May 2nd, 2008 - A Day of Preparation

May 02, 2008 – Preparing Dad’s Dream

Today would literally make or break our planned departure for tomorrow. We needed to coordinate efforts to maximize our results for the day. With that in mind, Rusty and Pete arrived at the boat early to find that a lot had actually been accomplished yet much more needed to be done. We boarded water jugs but I’m not saying how many at this point. We did board eight jerry cans which were filled with diesel fuel in case we ran low or out with the fuel in the main tank.

Speaking of water, today’s educational question is: If you were planning this trip, with five people, sailing 14 days, how many gallons of water would you pack?

Now back to the boat. Rusty returned to the hotel to pick up the remainder of the crew. While they went grocery shopping, Mindy and Tris took a ferry over to St. John for the day, and I struggled trying to get the XM Satellite Weather activated. After about four hours of trying….I failed.

The crew shopped for a few hours and met me back at the boat where everything was loaded. While Rusty and Lora returned for the perishables, Steve, Scott, and I filled the fuel tank and jerry cans. Naturally, as we pulled up to the fuel dock they suffered a total power failure and we were relegated to sitting around praying the power would come on before morning. It came on after about 15 minutes and soon the boat was listing to starboard due to all of the additional fuel. By the time we returned to VIP we discovered that the battens still had not been installed in the sails.

Back in November, new sails were made for Dad’s Dream and shipped to the boat including battens. (Battens are plastic shafts inserted into the sails to give it shape. You can sail without them but it is far more effective with battens.) There were none to be found around VIP and yet the shipping label said they had been shipped. So I called the salesperson and asked when they had been shipped and it was with the sales. He gave me a description of the tube and immediately I knew where to look. Sure enough they had been in a different building at VIP all along. Scott, Steve, Matthias, and I inserted all of the battens even before Rusty and Lora returned with the perishables. Once those were loaded in the freezer on board the boat, we all headed back to get cleaned up, dining at “ Off The Hook” restaurant in Red Hook.

Exhausted we all returned to the hotel lobby to get on the internet and do our final contact and weather check before our departure.

Pete