, our itinerary is wonderfully ambiguous. We have to be in Prideaux Haven, in Desolation Sound, on June 14 to pick up John and Nori's son, Collin. Other than that, we have NO schedule. How cool is that?
The other Significant Recent Event was our participation in the annual Opening Day Parade in Seattle. We had somehow allowed ourselves to be designated as Tacoma Yacht Club's "official" decorated entry. The theme was "Wild Wild West" and we came up with the idea of turning the boat into a covered wagon representing the film Paint Your Wagon. A large number of TYC folks spent countless hours on the project, from the conception and design through building all the component parts, and culminating with actually assembling the thing at Seattle Yacht Club while working around rainstorms and howling winds. But all the hard work paid off as TYC and Dreamtime took First Place in our category ("Yacht Club Sponsored Decorated") and FIRST OVERALL for "Best Decorated to the Theme." Pictures of the whole thing are HERE.
We have one more TYC event between now and Cruise Departure, that being the annual Memorial Day Cruise to Eagle Harbor. While some might question our sanity, signing up for that cruise a week before the Big One, we figure that packing the boat for one cruise is the same as packing for another. We'll have most of the stuff for the summer aboard when we go to Eagle Harbor. Then we'll still have a week to take care of the final details.
It is unlikely that this page will be updated during the summer, since we don't have Microsoft Front Page on the boat's computer. We will communicate by email when it's available (which won't be often) and we've set up a blog site at www.sailblogs.com/member/dreamtime09. Friends and relatives who are interested can follow our travels there. Updating the blog, of course, is also dependent on internet access.