Progress . . . Sort of

I can’t begin to put into words the excitement that comes with making the long awaited trip to see our boat in person and step onto her for the first time. . .

Better than Christmas morning!

Like the culmination of 15 years of Christmases as our dream finally becomes a reality. Years of saving, doing without, working extra hours, skipping vacations. Not just once or twice, but years of sacrifice to get to this moment. THIS Christmas would be the gift we had been waiting for so patiently.

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THEN the phone rang . . . as the final items were placed in our bags for the long trip, Hubby took a call from our Builder. The Builder was apologetic and professional on the phone, like a doctor delivering the ‘you have cancer’ diagnosis he said the boat is delayed and would not be ready to launch as previously targeted for December 1. Our flight was leaving in 24 hours, our holiday accommodations for a full month paid for and long past the refund time frame. The Christmas music stops, dancing halts, silence and shock filled the air . . . What do we do?

As I said before the most satisfied and successful people are adept at being able to roll with the punches . . . I also said I was not very good at it . . . you know how to get better? Ugh . . .

We went for a walk, as we often do with big decisions - clear the head, silence the chaos, take sometime and think it through. There was not a lot of time for that, check-in for

our flights was upon us. What were our options? Really. . . The amount of delay was uncertain for several reasons: the holiday was coming in Cape Town and the city would not allow boats to be launched, staff would be heading home to see families leaving limited personnel in the plant. The Builder just couldn't commit. Where would we stay after our initial accomodations expired? Would this impact our 90-day visa? What about the Captain we had hired for the crossing? What about our crate that could only be delivered to the boat once it was launched? Bonded / custom storage was not an inexpensive component of the delay.

THE DECISION

We opted to keep our current plans and make the adjustments once we arrived. Maybe the Builder would know more when we arrived. Maybe being there in person could help us better assess, though we did not know anything about the boat building process. We did know that sailing could be unpredictable and it was going to start with this issue. We were going to get some experience rolling with the punches.

Twenty four hours of travel and a seven hour time change we arrived in Cape Town. It was cooler than we expected as summer was just getting started in Mid-November. It was a wonderful break from the heat that had been unrelenting in Florida. We planned to see the Plant on Monday to give us a few days to recover from jet lag. But honestly we were still so excited to see the shop, we just didn't know what to expect.

Stay tuned for the BIG REVEAL we will raise the garage door to see Blue Tortuga for the first time!