Preparation is underway

This is George and Jan Tonner who arrived yesterday, and Janet and Ken, at the inner harbor in Annapolis.

We've been here five days now, and everything is going great! Janet and I arrived last Saturday night from Cincinnati (via West VA and Washington, D.C.), and Breaking Away was already in the water. The boat yard had just completed its work and they hoisted it into the water and took it to my slip in the marina. The yard had removed the winter shrink wrapping, waxed the exterior hull, painted the bottom, de-winterized the water systems, and installed a line/weed cutter on the propellor shaft.

The entire canvas top, side curtains, and cushions were stored in the front berth for the winter. I don't know how they squeezed all of it in there. The next morning, that was our first project - to reinstall all that stuff on the flybridge. It turned out to be quite a major undertaking, getting all those jigsaw pieces figured out as to where they went, how they attached to each other, how to loosen some zippers just so, so that we could stretch the pieces to snap down and zip down and fit side-to-side. Everything has to fit precisely together or else nothing will fit at all! But with two brains and four arms and lots of muscles, we finally did it! At some points, I had to hang on the frame with all my weight to pull it down enough for Janet to be able to have made zip a piece together.

We made numerous shopping trips to get all the little things that keep cropping up on the to-do list. The more I'm on this boat, the more I love it and think it's the perfect boat for the upcoming adventure. The boat yard mechanic also came by on Monday to change oil, filters, and to show me other maintenance items. Today the four of us will drive to Washington, D.C. to see the cherry blossoms along the Tidal Basin. As long as the weather permits (today it's very windy), tomorrow the electronics fellow who installed the auto pilot and GPS chart plotters last December is going to take us out for a "sea trial" to instruct me on how everything works. Afterward, we will take an all-day cruise to Chestertown. Janet returns home on Saturday.