Soon to be sailing away (again)

With the hurricane season finally drawing to a close, we are soon to be sailing away. Yippie! Over the past couple weeks, we returned from time away from the boat (we flew to England to see friends and family). Upon our return we put Britican back into the water, moved her to Charleston Harbor Marina and have been preparing for our imminent departure to Florida, Bahamas and down into the Caribbean.

We took the boat out of the water so to get our antifoul (hull bottom paint) issues remedied. For some reason something didn’t work right so we’re hoping that our CopperCoat antifoul story will ultimately end with a positive conclusion. Britican was hauled out of the water and CopperCoat touchups and sanding were completed. We won’t be for sure about how it’s worked for a couple months but I’m feeling optimistic. For more on that, check out my article and video entitled, Liveaboard life. Let’s hope that we’ll now be able to rave about how amazing the product actually is.

While Britican was out of the water we had our underwater zincs changed on the propeller and shaft, cutlass bearing serviced, mast paint job fixed and Simon painted the propeller with five coats of egg whites (a secret anti foul recipe).

At the marina we’ve been doing various boat jobs including getting the outboard serviced and a variety of jobs on our watermaker. Water comes at a premium in the Caribbean so we need to ensure we can make our own. Our primary pump died so we ordered a new one. And all our membranes need to be changed – the component that takes the salt out of the water. As with many things on our boat we started off thinking it wouldn’t be too challenging yet every step has been quite difficult.

Fortunate for us we have amazing friends around to help us out!

Aside from the boat jobs we’ve been socializing with other boaties, enjoying beach walks and preparing for our departure from the U.S. of A. I’ve ordered all of our daughter’s homeschooling materials. After recently discovering that she’s Dyslexic I took quite a bit of time to research the overwhelming amount of options. There’s loads of help out there…you just have to weed through it all! After weeks of research I decided to go with a program called, ‘All About Reading,’ and ‘All About Spelling’. These programs have been designed for children with reading disabilities.

I’m secretly thinking that while teaching Sienna how to read, write and spell that I might finally get my act together on the topic. Hahahahah.

So…the official countdown has begun. We’re aiming for a departure from Charleston around the beginning of December! Below is our latest Sailing Britican vlog style update. We hope you enjoy…

Soon to be sailing away video

Any questions, comments or stories that you’d like to add? Please leave them in the comments below 🙂