7. Baltimore April 2025

The final refit work in Baltimore before we go sailing.

In April I flew in to Baltimore to finish the refit work on Beyond. This is a short log of the work. Halfway through my 17 year old son, Cody, joined me to help - the carrot was the sail to New York when complete.They always say you shouldn't sail to a schedule but it's hard to manage in modern real life. I had not booked a return flight because I was sailing home. But my wife was joining us in New York, so we had a real date, a hard non-negotiable date, and while I was looking forward to my 'date' in the Big Apple, the pressure was on. Like really.

Dawn to drop. There's a lot to do and projects and tasks always grow. Mission creep is a real thing.

One of the things I believe is that a Jordan Series Drogue is the best heavy weather tool you can have - as in when the weather is scary - and it basically is a sea anchor you release behind the boat after which you can go down below and cry. But it needs to be there so you can deploy it. I decided to make a box out of salvaged and recycled teak. But before I could fit it I needed to finish the painting of the aft deck.

Then it needed to be bolted down. Stainless angle irons, heavy bolts, holes drilled and filled with epoxy to seal the balsa core and drilled again. I visualised a heavy wave taking it out, leaving behind my steel fixing, sort of like a roofless cathedral with ruined remnants of walls. Fine. Onwards.

Then it need massive stainless chainplates (thank you metalsupermarket.com)on both sides of the aft topsides, to hang the drogue from when deployed. Nothing wrong with over-engineering until it, literally, was strong enough to lift the boat. Again drilled, epoxied and bolted in.

A small job was a new salon table. I had found a solid teak Indonesian chest on eBay. Dirt cheap. I repurposed it in my garage workshop in the UK and made it into a funky table with hinged top and compartments for stuff. Then disassembled it and brought it over in my airplane luggage. Yup, I was massively over weight. Don't ask.

And of course it was a bit too large so I had to cut it down by some 6" and re-assemble. Hey ho. I was quite pleased overall.

When Cody arrived, he was too jet-lagged to even notice.

So I punished him by putting him straight to work. He is a plumber's apprentice so that's useful.

He did well but needed rewards.

There. may have been some golfing rewards as well.

We got there in the end. Or, more accurately, we got a lot of the work done. Every sailor knows that there comes a point when you have to leave. The work is not finished - it never is. You go anyway.

So Cody and I set off for New York.