We decided to spend a week at our homeport, catching up with friends, family, and paperwork. We went to our niece's college graduation party - Congratulations Michelle! We also visited my father for Father's Day. We spent a day at work and another day with our friends, Penny and Phil, Rich, Sherry, and Kelsey.

Our space is precious on the boat, so we put a lot of stuff into storage that we realize we do not need.

We met a nice couple who just opened a café, Marco and Pepe's, in Jersey City. As we were leaving, the woman asked me if we just got off a boat. When I replied that we had, we got to talking. It turned out that the man had sailed in Maine and spent a long time with us sharing his insights on where to go. Hopefully we'll actually make it to Maine to take advantage of his advice.

We also had a diver come clean the bottom of our boat. It turns out that we had a line wrapped around our propeller shaft. Hmmm.

For those of you who are keeping track, the restaurant at Liberty Landing, which was supposed to open July 4, 2000, is still not done. We were also at Liberty Landing for the Poker Run, where a bunch of really loud boats go to other ports really fast. Just a few of the boats are shown below.

The offshore boats force us to move off "D" dock to another dock. The only sail boat that remains on the dock is Richie's Hunter 410. Here he watches carefully as the speed boats roar out of the marina.

It takes us more than twenty-four hours to get electricity again, but that's the way it is at Liberty Landing.

After spending a busy week at our homeport, we are heading to Lockwood Boat Works to have our so-called "dripless" stuffing box serviced. The dripless feature of the stuffing box does not seem to work. John spoke to a mechanic at Lockwood's on Friday. The mechanic assured us that while they have never seen one of these stuffing boxes drip, he can put on the spare seal in an hour, but we have to bring the boat to them. So we are back-tracking south into the Raritan Bay before we head North.

The Stuffing Box

Lockwood's is hard to get to. They are in Morgan Creek behind a busy railroad bridge and a highway bridge. The highway bridge only opens on the hour. When I call the bridge tender and inquire when the next scheduled opening is, I'm told to "shut up and wait, lady" by some concerned citizen monitoring channel 13. We are half an hour off the opening and we circle around the approach with the depth sounder alarm going off for thirty minutes. Not a good start.

We plow our way into the yard and tie up by the lift. The mechanic who installed the stuffing box, comes out, removes the old seal and slides on the spare seal that rides on the shaft. Now the dripless seal is not only dripping it is spraying water. They are going to pull the boat tomorrow and we are going to experience living on the boat while it's "on the hard."

As you can tell from the heading, we spent a very long "hour" at Lockwood Boat Works. The root cause of the dripping problem was that the motor mounts were installed backwards when we took delivery of our boat. We also had some insurance work done while the boat was hauled. When we snared a crab pot in the Chesapeake, we did some damage to the prop and possibly the shaft. Also, we had hit a rock in Betterton Maryland and it turned out that it bent the fin on our keel. None of this is a big deal, but as one other sailor said, "One boat bucks equals 500 regular dollars." The net result is that John has to coordinate among

• the boat manufacturer, Hunter,
• our dealer, Sandy Hook Yacht Sales,
• Mack Boring, the local guys who certified the initial engine installation,
• Boat US, the insurance company, via an adjuster and claims representative,
• Lockwood Marina and their many office workers, yard workers and mechanics.

Lockwood has the best reputation in our area, which is good. The bad part is that they are therefore expensive (more than 5 Boat Bucks) and busy.

Living on the boat while it was on jack stands was horrible. We had electricity, but no water. So the head didn't work, the air conditioning didn't work, and we couldn't wash dishes.

There were some upsides though. We got to see my brother and his kids. We went to Rhode Island and visited Art, Marie, and the beloved grandchildren.

On the way back from Rhode Island, we spent a few days being tourists in Mystic Seaport.

We also visited the Mystic Aquarium and saw a white Beluga whale and two fighting sea lions.

We got to know people in the marina and we investigated places that we might keep the boat when our year is over. We met some really nice people, Angel and Wayne, in the Broadway Central Café in South Amboy. We made some improvements to the boat, including fender boards, a board for tying water and diesel jugs on the deck, a shelf for one of our closets, and a screen for our companionway. We also went into Manhattan for the Fourth of July fireworks, which were spectacular.

This time seemed interminable to us and we just waited every day to see only the tiniest progress. However, on July 6^th we finally resume our trip.