Indiantown goings on

Arrival! Launch! Exhaustion!

We arrived at the boatyard at 9am on Monday, and a mere thirty hours after our initial greeting, we splashed down yesterday afternoon.  I’ve  never seen anyone sand and bottom paint a boat as fast as Andy did, which is good, since it left him more time to prep everything while I wafted uselessly between car bins and bags and piles left stored onboard. (I also cleaned a few things.)

The boat was in great shape – as clean as we’ve see it upon return – and both the interior detail (moi) and the exterior cleaning (Andy and sort-of Lily) went swiftly, without any major critter evictions. (One anole was kicked out from under the forward hatch, but he didn’t put up a fight.) We ticked down our to-do list as the days went on: we hoisted the dinghy off of the bow, cleaned it, and put back in its winter ‘garage’ on the davits, cushions were put back together (a task which I greatly underestimated the time and strength, both mental and physical – you’re saints for doing it in year’s past without complaint, Andy and then Steve!), shopping lists were made, systems were checked, shaft zinc replaced, and days’ tasks were laid out. It’s amazing how much easier it is to stick to a job and complete it now that the kids are old enough to make their way around the yard without our constant attention.

With the Ruach kids (and Susanne’s gracious facilitation) the kids had lemonade stands both Monday and Tuesday, so our efforts onboard were even rewarded with lemonade delivery (for the family discount of 50 cents a cup). The kids roam the boatyard like a foursome of scraggly Eloises. They peruse the free table a few times a day for any potential treasures, check in with Jessie and Alex (the yard workers who run the travel lift and move boats) to see about area of assistance and to get the lemonade sales going, pop into the office for popsicles, purchased with their newly pocketed lemonade cash, and generally scamper and skibble around like the band of exploratory latchkey kids that they are. It’s a pretty great scene for everyone involved, if I do say so myself. They’re imaginative (they’ve already started filming their second annual movie), they’re active, reports are that they’re polite (but do I really believe this?!), and they’re back together again. Good stuff.

We’re headed back to Indiantown as I type, after three nights of staying in Stuart while we worked onboard. We only meant to stay two, but we forgot to bug bomb (a necessary evil despite no real visible problems) the boat on Monday night, which meant that it happened last night instead, and today is the day that will have us unpacking the car, finally. (I didn’t want to stow our belongings onboard to have them exposed to the ‘bomb’ before now.) I’m ready to drive around without things packed around my legs!

It also means today is the day that we organize the storage under the berths in order to make them up for sleeping tonight, and if time, getting a jump on provisioning. I’ll enjoy one of my favorite stretches of Floridian driving (the last ten miles north of Indiantown coming from Stuart) to mentally prepare- it’s going to be a long one!