Hello to all our family and friends, 

It feels like a long time since we made the passage north to Oxford, Maryland in early June.  Oxford is a picture postcard town on the eastern shore with only one grocery store known as “the market”, four restaurants, a firehouse, a library, three police men, a town hall and numerous marinas.  The usual entertainment for the police officers is directing their radars along the only street into town to catch unsuspecting motorist who fail to slow down to the posted 25 miles an hour limit.

Crabs for lunch

We spent about two months on the hard at Oxford Boatyard.  It was rather strange and certainly quite hot living on a boat that was out of the water, although the first month was actually rather cooler and much wetter than normal.  We furiously sweated through the extensive work list, which included fixing topside paint blisters by re-Awl-Gripping the boot stripe area, varnished all the exterior bright work, and fitting new refrigeration to allow us to freeze all those lobster we keep catching in the Bahamas. Graham did such an outstanding job on the Awl Grip that he was offered a job by the paint shop!

The cats were not too keen on the boat being out the water.  Shadow’s focus turned to setting himself free of his harness and finding convenient routes to the ground. Whenever he was successful, he would cry at full volume in an attempt to alert the whole boat yard that his negligent owners had let him escape.  Sylvester was pleased we invested in a companionway hatch fan to cool him down while he was still wearing his thick winter coat.  Nobody informed the boys that growing a thick new coat as soon as we hit the unexpectedly cooler climate of the USA east coast would be such an impediment only a month later.

In amongst all the boat work, Trudy found opportunities to work on her craft projects, and having found suitable sources for jewelry and craft making equipment, the many collected beach treasures are starting to develop into small masterpieces.  We also invested $20 on a blender so that we can lubricate our pallets with frozen beverages from our new refrigeration system.  This should also be quite useful for grinding up conch (sea snails) that we steered clear of last winter.

We launched on Tuesday 15 July, 2003 without incident, but with the expectation that we still needed to complete a few more internal jobs once the hull had settled into its “floating” shape again – on the hard there were several cupboard doors which mysteriously no longer fitting into their frames.  Our plan was to have her fully ready to depart the following Sunday, with the aim of being in Mystic Connecticut, one week later for their classic boat festival. We had been invited to participate in the parade on a 100 year old fishing boat from St Ives Cornwall.

Luna Azul being prepared for launch

On Friday, two days before we were due to depart for Mystic, Luna Azul took a direct lightning strike to her masthead VHF antenna.  Thankfully nobody was hurt; however we'll now be staying in Oxford a while longer to process the insurance claim and make repairs to the long list of damaged electronic equipment.  All in all, we won’t find it too difficult to stay in Oxford as we really love the town, its watering holes, and most of all the ability to get regular showers at the local boatyard.

We are still planning to be at the Southbound Cruisers Reunion event in Baltimore, MD for 9-11 October to catch up with friends and listen to the presentations.  Trudy then flies to the UK for three weeks to help her sister with her first baby, which is due on Trudy’s birthday in August.  When she returns we plan to start moving south to stay with the warmer weather.  We are still unsure of our destination this winter - we both loved the Bahamas, but have growing curiosity how the rest of the Caribbean compares.

We are trying to keep the website up to date for those interested in our current location.   It can be found at www.bondcar.com.

We hope this reaches you all well, and wish you all the best. 

Lot of love, happiness, understanding, giggles and smiles

Graham, Trudy, Shadow and Sylvester