Life on the road and at Indiantown

 We left NY for Florida last Wednesday setting aside three days of driving at 8 hours per day. Traffic was good and on every day we made great time down I95 towards Florida. There was only one major delay where a bridge was being raised to allow taller traffic on I95. Several of the bridges passing over I95 have been raised already but as fate would have it while traversing North Carolina they had both Southbound lanes closed at one of the older I95 crossings. All traffic had to exit I95 then cross an intersection and then get back on I95. It sounds simple but the traffic had to squeeze down to a single lane. We were lucky we left early in the day so we were only backed up in traffic about a mile deep when it caught us. 

 Arriving in Savannah, we had a great Sushi dinner out with Michele where we combined efforts to consume 6 rolls. Great food at Miyabi in Savannah.  

 We were lucky we left NY when we did because that got us to Indiantown in the early afternoon on Friday. If we arrived on Saturday we would have lost the ability to work on Freedom for two days because they don't run the travelift on weekends and the boat was not in the work yard. After driving 8 hours, we unloaded the car hoisting everything up about 10 feet onto Freedom, and then we helped move the boat and reconnect it to some power. A long day. 

 The boat made it through the Summer very well. Having a dehumidifier running aboard with an over side drain kept the insides dry. This kept just about everything free of mildew. But grinding off all of the scale on the rudders, trim tabs and propeller shafts was a 2.5 day chore with 40 grit sand paper on a 5 inch random orbital sander. It was like trying to sand concrete. This photo of the aft most strut displays the level of encrustation that was common to all of hardware under the waterline. At first blush it doesn't look dense enough to be a problem and that's what we thought. We know much better now. There has to be a better way that works for the EPA. Anyway the shafts are cleaned up and can slide through the cutlass bearings easily and that facilitates removal and installation of shaft seals which let go and started leaking water into the bilge back in the Spring. When they quit working we were traveling to the Berry Islands across the Northwest Providence channel (big, deep water) from Lucaya. While the Eastern opening of this passage is mostly protected from the open Atlantic, it can still get ugly out there. But we waited quite while for calm weather and it paid dividends plus. The water was very calm for that crossing.

 With four full days of work done we still have two more and if we keep at it Freedom will be in the water Friday! But we still have install new shaft seals, lap the shafts into the flanges, connect the shafts to the transmissions and repack the rudders before we wash and wax the hull. By hand of course. I have to work off all of the conch fritters I consumed last season in the Bahamas somehow.

 Once in the water we are thinking it will be another week afloat before we start moving again. With all of the work going into Freedom we want to make sure she hasn't sprung a leak or two. And there are all of the electronics to reconnect and check out also.