Yessss ... exactly 6 weeks after Toine gives the boat to the PYD crew and a little more than 11 weeks after we leave the boat at yacht service Van Swaaij, the four of us are back on our own boat. Quite a milestone that is slowly starting to get through to us !!!! We are now wonderfully anchored in the beautiful blue water in the bay of St George with two days to set up the boat and prepare the trip to Florida. We really need that time to make it our own boat again. And to swing in a little bit ... today we succeed behind a swaying anchor with a strong wind 😉.
The crew has lived on it for 6 weeks and a lot of stuff is in a different place. Regularly they search for e.g. plates or the tray with tea bags. It is very clean everywhere and everything is neatly polished, even small details such as the bathroom taps and the tea kettle shine brightly. Top how they did it; the SeaQuest has never been so clean. Skipper Chris is very experienced and has his own habits and interior of a boat ... nice to see and a few things Mira takes over, especially in how the kitchen is decorated. What a huge amount of food is still on board. Great to use the next week. So we really don't have to go shopping anymore.
It feels very familiar to be here again, it's like 'coming home'. But also with some healthy excitement for the upcoming crossing to Florida and another first night of sailing after our nightly accident. We leave tomorrow morning for a 6 day trip via the south side of the Abacos (Bahamas) and then due west to Fort Lauderdale. That is the closest Port of Entry for Deerfield Beach, a few miles below Deerfield Beach.
But first back to last week... we still have two great days in NYC. The first day with a lot of rain in the morning and that's why we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and see beautiful things. A lot of paintings of Dutch masters. Then we take the subway to Chinatown for a delicious lunch. Meanwhile it's dry and the rest of the afternoon we spend at the 9/11 Memorial on the spot of the old Twintowers with waterfalls disappearing in the middle of an infinitely deep hole, and in the 9/11 Museum. Very impressive and a lot of dust to talk about. In the evening we eat japanese at the Beni Hana (for Toine's colleagues a well-known restaurant 😎). It's packed, a nice crowd with many different nationalities. Finally we go to 'The Top of the Rocks' (68th floor of the RCA buiding) with a nice view on Manhattan and NY with lots of lights 🌃.
The second day in the morning some shopping and after more than an hour of waiting to the 86th floor of the Empire State Building. Again a very nice view and now in daylight. With our stomachs rattling we quickly go back downstairs and have lunch in a small tent with 5 TV's with various football matches for the World Cup qualification, including the Netherlands against Sweden 😅. Afterwards we take the subway to Battery Park, sitting in the sun with a view on the Statue of Liberty. Super easy that subway, we will be back in our hotel in no time! And finally in the evening from our NY adventure to The Lion King (on Broadway), a long cherished wish of the girls. What a super nice musical! Also so impressive.
NY is super cool, but we are also very happy to be able to go back to relaxed Bermuda. We are exhausted after 4 days of walking a lot, subway in and out, seeing and doing a lot of things and with always people and sound around us. We relax in the swimming pool and meanwhile we can already see the SeaQuest on Marine Traffic and use their speed to calculate what time they will arrive the next morning. Early in the morning we check it again and so we know exactly what time to walk away .... on the hill of St George we can see the mast in the distance and a little later the SeaQuest turns into the bay. We quickly walk to the Immigration Dock and help with mooring and customs clearance. Very good to see the boat with crew in the flesh !!!! Nice people and we are offered tea and coffee on our own boat 😉.
The rest of the day the crew is working very hard to clean everything (inside and out), fill up with diesel and water. Toine is on board a lot to see what he has to do to make the GPS and the autopilot. I come to check it out regularly. The girls are mostly in the swimming pool. It is good for us to see who the three men are who have been on our boat for so long and to get a picture of how they have lived. Chris tells a lot and we are allowed to ask everything and get an insight into everything. But of course we have the feeling that we want to get on the boat ourselves as soon as possible. The men stay on board for another night at anchor and need the next morning to complete everything. In the evening their flight is back to London. We can arrange through the hotel that the men can enter the swimming pool in the afternoon so that we can get on the boat from 11 o'clock on Friday. We retreat for a last night in the hotel and go out for dinner.
At 11 o'clock is the switch and after that we take the men out to lunch at the Wahoo Restaurant. Chris tells a lot about his previous sailing trips. Nice to hear and nice to end it like this. Even nicer to be able to get on his own boat again. "I never give the boat back to strangers" is Toine's conclusion. Well, we can close this chapter now and move on to the next phase... on to Florida!
The first night on the boat sleeps wonderfully. Gradually the weather really becomes our boat and we get used to the movements behind the anchor. Toine makes the GPS and the Autopilot. The GPS by connecting another (better) GPS of the A67 screen to the network. This is less complex than with that white ball on the railing. With the Autopilot something was shaken loose and luckily nothing was cut. As a test Mira bakes a nice sandwich in the bread machine with Soezie bread dough. Lovely!
In a little while we go to the side to check out and do some last shopping. We're ready for... Florida... here we come!!! We will post a short message on the site every day.