The final push!

April has been busier than March, and that was busy…. but we are now declaring Silhouette ready to go!

A very quick 4 days ashore for antifouling, anodes and making sure the rudder bearing we replaced last year was still firm (it is) along with fitting a disc rope cutter was all completed in wonderful sunshine and without a hitch, which was a relief. There are a number of small jobs we want to do but these can be done anywhere and it’ll be good to get going. As we were only out for 4 days, we paid to have Silhouette polished and are stunned at how well she looks. We were a bit worried when the crane got a bit close though….

A lovely couple, James & Bex berthed next to us for 3 weeks with their Moody 425 “Hepzibah” and we socialised with them until they left last week slowly heading off to the Med. They are exactly the people we want to meet and hopefully one day our paths will cross again, such is the cruising lifestyle, making friends and then sailing in different directions.

Last weekend we went to Steve & Helen from “Allegrini”  leaving party at their home port in the Hamble, & they will be down this weekend to ours. A small affair of about 140 people !!! I think they’re coming to make sure we actually go.

Our departure has been delayed 4 days due to a bit of a cock up with our US visas. We thought our ESTA visas would be fine for when we enter US waters next year but have luckily just found out we need full B2 visas. 5 hours on the US website filling in the application forms with some truly odd questions and a website which continually crashes was “frustrating” and we now have interviews at their embassy next week. As long as this all runs smoothly we’ll leave Poole on the 3rd May heading firstly down to Dartmouth to collect our OCC membership papers & burgee, then onto Plymouth to collect our passports which the embassy keep for a few days. Caroline had the bright idea of getting our passports sent to where we are heading rather than delaying our departure another week waiting around! We’ve always used Boracol on the teak which is easy to use, but having seen another yachts teak after being treated we decided to do the same. The finish looks great, we’ll just have to see how long it lasts before needing doing again!

With preparations completed, the next entry will be “on the move”.