Anna Marie, Daniel, his friend Jason, and I left NY on the 25th of June. We provisioned on the way from the airport after stopping by the hospital to visit Kabooms (the gentleman I hired to take care of the boat in our absence – you may recall reading about him in I Live in a Marina). Unfortunately, Kabooms had suffered a seizure a couple weeks before our arrival, which resulted in a bad fall and a blow to his head. He did not appear to be doing well at all when we saw him. His speech was almost incoherent, but our driver Peter Phillip was able to make out a request to come back the following day. I went by myself the next day, and he seemed to be doing a bit better. Fortunately, his brother had flown in from England to care for him and all his marina friends are visiting him on a regular basis. I am hopeful we will receive more favorable news with the next update.
We spent a couple days getting the boat ready for travel, and we finally got Kathryn’s painting hung as well as the lettering on the transom.
Kathryn had made a painting for me a number of months before she left us. When we purchased the boat, and the former owners (David and Marian) took down their painting from the forward salon wall, we knew exactly what was going to replace it. Months ago, Anna Marie had picked out a great frame and boarder for the painting and the location. The problem we had was getting it to St. Lucia safely. The airline told us it was too large to take on the plane, so we shipped it FedEx at a ridiculous cost, and when it arrived, the glass was cracked. It was packed so well that it must have been subjected to some real abuse for this to happen. I fought with FedEx to accept some blame for this, but not being familiar with international shipments and procedures, I lost the battle. I wasn’t supposed to remove it from the customs office until after I filed a claim and FedEx had the opportunity to look at the item and the package. Hindsight being 20/20, I’m sure we could have gotten away with taking it on the plane. It took another trip down to have the glass replaced at a local art gallery, and this trip to have enough hands to hang it properly. We are really happy with the ultimate outcome.
The whole transom lettering process took a good deal of time and effort. Initially, it took me a while to find someone I felt I could trust to remove the old name without damaging the hull finish. Once that was behind us, it was a matter of making numerous measurements and font selections to insure we were making the most of what usable area we had available, as well as complying with the US Coast Guard requirements for letter size.
We had a prototype printed on paper for my last trip down, and with the measurements I took using the prototype, we headed down this time with what we hoped would be the final version. The letters on the prototype for the home port were a tad shy of the four inch minimum height, and we had forgotten that they all had to be uppercase.
Anna Marie and I centered the lettering on the transom, taped it in place, and framed out it’s location with blue masking tape.
Dwayne and his helper then began the application process: they cleaned the transom with acetone, sprayed it and the adhesive side of the lettering with a soap solution, put the template in place, and began to squeegee out the solution.
Immediately following, we conducted the renaming ceremony. Anna Marie found the procedure on the web, and led the event. The following video is a portion of the 15 minute ceremony.


Great stuff. I was quite moved, wishing you nothing but safe seas and journeys.
It looks wonderful! Miss you! Be safe and enjoy!