Loop 2 - Preparations for Year 2-May, 2017

     After 6+ months at home in League City, TX, we spent several weeks organizing gear and clothes to return to Winter Harbor Marina in Brewerton, NY (near Syracuse, NY)to resume our Second Great Loop adventure. We had a wonderful winter break with the highlight being LOTS of quality time with Bob (son), Jill(daughter-in-law), and the Grandkids (Sarah, Will and Katie) as well as The Admiral's family (her father Jim and mother Carita, in particular). This time has been well documented on Facebook, and I will not repeat that here.
      Over the winter we had some service work done on Lucky Us. The two, huge storage buildings must total several acres in size, and they are heated to 65F to allow for various contractors to work on the boats. We had the aft cockpit door removed and rotten wood around hinges restored and the overhead hatch in the master stateroom was removed and re-caulked as well as treating some rotten wood. The hatch has leaked for years in certain directions of driving rain so that repair was long overdue. We also had several mechanical issues addressed, including re-packing the drive shafts on the main engines as well as the shafts on the two rudders. Lucky Us also had two coats of (blue) anti-fouling bottom paint.
     The New York State Canal System is now under the control of a different state agency, and one of their first moves was to delay the opening of the canal from May 1 to May 19...

     While delay this was a big disappointment, it only cuts our travels shorter by a minor amount since the weather up North is still slowly warming up, and we would have lost some (much?) of this time to weather delays any way.  Oh well, we have learned to be patient and go with the flow.

      We left Texas on Thursday, May 11 fully loaded to enjoy a leisurely 6 day trip to Winter Harbor, including a two day stop in my home town of Lorain Ohio. We had taken only one kayak back home for the winter because the Admiral wanted to buy a new kayak. She bought a really neat Hobie kayak that has a removable pedal powered system. Lucky Girl (our dog) loves the new kayak since it is more stable and wide enough for her to move around the entire kayak. We had to be careful not to use the "k" work around the house as she would get excited and head for the door...

     The photo at the left show the Admiral and me standing behind a beautiful, blooming rhododendron, which is evidence of the late Spring up north. We both had sweaters and jackets on for basically our whole stay in Lorain, Ohio.

    We arrived in upstate New York about 3 days before the opening of the canal system, and we stayed with my brother Hank and sister-in-law Joan. They live on a small bay off of Lake Ontario about a 40 minute drive from Lucky Us. Great accommodation as well as the fact that Joan is a great cook! Once Lucky Us was launched, we could start moving our gear aboard. The indoor heated storage meant that we could leave most of the boat untouched, but we still had to put things away and do provisioning at the grocery store.

   We did have some excitement during the start up process. It was in the form of a hail storm (photo at left). The larger teak board is 3 inches wide, which shows that some of the hail was dime sixed. We did get several holes in the port (left) side windows of the enclosure for the flybridge. Along with Lucky Girl we were huddled in the salon. The noise of the hail hitting on the fiberglass deck above our heads was quite impressive!

     By Saturday, May 22 we were ready for the next big adventure to start. So, the daily blog continues below...