The better part of February was spent in Baltimore with the one engine out of commission and hunkering down through the cold weather. I managed to get out to two different pole studios in the area and a couple more times to yoga. It feels so amazing to finally get back on a pole with some regularity!
As the winter was wearing on and David was doing more research about our engines, it’s starting to seem like we need to do something more drastic — a repower, a complete changeout of the engines for new ones. We can keep these engines limping along, but they’re really not made for the type of usage that we put them through — very high load, for hours on end, and 500+ hours a year. They’re not rated for it, and it shows. So we’ve been looking into what engines to replace them with, but the expense is going to be very high, so we started thinking about the idea of just trying to find a different boat. So, we decided to impromptu head to Miami for the Miami Boat Show, and bought plane and show tickets just a couple days before the show.
A large benefit of this trip was to get us back to some warm weather! Russ and Jax met us there and we had a lovely couple of days touring all the new models of power catamarans. Unfortunately we didn’t see anything that would really work for our unique situation – 2 live-aboard remote workers who are on zoom calls 8hrs a day. One of the amazing things about the layout of Highwind (which is pretty unique) is that there is enough room for us both to have full office desk setups in different rooms. On Sunday we visited with Don, our friend from Seattle and Meydenbauer Yacht Clubs who invited us to hang out at his pool for the afternoon.
In the last few days of February we finally had some great news from the machine shop – they had been able to complete the rebuilt of the head unit using most of the parts from the unit that we had shipped from England. We rented a uhaul truck and a task-rabbiter to assist with bringing it inside the boat and down onto the engine (David was still recovering from his surgery, so we wanted him to be careful with his abs). The task-rabbiter also assisted us with moving some of the heavier pieces of the engine downstairs.
Before David could actually start any of the reassembly, however, we were headed to Big Sky for another ski trip. This time it was a reunion of our friends from David’s days at Skype. We had a fantastic time, as usual, hanging out, skiing (and also working a bunch). We celebrated David’s birthday with some candles in his favourite ice-cream flavours.
We returned to Baltimore for 2 days before we were then headed out to a Prague & Seattle trip for David’s work. In those 2 days, David was able to put together a large portion of the engine, but the work was not quite done. However, we had a plane to catch, so in early March we were headed away from Baltimore once more.