Wow, that was a big week. We are exhausted. ... and smitten! Monday was a paperwork day, but aboard Chinook. We went over the contract, item by item, to ensure that everything the contract stated would be delivered. There were a few things missing or incomplete (mixups in ordering, vendor delivery timing issues) but they were noted with written assurances that they would be delivered, changed out or corrected. This all needed to be clearly stated before we transfer the lion's share of the purchase amount to Garcia. Signing and double-checking the contract Anything that wasn't in place, was incomplete or not working properly would be dealt with by the warranty team. There was no refuting that they had delivered A boat. We had no idea how she sailed and there was no way that a single day of inspection would allow anyone to check every bit of the more-than-5000-person-hours of labour that went into this sleek looking vessel. The "Grin and Grab" p
When we rocked up to the Garcia office for our Monday morning meeting, we couldn't help but notice that a mast-less Exploration 45 was parked outside the shed door where we had previously seen our hull parked. Could this be o-u-r boat? Nice boat. Could it be ours??? Marie, our project manager, confirmed that it was our boat! Although we had come to the yard to put the Boat Show goodies that we had acquired into Garcia-provided storage, we were meeting with Christophe, the after-sales guy to go over spare parts and after-delivery emergency equipment that we were putting on our order. We would not be getting a look ON BOARD this marvellous aluminium creature. We would just be admiring through the meeting room window. Our boat tour was tomorrow. The next day, we had mistakenly thought that the meeting was at 11 am, rather than the scheduled 10 am. at 10:15 we received a text message from a puzzled Marie. "Are you coming for the meeting? Don't you want to
We have a lot of people asking: Where will you go first? Where will you be in [insert month here]? Can I come to Bora Bora? So here is a very high-level, very preliminary plan for 2024. Please note this is subject to change due to weather, whim, Kate's visa (Sean has Irish- and thus EU citizenship), boat maintenance and any other multitude of reasons. But here goes... March 2024 Chinook is scheduled for delivery on 11 March 2024. We have a week of training and we plan to spend the remainder of the month based in Cherbourg, doing small sails around the area. If we feel adventurous and have the weather window, this may include The Channel Islands. April - June 2024 A circumnavigation of The UK and Ireland. At this stage we are not even sure which direction it will be. We want to spend a few months learning the systems and testing the boat while we are still relatively close to the factory. It also gets Kate out of the Schengen Zone for visa purposes! Mid-July 2024 Back to
What a sweet picture! I assume x-country or telemark.
ReplyDeleteNope - trail running!
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