Season end - hellos and goodbyes

No doubt, dear Readers, you have been waiting with bated breath (?) for the next instalment in the Follyfin Saga... apologies for long delay. Skipper and I have been a bit busy over the past 3 weeks, first busily engaged in putting FF to bed for the winter, then welcoming our latest grandchild, Celeste, into the world. 

Her timing was perfect, arriving last Saturday evening a few days after we arrived back in UK and only a couple of days earlier than expected. She weighed in at 9lb 5oz, and mother and baby are both doing well. Of course we are all delighted!

Winterising Follyfin was made significantly easier by the wonderful helpers we had. First there was Ivor, who helped get the sails off on his last day with us. Then there were our new friends Lee and Deborah - met only recently in Maine at the OCC Rally (see previous post) -  who invited us to stay in their house a short drive away from Captain’s Cove Seaport, Blackrock, near Bridgeport in Connecticut. This is where we have decided to store Follyfin over winter. It is not an extremely smart or modern Marina but the facilities and expertise amongst the staff are excellent. This is not the word we would use to describe the company who we used to service our life raft. It shall remain nameless for the present; suffice to say that from here it has been returned to them for a third time (the first two times from Boston whilst we were temporarily berthed there earlier this summer) because of substandard service and treatment of this essential and expensive item. The photo below shows the mark up done by Skipper prior to its collection from Captain’s Cove.

Lifts to chandlers and US Customs and Border Agencies, a nice comfortable bed, hot showers, washing machine, flush toilet and above all their company, help and advice made the daily toil of denuding, clearing and prepping Follyfin for the winter so much more pleasant. We were all rewarded with a visit to Brewport - home to a local craft brewery - on Ivor’s last night. Flights of beer and pizza: what more could a chap need to speed him on his travels?

Anyway, back to the winterising process... Skipper (Bosun/Engineer), having serviced the engine and dosed the engine, shower and head pipes with antifreeze (amongst numerous other winterising tasks) pronounced Follyfin ready for hauling out onto dry land (aka ‘the hard’ in nauticospeak). This was duly done first thing on Thursday 20 September. We were a little anxious during this process since the haul-out bay was barely wider than Follyfin herself. But like the secret passenger who fell out of the keel area once out of the water, we need not have worried. That evening we all celebrated by taking a Clam Crawl (raw ‘on the half shell’, steamed and fried) with our friends in two very different establishments.

By Friday evening the work was finished and we said goodbye to Follyfin until the Spring. The next morning we also bade a fond farewell to Lee and Deborah as we boarded the train to Grand Central Station in New York City. So this is the other silver lining about Hurricane Florence messing up our original plan to winter Follyfin further south: she and we are only a couple of hours by train from Warren and family in Jersey City. So we spent the rest of the weekend with them before catching our train down to Baltimore to fly home overnight on Monday 24th. Happy times with our JC grandchildren!

So, dear Readers, that’s all from Follyfin and her crew for this season. We plan to rejoin her in April 2019. Seems a very long time since we were planning to cross the Atlantic east to west; almost 3 years to be exact (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJWMdmZTqf8 ) for an amusing cinematic reminder!). Will 2019 be the year to cross back in the opposite direction? Who knows...watch this space!