“You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” Martin Luther King

 

It’s halfway through February. I haven’t posted since before Christmas. The reason is – I didn’t have any good news. My mom always told me, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Thus, my silence.

Since our emergency stop to Lagos, Portugal when we had an epic failure trying to cross to the Madeira Islands, we have been confined to a marina slip. This was on the tail of spending two years locked down in a marina in Ireland. We have made the best of a bad situation. We have still traveled, still had adventures. We fared better than the majority of the world during this pandemic. For that, we are very thankful.

Then, when it seemed our time had finally arrived to continue our journey, our roller furler, the rod that goes from the top to the bottom of the mast, broke about two-thirds of the way up. This rod is what winds the sail up inside our mast. Normally, if there was a problem with it, we could take the sail down manually. The broken rod caught the sail ¾ of the way up, making it impossible to get the mainsail down. You can read the details in the post Demasting on Equus.

With hope in our hearts for a quick repair, we were severely disappointed when it took weeks to even get an appointment at the shipyard to get our mast removed. After the mast was removed, we limped back into our slip like a lame duck. We knew we would be playing a waiting game, we just didn’t have a clue how long this game was going to play out. Three months later, I finally have some good news.

 

New Year – New Opportunities

We got through Christmas in Lagos and with great anticipation looked forward to welcoming in the new year. Even though we knew we were in for a long wait for the repairs since the workers were taking 2 weeks off around the holidays, and Covid was causing people and parts shortages, we decided to enter the new year with gratitude; as an opportunity to continue fulfilling our dreams.

When the previous couple of years have been disastrous, you can’t help but think you will be entering a year that has to be better. Since our plans to sail across the Atlantic to meet our children and grandchildren in the Dominican Republic in January were altered, we couldn’t help but take a leap of faith and believe good things were on the horizon.

With that in mind, we woke on January 1^st to welcome the first sunrise of our new year. We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day. The sunrise was brilliant and we hoped it was an omen of what this new year has in store for us. However, the next month was not the smooth sailing we had envisioned.

The first week of January we had to fly to the Dominican Republic to meet our three children and our three grandchildren. Orion was turning 7 the week we were there, the other two babies; 9 months and 1 year old. We knew it was going to be a challenging week, we just didn’t count on the sickness that would plague us during the trip.

Our daughter-in-law and Orion were delayed for 2 days. They were both getting over an illness and had to make sure they were healthy before they left. Meanwhile, Montezuma’s revenge ravaged 6 of the adults. Each of us spent a day in bed in our rooms battling that revenge. My revenge took place on the day Dan and I were supposed to be taking Orion for his birthday trip to Monkey Island and ziplining over the rainforest. Philip had to fill in for me. While I horribly missed the outing, it was nice for dad, son, and grandson to have a wonderful and adventurous day.

Then the foot and mouth disease hit the babies. They were feverish and miserable. Already off their normal schedules and sleeping in a strange place, they were not happy campers. Always a rough situation for new moms and dads to have a sick baby on a family vacation.

By the time we left, we did have a wonderful week in between incidences, but our son-in-law Sean was sick. Derek was also not feeling well. We all tested negative for Covid so off we flew, the kids back to the US, us to Portugal. A week later, several family members came down with the flu and several even showed positive Covid test results. Dan and I already had it, but we did pick some type of flu that had us in bed for a week back on the boat. It was a rough trip – for everyone.

Sickness aside, we loved seeing the babies, our kids and enjoyed an entire week of not having to cook or think about food. We were at an all-inclusive resort. The entire week, we only had 2 meals where the entire family was present. This was certainly not what we had envisioned, but we did take what time we could to get with our family and are grateful.

What we enjoyed most about the trip? The sandy beaches were gorgeous. The swim-up bar at the pool was lots of fun. Spending time with our family and celebrating Orion’s 7^th birthday was at the top of the list. Every morning, Dan and I walked to the beach to watch the sunrise. We looked across the ocean and wondered what it would have been like had we sailed across to the DR. There were sailboats anchored in the distance and it broke our hearts to think that our boat was back in a marina in Portugal and that we lost several months of sailing in the Caribbean. One more reason to know that this year will be better. We have to make it somewhere eventually. We are just that dedicated and will not give up. Never give up, never surrender is our motto!

 

Major Mast Woes

When we both felt well enough to return to the land of the living, the 2-week holiday was over and we could concentrate on getting our mast fixed. We waited for our repair person to show up. Finally, there was a knock on our boat one morning. We had an appointment at the marina the following day to get our mast put back on Equus. We were very excited as we felt so naked being the only sailboat in the marina without a mast.

The replacement went well. We motored over to the repair yard in the morning, the mast was replaced by the giant crane, and we were back at the marina in time for lunch. The issue “de jour” was that our repair man’s helper had been exposed to someone who tested positive for Covid so he had to quarantine for 5 days. Since he had no helper, he would not be able to finish all the work on the mast until the following week.

Our mast was back on, but there was still much to be done. All the halyards had to be tightened and bolted back in place. The base of the mast has a complicated epoxy process to ensure no water leaks around it. Then, we had to ensure the new furler system worked. A week later, work resumed, but unfortunately, all did not go well.

Dan went up the mast first when our repairman showed up without his helper. When we tried to raise the sail, it got caught about a foot short of the top of the mast. This was a mystery, so we had some problem-solving to do. Next, our repairman went up the mast. He thought the problem might be with the halyard that raises the sail. He promised to bring a new halyard to try the following visit to see if that was the issue.

Days later, he showed up with the new halyard. It didn’t work. Then began the subsequent trial and error attempts to solve the issue. It turned out the bearing at the top of the mast was not sliding into place correctly under load. To fix it, we would have to take the mast off again, and the part alone was more expensive than the roller furler we just replaced. This was very bad news. There was a way around the issue. We could have the sail cut down a few inches and not hoist it all the way to the top of the mast. We prayed this would work. Finally, the sail came back from the alterations. We all stood at the base of the mast and held our breath. The sail raised, tightened nicely, and rolled back into the mast without a hitch. We finally had success. It had been a real nail-biter!

 

What Now?

Of course, the Orcas are back at it again just as we are thinking about heading east. There have been several encounters around Gibraltar, which we need to sail around to get into the Mediterranean.  We can’t head down there quite yet as the wind and the weather are still too unpredictable. We have decided on the second week of March to start our journey again. Our goal is to meet our boat buddies on Whatever She Wants. They wintered near Barcelona. Off the coast of Spain is a chain of islands called the Balearics. Mallorca and Ibiza are popular sailing destinations where we hope to meet up with our friends.

After that, we will probably head to the island of Sardinia which we hear is amazing from sailors in this marina who have spent time there. The island belongs to Italy. Corica is just north of Sardinia so we will probably make a stop there as we make our way eastward toward Greece. There are other stops we can make but it is pointless to plan. We have to start sailing and take one day at a time. Wind, weather, and luck will dictate how far we go, and long it takes to get there.

So that is the wrap-up of the beginning of this new year for us. It hasn’t been great so far, but we figure it has to get better. There is only up, and forward. We truly appreciate everyone who has followed our adventures and supported us financially, with prayers, and kind words. You have helped us through these hard times. It is my hope to have wonderful stories and photos to share with you in the next few months of the incredible places we plan to see. I will do my best to describe the wonder, and take photos so you can feel you are traveling along with us. We know you are all there in spirit. It is one of the reasons we are able to continue over the bumps in the road. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

Fair Winds,
The Captain and his First Mate