Repairs Continue

Midnight Sun III continues to be repaired at Pensacola Shipyard. The main issue is the repair of cosmetic scratches in the gel coat from Hurricane Sally. While we were fortunate to sustain no structural damage, the boat was hit by many roofing shingles that were blown off our house roof. Well that will not happen again - we now have a metal roof!. The shingles did not pierce the gel coat bet left many shallow scratches. These are being wet sanded or compound polished out prior to re-sealing the surface. Its proving to be a slow painstaking process - but the finished areas look like new again. We keep getting told "two more weeks"........we shall see.

So this has put us behind schedule with our plans to leave for the Bahamas, but we have not given up on that hope yet. Needless to say I am monitoring progress every couple of days and itching to get her back in the water!!

In the meantime....

Drone Flying

Yes, I do have one of those annoying Drones. I have been wanting to film sailing shots with it for the past year but have not had the confidence to fly it over water - so yes, that is a major issue. Well I have been practicing and built up more confidence. This weekend members of Pensacola Yacht Club came over to our area and we had a party and raft-up. - Yes, everyone here is about over the whole Covid thing. Foolish - well who knows, we will see. Fun - Yes! So I took the opportunity to do some drone filming and made a short video.

Check it out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5k5A9n0gzo

Repairs

As I write this post, Midnight Sun III is currently in the Pensacola Shipyard getting final repairs completed. To be honest, I have made the lions share of the repairs (other than mast and rigging) myself while waiting on a space at the shipyard. Everything has been backed up because of Hurricane Sally. We are very grateful to Rick Zern and the guys at Zern Rigging for getting the mast and rigging work done. Awesome job guys - as always! Also, a big thanks to Hunter Riddle at Schur Sails - another local Pensacola firm that does first class work at a reasonable price.

Final items include painting the bottom (antifouling), wet sanding/polishing a few remaining scratches on he starboard hull, and detail cleaning/polishing the topsides and hulls.

Of course we have had several rain days sine she was hauled out - but we are hoping for a speedy turnaround by the yard and our contractor - Perdido Sailor! So the pressure is on Brandon.....its all up to you now!

Our Plans for 2021

Of course with the ongoing Covid situation, our plans are even more certain to be "written in the sand at low tide" - meaning subject to change and revision. I know that many of my blog readers are in Europe and other parts of the world, but the situation here in the US is far more.........well I hesitate to say better, but certainly more "nonchalant" than other parts of the world. Comparatively, we have few restrictions on travel within the US, and facilities are certainly open and available.

That said, our current plans are to leave -hopefully later in March and head south around Florida then across to the Bahamas. From there, we will likely head back to the US East Coast (Maybe June) and head north for Hurricane Season. I hesitate to put this in writing, because I just know that things will likely change. But as of now - that's the plan. I will keep you posted, but we are getting excited to hopefully be underway soon. Now that does mean we have a LOT of preparation work to do in the next month. So wish us luck!!

Video Update

I have finally finished the video series on our Atlantic Crossing from La Rochelle France to Josephine, Alabama! This has been quite a project, but the entire trip including our planning and preparations now form 9 episodes that are uploaded to YouTube. The final part - Episode 9 covers the Bahamas to home. Since we have come through the Bahamas several times and since this was the last leg of our trip, we passed through fairly quickly but did manage to stop at a few places that we had not had a chance to visit on previous trips.

Please check out the final episode at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUJkQ4wT5cE