Getting Ready

When I arrived we still had lots of work to do and a deadline fast approaching, however since I can't drive in the USA yet, I was more or less confined to the house for the first few days. This wasn't as bad as it might sound as it gave us some time to look up information on things such as where to get a propane tank filled in Milwaukee...

Later we went shopping for food and material, especially lots of trips to Home Depot for various DIY bits and pieces.

The food list was one of the things we worried most about when we were originally thinking about the trip (not many supermarkets in the Atlantic Ocean) and I went to the trouble of buying various books to help, the best of which was The care and feeding of Sailing Crew.

In the end our list could be summed up as cans, cans and more cans!

Galley Saloon Chart table
Home, sweet home!

Once we had finished what we could usefully at a distance we started living on the boat, both to avoid the trip to Milwaukee (almost two hours each way) as well as to get used to our new home and to get it ready to set off.

Although time was tight we managed to get almost everything ready in time for the 27th of June (although we set off with some things untested) as you will read further on.