Well, she’s off to Europe.  Matt Scarpelli and I drove from Florida to Baltimore with Myrna and over the course of four days we managed to get the boat loaded on the Wallenius Wilhelmsen ship http://www.2wglobal.com/www/wep// .

PPhoto by Beth Perry (she c0nsistently takes good photos).  Guy decorating boat: Matt

 Well actually Matt and Beth Perry managed to do it.  I was not allowed into the shipping area because I didn’t have the proper identification.  Matt also managed to prevent an 18 wheeler from taking my mast out while it was backing out of the loading area.  Big shock there.  Why wouldn’t that happen at this point?  Thankfully Matt smokes because otherwise he wouldn’t have caught it.  

More significantly we managed two trips to South of the Border http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_the_Border_(attraction)  in South Carolina, and had a great breakfast at Pedro’s diner.  South of the Border is a roadside sociological event, and I recommend anyone who is driving up or down I95 to visit.  It’s super bazaar.

Before leaving Fort Myers I received my new spinnaker in the mail.  Dave Bolyard overnighted it to me to make sure it fit, and it is a big improvement in both cloth weight and shape over my current spinnaker which is a cut down fractional runner from a 30′ sportboat.  This is a design straight from Dave Ullman and Bolyard and the team at Ullman Gulfcoast knocked it out very quickly just for a single hoist in Fort Myers before Myrna was packed up for France.  It’s an amazing group to be working with.

Dave Ullman is busy designing the rest of the sails and I plan on spending the next week in the loft puting those together with Bolyard before leaving for Europe myself.  No rest for anyone here.

-R