That sinking feeling…

So, you know how I’ve been going on and on about long-distance marriage, and how hard it is to be apart, and how we are both so done with all this immigration waiting nonsense and are ready to just.live.together and yada yada yada? Well turns out I have another thing to add to the list of “things that should not be long distance”. This time, it’s boating.

Thank God for friends, honestly. These amazing people, Jeff and Harmony of s/v Serenity have been keeping an eye out on Brio for us, and sending us little updates as things happen. It started with an email letting us know that our carefully-tied tarps had completely shredded (about 2 weeks after we left!). If you only knew how long we spent agonizing over where to tie those suckers, what to cover, how tight to tie it down, etc etc, you’d probably laugh at the irony of them being shredded messes. BUT, being the awesome people that they are, Jeff and Harmony actually bought us new tarps and re-tarped our boat for us. I mean, really, who does this kind of thing??! So nice!

Which brings us to today’s update. Brio is sinking. Okayyyy, that’s an exaggeration, but it makes for a pretty good conversation starter. Really she’s leaking like a bit of a sieve, and Jeff got the distinct pleasure of opening up our bilges (kind of like looking in your neighbour’s closet — never know what you’ll find) to see what the deal was. Water on the floor, water coming out the manual bilge pump, water falling from the sky… water, water, everywhere, and lots of drops to drink!

The less-fun story is that we pretty much know the source of these problems: our lazarettes. All Nor’West 33 owners hate these leaky suckers, and it’s on our list of projects to do. It’s been raining really hard in Chiapas (so we hear!) and the lazarettes have been slowly accumulating water, which runs into the kitchen (“galley” for you boater types), which runs on the floor (“cabin sole”), which eventually fills the bilges. God boats are a pain in the butt.

Anyways, long story short we’re up here, the boat’s down there, it’s still raining, and the lazarettes are still leaking… but we have wonderful friends keeping an eye on things, the great staff at Marina Chiapas are periodically pumping our manual bilge pump for us, and soon enough we’ll all be reunited in Chiapas. Long-distance life be damned!

PS – This is like an overly-doting-proud-grandmother note, but if you check out Serenity’s blog you can not only read their hilarious blog post, but you can also SEE BRIO in the background! We’re the blue boat tied up on the other side of their dock finger. I saw our pretty little boat and my heart stopped for a minute. Remind me why we’re up here again?? That boat is our home, in the deepest meaning of the word, and I miss her so very much. I know life is teaching me the quality of patience (or attempting to!) but really, I’m over it. Let’s get this show on the road again, shall we??


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