LAUNCHING OF CHAUTAUQUA AND FINAL WEEK OF PREPARATIONS

As the summer is quickly come to an end, and Sal's beard has gotten longer and longer, it has finally come down to our final week on land. After a few delays, Chautauqua was finally launched September 2nd in Iroquois! We held our breaths as she was lowered into the water and remained afloat! Phil did a quick inspection of the bilge..wait a leak!!!!!!!!!!!! But no need to lift her out again, he was able to temporarily stop it, until my dad could fix it properly later, ok we can breathe again. I've learned very early on in fixing up boat (and this probably applies to a lot of things), nothing is ever simple. Something always comes up or there's a delay here or there, or you've discovered a new problem that now needs to be fixed. What I would plan to take an hour, would end up taking at least 4 sometimes. Anyways, we didn't end up getting the mast up on that day as planned because a broken connection in the fuel line for the engine would first need to be replaced. So the mast went up on the 3rd and we tried to remember how everything goes, which lines for what, what shackle attaches where, etc. etc. In the end, we had things looking pretty nice. Time to go home and get things set to go here. Mom's lists (there are numerous ones) get longer each day, and departure day gets closer and closer.

Our plan, as of this second, is for my parents to bring up their boat (Chautauqua) to Brockville to load up with last minute supplies on Friday the 9th of Sept. and leave for Oswego the following day. Second wind is going to be trailered and launched in Mallorytown Thursday evening and we will probably head off Friday or Saturday, and hopefully we'll meet up there. We'll just have to see how many times this changes, but no stress, we just have to get into the 'cruising mode'.