Our jaunt on the ICW ended a few miles up the Brunswick River at the Brunswick Landing Marina. Our boat will stay here, in a slip in the marina, for all of hurricane season while Mike and I will also do some land travel.

Brunswick is a large, lovely marina with a strong sense of community. Our dock fees here include laundry, the use of shared bikes and gas grills, and access to the club house with its frequent cruiser happy hours. It’s just a short walk to historic downtown Brunswick with some good restaurants, lovely shaded parks, a farmers market, and even a rum distillery.

Ok, enough fun – we still need to prepare for hurricane season and the possibility of severe summer storms. We’ve got an open-close checklist that we’ve used for years, but with a new boat and new systems, we have to review it and modify it. Also, we’re staying in the water this summer instead of hauling out, so we need to prepare a bit differently for that too. Basically, our priorities are to fix as many leaks as possible before we leave the boat unattended, and to reduce the windage and add lots of dock lines so that when heavy storms do occur, there’s little to no damage. Fingers crossed!

Most of our portlights are leaking in heavy rain, so we are gradually removing one at a time, cleaning and scraping off all the old caulk and silicone, and rebedding each one cleanly. We’re getting better at it, but each one still takes about 6 hours from start to finish. It’s a lot of work, AND mess. And it leaves a hole in the boat for hours at a time – not good in spring rain storms! It will be worth it when we can be confident that the rain stays on the outside and we don’t have to worry about water damage to the wood or anything else on the interior.

We took down our jib and staysail, covered all hatches and portlights, flushed the engine and outboard, did oil changes, defrosted the fridge, wiped the entire interior with white vinegar to discourage mold, and fixed a link to the cockpit shower. There’s always plenty of tasks that require Mike to squeeze into a small space!