With Dorian behind us we got serious about getting Pachina Mia, and ourselves, ready for another winter. One of the more pleasant tasks is getting up the mast to remove our lazy jacks and our wind instrument. It was my turn, so I strapped into our ascender, and climbed the nearly 50 feet of our mast.
The folks at Lewisporte had already made us feel very much at home, but it is different than Corner Brook. Lewisporte Marina is big — much bigger than Bay of Islands Yacht Club. It claims to be the largest marina in Atlantic Canada. So while it is wonderfully set up for folks like us, it doesn’t have the same intimacy as our little home in Corner Brook.
Luckily though, we’re gone (from Corner Brook), but apparently not forgotten. Our good sailing friends Paula & Byron drove all the way across Newfoundland just to see us 🙂 . We spent a wonderful day and evening with them. We swapped stories about our respective summer journeys; theirs down south to the Chesapeake, and ours around the northern tip of Newfoundland. The contrasts were stark.
We had a wonderful breakfast with P&B the next morning, then said goodbye and got back to the job of taking apart our floating home. One significant task was to retrieve our winter cover which we’d dropped off with Carl Drover, a master sewer who lives near Corner Brook. But this was perfect because Byron & Paula had invited us for dinner at their place. So we got to ignore work for another few days 😉 .
We spent another evening with them, and with some of our other wonderful friends from Bay of Islands Yacht Club: Gord & Leonna, John & Doris, Don and Lisa, and of course Dukie — Paula’s baby, er, I mean dog.
The next morning we headed back to Lewisporte, with winter cover (mostly) restitched. We had to get the boat ready for haul out. Unfortunately the day we had booked turned out to be way too windy and stormy, so with the enthusiastic agreement of the yard’s manager, we postponed to the following day.
The haul out went beautifully. Lewisporte Marina has a travel lift, and professional staff that made the job easier than we’ve ever had. It was weird to be so useless. We hardly had to do anything. And best of all, Pachina Mia was placed in a secure location, and seems to be positioned better than she’s been in many years.
The following days were a whirlwind of winterizing activities; building the cover frame, then getting the canvas up, and tying it all down. Changing the oil (which we did in the water), draining the bilge, decommissioning the head, general cleaning and sorting stuff for the coming six months. On the final full day we turned off the fridge and winterized the water system. Luckily, Lewisporte has a beautiful clubhouse that the members are encouraged to use … so we did.
Unfortunately, we discovered the door zippers on our newly re-stitched winter cover had been missed. So Ann spent six hours hand-stitching the zippers. The weather through this process was cold and rainy. Ann became hypothermic, but she did it, and the boat got all safely tucked away.
We packed our little car, said our final goodbyes to Pachina Mia guarded by our little treasures 
, and headed off to the ferry. We’d booked the overnight sailing, so arrived early evening and boarded around 9:30 pm 
. We settled into our upscale seats, and snoozed while heading back to Canada.
We landed the next morning and headed to Ottawa, with one overnight stop in Edmundston 
. We arrived “home” and promptly ended up at the pub.
