We've been working on the boat for 3 months solid . . . took the mast out, had new rigging cut, sliced off 2 inches off the bottom of the mast, repainted the mast and re-applied the kids' growing marks to correct their position, new coat of bottom paint, re-varnished most of the interior wood trim, discovered a water saturated balsa core in the cabin top and fixed it. That last item may sound easy . . . no way! We took all of the deck fittings off which is a major job in a 25 year old boat, took the interior apart to get to the cored cabin top, removed everything from the boat to protect it from the mess we were going to make, then covered the rest in plastic and began cutting fiberglass. Our naive belief that just because the balsa core was waterlogged it would simply fall out was quickly proven wrong. We finally discovered that it could be scraped off with a very large, heavy, chisel held overhead. Fairly exhausting work. Final step was putting it all back together again. We used epoxy to patch up the cracks in the deck that led to the problem and repainted the non-skid area a beautiful sandy color. It looks great!
Just about every spare moment was spent working on the boat. We did manage to squeeze in a late season skiing trip over Easter. It's the last year both kids will be in public school and have the same spring break so we took advantage of that. My souvenir was a ripped up knee, torn miniscus and torn ACL. Surgery is a strong possibility.
We were more than ready for the payoff, a very quick trip to Martha's Vineyard and return. Our neighbor, Jerry Brown, volunteered as crew. He grew up sailing in the Azores and has done several transatlantic trips. Andante had been in the water for a week and a half when we left on Wednesday, June 30, 1999 at 2330 hrs. This was Jerry's wife's birthday. Happy Birthday Coleen!
