9 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
We had a lazier, hatch-less day - I have to wait for 24 hours for the sealant to cure before I can continue. Glenys removed all of our 15 curtains and soaked them in a bleach solution. She then removed all of the hundreds of curtain hooks and slides and soaked then in a bleach solution as well. Meanwhile, I kept out of the way catching up on a little admin.
Glenys also packed up a box which we’re going to ship back to the UK using a courier service called MyBaggage.com. We were initially thinking of taking our belongings home in six cargo bags on the aircraft, but Icelandic Air charges as much as $150 per bag for excess baggage. MyBaggage provides a door to door service and ship things to the UK for around $80-$100, so we’re giving that a try with one box of miscellaneous stuff.
In the afternoon, I emptied the anchor locker which was filthy after anchoring in muddy places along the east coast of the USA. The chain is starting to show surface rust and I’m going to de-rust it when we’re on the hard, but for the time being, I placed it on the deck wrapped in a piece of plastic. I’m hoping that this will prevent it getting too wet and keep the deck from staining.
I hosed down the anchor locker, but it still needs a good cleaning and some of the paint is flaking off, so it needs wire-brushing and painting with bilge paint - a job for another day.
10 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
We were back on the port-lights with a vengeance. Our morning was spent carefully scraping the surplus new sealant from the last six port-lights. I then inspected all of the rubber seals and decided that I would replace two of them. One seal looked to be cracked and another one had old silicone sealant applied to seal a leak.
I hadn’t noticed the silicone sealant when the hatches were still in place - it must have been done by the previous owner about ten years ago. I pulled off the old seal, which was very easy because the seal is only held in place by a tiny 3mm wide L-section groove. Unfortunately, this groove had sealant in it, so Glenys spent a boring 2 hours scraping it out with a razor blade, a small screwdriver and a bit of wire. It took me 30 minutes to push the new seal in place.
The afternoon was sunny, so I took the opportunity to fit three of the opening port-lights back into the hull - only 8 to go. At 18:00, it started to rain, so we tidied up and cracked open a cold beer. After dark, the heavens opened with torrential rain and a couple of the holes in the coach-roof started to leak - one in the front heads, which wasn’t a problem and one over my armchair, which was dripping on my head. We’re hoping to get the rest of the hatches installed tomorrow, because there’s much more rain forecast over the next three days.
11 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
After breakfast, I started to stick the port-lights back into the coach roof. Meanwhile Glenys was cleaning up the screws that hold them in place and giving the frames a final clean before installation. It all went well and, by 16:00, we’d installed all but one, but then it started to rain. Fortunately, it was only a passing shower and 20 minutes later, I was able to stick in the last port-hole.
I’m really pleased with the job that we’ve done - all the opening port-lights look fabulous now and I know that they’re installed correctly. I just have to finish off the fixed window in the back cabin, which needs a final seam of sealant and cleaning up.
The weather is forecast to be persistent rain for the next two days and the wind will be coming from the north east, which is on our port aft quarter. Rather than having the wind howling through the cockpit and down into our saloon, we put up the “tent”, which completely encloses the cockpit. It’s the first time that we’ve used it for over five years.
12 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
It was a miserable rainy day, so being a Sunday, we declared a holiday and pottered about on board. I caught up on administration and gathered together the information that we’ll need to present to the banks to obtain a mortgage when we get back to the UK. I also started investigating drawing down my pension, which will be giving us income, which we need to qualify for a mortgage.
Glenys cooked a traditional Sunday Lunch and we spent the afternoon drinking a bottle of wine and watching a movie - a nice relaxing day.
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