27 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
It was Memorial Day, but we had no time to relax. We were back at the boat at 08:00 and rattled off a few jobs. I put the final coat of varnish on the cockpit table and Glenys continued to clean after the chaos of the past few days. I then replaced the aft heads door, which looks great.
I flushed out the bilge sump, which hasn’t been done for a couple of years. I unscrewed the ¾” plug on the bottom of the keel and frantically tried to catch the foul black oily bilge water in a bucket. Including a quick trip to the hardware store to buy more degreaser/bilge cleaner, I spent an hour filling up, scrubbing and emptying the bilge sump. A nasty job, but rather satisfying to have a clean smelling bilge
It was blisteringly hot again and we were making good progress, so we packed up at 14:00.
28 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
It absolutely threw it down first thing in the morning, but the sun broke through at 10:00. I replaced the cockpit table leaves. It’s not the best varnishing job that we’ve ever done, but it looks a lot better than it did before. We continued to tick off small jobs and clean the boat. After a quick sandwich, we were able to refit the carpets and Alba was back to show room condition.
Our last job was to remove the bimini because we had already received several “presents” of guano from overflying birds and after a few more weeks, it would look terrible. The bimini frame doesn’t fold away after a modification that I made 5 years ago, so I came up with a series of lashings that hold the frame in the same position as if the bimini was in place. I reckon that it’s strong enough that you could go sailing without the bimini in place.
At 14:00, we locked up the boat and retired to our air-conditioned house. Only one more sleep to go.
29 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
Our flight wasn’t until 20:30 from Washington Dulles airport, so we had a leisurely start to the day, packing and repacking our two cargo bags. We managed to get most things into our 23 kg allowances. We left the house at 10:00 and drove to the boatyard, where we had a final look in Alba’s cupboards to make sure that we haven’t forgotten anything.
We dropped the boat keys with Roger at Free State Yachts, who tells me that there are another two viewings booked for next week - fingers crossed.
We took one last photo of Alba; climbed into our hire car and drove away - and so our new life starts.
As the great and wise Porky Pig says, “Th-th-th-that’s all folks!”