A long summer

Well, it's been a while now since the last update on Anne Marie, this is because I haven't managed to get over to Canada again since my season started on Shoo Shoo, and also having had another addition to the family, baby Nancy! Mother and baby are getting along just great, although with Florence in her terrible twos sleep is hard to come by. So all in all, the Anne Marie project has come along at a nice quiet spell in our lives! Good job I have an understanding wife....;) Anyway, Anne Marie has not had to be on her own, as my old friend and sailing companion Oz went out a couple of months ago to start on preparations for the trip. I met Oz first in La Ciotat where he was working on the old Nicholson cutter Marigold, which he had sailed on for many years. A small wiry fellow, he would wander around the shipyard with his eyes always on the floor. It would have been easy to have thought he had some problem with his back, curvature of the spine or something, until under closer observation you would watch him straighten up, like a heron, before darting to the ground and picking up a stainless m6 nut, or washer, or some such scrap. He filled up buckets worth over the year or more I was putting Voluta back together in the yard there, and by the end had 300 bucks for his labour...worth the mockery.....? Just....! Oz was a great help on the Voluta project back then, helping to bolt up the iron floors amongst many other things, and when my time in the yard had come to an end, it was he who grabbed the tiller and volunteered to take her up through the canals on her way back home. A few months later when I had a bit more time off work, I got over to Honfleur and met up with him and Voluta again. I seem to remember it was very early in the morning, and I had been travelling hard to get there, and as I quietly jumped into the cockpit and announced my arrival with a cheery 'morning Oz!' and bang on the hatch, All the welcome he could muster was 'arrrgh get lost long 'un...', but he still stuck his head out of the hatch and gave me one of his big toothy grins. We proceeded then to turn the boat around from something all the locals thought was going nowhere apart from maybe the river bed, into a rigged up gaff cutter in a couple of days, and sailed off down channel, getting our asses kicked off the point Barfleur, where the mast did its best to escape the boat, and once again proving Volutas great speed when she has a bone in her teeth. After a stop in Cherbourg for repairs and rehydration, and a skip over to autumnal Salcombe, before the last leg home to falmouth completed Volutas long delivery home, which had started in Rhodes 3 or 4 years before. Anyway, I digress. The point being that Oz had obviously not had his fill yet of sailing around with me on old classics, ('mwah hahh hahh she's a classic don't you know old boy' - standard Oz reply to the oft asked question 'nice boat, what is she?'), and got a ticket out of his South of France retirement boatyard, brushed himself off, bought a new pair of tracky bottoms and jumped on a plane to Vancouver. Good man! The latest is that the canvas I had laid in the winter had not taken well due to the wet conditions at the time, so Oz has lifted the forward part and prepped it a lot better than I had had time to do, and is preparing to stick some more down. He has removed most of the fittings, so as to make fewer holes in the canvas, sanded the deck and repayed a lot of the worst seams, which were really hanging, and will soon be laying the canvas that should see her home to the uk. He has also fixed the water tank, which had a hole in the bottom. This old tank, which I suspect to be original, had previously put me into one hell of a panic, as I had filled it up shortly before leaving for the airport to come back home the last time. With only a couple of hours before I had to leave, I was shocked to see the bilge full of water, immediately worrying that a leak had been sprung, or some fitting had failed, and although I finally came to the conclusion that the tank must be the culprit, and water was not coming in from the outside, it was a pretty nervous couple of hours. So Oz found the leak, just a patch where the tank had rusted through due to sheer age, patched it with new steel, and filled the bottom with cement for good measure. There has also been plenty going on with Shipwight Eric, who is putting a useable bunch of spars together for Anne Marie down at Britannia shipyard. I believe he has now finished the new bowsprit, and is also making a mizzen mast, boom, gaff and bumkin, so Anne Marie can once again sport her yawl rig. More on this in a later update.... As a final note, due to some withdrawals, I am once again looking for crew, so if anyone out there reading this fancies a cruise through the Pacific towards Cuba on a classic yacht (don't you know old boy)....get in touch.