June 6th

Hello everyone.

Good News!  We have everything finalized with the ship that hit us on Friday, April 13^th.  Don and I like to refer to it as our “Good Luck” day.  We are in such high spirits. We are ecstatic the way things worked out.  We thought things were taking too long, but it has only been 7 ½ weeks.  It seemed like an eternity, but as we look back, it has gone very quickly.

One thing that I haven’t shared about the night of the incident is that Don went flying off the starboard side of the boat, as I was screaming he grabbed for something, anything that might still be left on our boat.  He was able to grab one lone stanchion bar and wrenched himself back up the side of the boat.  We believe that is when he cut his foot.  I do think that I was even more frightened than actually seeing that ship coming right at us. The thought of not being able to find Don in the dark, deep ocean was agonizing to me.  As soon as he got back to the cockpit we hugged and thanked God.  

Yesterday we pulled the dinghy out of the water to clean the barnacles off of Plane to Sea II. Disgusting to say the very least, I even got a little nauseated at the sight of the way it looked. We had the bottom painted with paint that sloughs off the sludge and it did work pretty well, but the sides were caked with gunk.  Hey, just one more adventure in the Furness’s log, which seems to be never ending these days.  We are eager to add it among the list; it won’t be lonely next to all the other quests.  For the ones that know us very well, the saying “the bad news is Don Furness is along and the good news is that Don Furness is along” is so very true.  All kidding aside, I’m so thankful to be with Don Furness.

Another challenge for me has been tying up here at the marina.  We are used to anchoring and being tied on all four sides has been very different for us to get used to.  It goes to the right then to the left, front then back, all in this jerking motion each time we get waves.  I’m surprised that I haven’t been sea sick.  We enjoy the freedom of going to one side at a time and the boat moving slowly around, this back and forth is for the birds.  Don is glad that I feel that way, because as we travel we can’t afford to stay in every marina that we come across.  That would get very expensive, very quickly.

More next time!

Love, Janis