News!!!

Well, it appears that our parts have arrived in Bermuda. The Racor filter arrived last Friday, but is waiting for some sort of clearance thru some customs broker.

The better news is that the quadrant left Newark NJ this morning, and as I type this, I believe that it has arrived somewhere at the airport. Unfortunately, the UPS tracking system does not have any record of it arriving here yet. It went from St. Herblain, France on the evening of the 22nd, to Koln on the 23rd, to Louisville on the 24th, and then on to Newark the same day. It looks like it spent the Memorial Day weekend in Newark (instead of going sailing, like it should), and left for Bermuda this AM.

The weekend here was pretty good, in spite of some showers. The wind died down, and shifted to the east, so we ended up with the stern of the boat protruding into the channel. On Monday morning we were approached by the pilot boat, which asked us to move so that we would not get run over by the cruise ship, so we up-anchored and moved in about 100 yds(meters). We were not alone in being asked to move.

After lunch we took the ferry to Hamilton where we watched both the Bermuda Day parade, and all of the people who lined the streets for the event. It was fascinating to see how it seemed like every family on the island had brought out chairs, tables, food, portable tents, and whatever else they needed to have a grand picnic. There were relatively few vendors, compared to what would be seen in a situation like this in the US, maybe because no one wants to pay for food they can make themeself. We talked to some of the people after we noted that spots had been laid out on the sidewalks in duct-tape with names on the tape. It turns out that there is a first-come-first-served opportunity for people to “mark their spot”, starting at 6:00 AM the day before the parade, and evidently some people start a bit earlier. But everything was civilized and well-ordered. We were wondering how such a thing would work in, say DC....

The parade had lots of floats covered in flowers and local plants, dance groups, high-school bands, drum corps, and all the rest of the usual parade participants. It was quite nice. We took the bus back to St. Georges and had croque-monsieur sandwiches, salad, and Natalie’s pumpkin pie, all quite excellent. We are gradually working on Art’s French so that he will be able to order food in France when we get there.

I will post more when I know more about the parts. The photos on Flickr have been completely reorganized, with title and comments added, so take a look. If I don’t get the parts this afternoon I will upload photos of Bermuda and the parade. I hope that we get the Racor before the quadrant – I don’t want to have two projects to do at the same time…