THE JOURNEY BEGINS

February 25, 2002

    Today the journey begins. Actually is started last weekend when all of our friends at Sunrise Cove Marina threw us a going away party. As best I can remember everyone had a great time.  Then I started to pack Vilkas for her overland trip to the sea.  Removed the boom, retrieved all of "stuff" that we had in storage and attempted to find a place to store it all on Vilkas.  This morning I motored Vilkas 4 nm down the lake to Aqualand Marina were at 1300 we had the lift reserved to remove the mast and then lift Vilkas out of the lake.  Lake Lanier is down 9 ft from full pool so Vilkas had a long ride up. By 2 pm Vilkas had had her bottom scrubbed and was resting nicely on the stands.  Roger, a very close friend of mine, and I then inspected the bottom discovering many blisters scattered over the entire wetted surface.  The warm lake waters are notorious for causing this problem but this was a bit more than I had anticipated. Since time was short, 7 days until the truck would pick her up, we decided that we would open all of the blisters so they could dry out on the ride south.