We are on our way south.

Chuck drove us to Beaufort with a van full of provisions and Mom & Dad followed with a Magnum full of our stuff.  Chuck unloaded the van into dock carts and rolled them to the boat, Reinhart transferred the stuff from the carts to the boat, and I put the stuff up…the only problem was that it took Chuck and Reinhart less than an hour to get the stuff on the boat and it took me (and Reinhart) many hours over a couple of days to get everything put away in its proper place.  Mom and Dad stayed in Beaufort for a couple of nights, which was great for running us to West Marine and the grocery store for the last few items.  We had a lovely dinner out with them for our twelfth anniversary.  We left our dock early on the 31^st and came around to say our goodbyes at the Beaufort Inn before they checked out and headed home.  Now we are on our way south again.  We should be in Charleston by Thursday.  

 

We hope everyone has a wonderful New Years!

 

New name and new plans for 2007

Okay, so I deleted the entire Blog off the internet on December 9th! Blogger got it back for me, but not along with our original address, which appears to have blog-napped. So, here’s our old Blog at the new address. As you must already know, the new address is sailmaiatoeurope and that’s because it’s the new plan. Our current strategy is to leave the triad on December 28 for Beaufort and to leave Beaufort by New Years. We’ll head south along the coast and by the end of January we’ll be sailing from Florida to the Bahamas. We’ll spend February in the Bahamas and make our way to the Caribbean by March. We’ll spend March through mid-May in the Leeward Islands. By mid-May we hope to be on our way to Bermuda, our first leg for crossing the Atlantic. We’ll hang out in Bermuda for a couple of weeks and then we’ll be on our way to the Azores, leg two, by early June. We think we’ll spend several weeks in the Azores before we head to the Mediterranean, the third and final leg of our Atlantic Crossing. I expect we’ll arrive at Gibraltar, the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea, by August. From there on things get much less planned; we’d love to do everything we can while we are in the Med: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Turkey…but we may not have the time to do it all, we’ll see. We also hope that we’ll be able to spend the whole winter there, and spend some quality time with the Piuk Family before coming back to the US in the Spring; once again, we’ll see.

We’ll try to update the blog as much as possible and let everyone know where we are and what we are up to. As always, we hope to see friends along the way. But for now, We Hope Everyone Has a Very Merry Christmas and a New Year Filled with Joy and Adventure!

My work is done but the fun continues

My work is done and I’ve said my goodbyes. I’ll have to take back what I said about being enthusiastic about work (yes, Parks, I’m talking to you)…by Wednesday afternoon I was back to my old self, easily-distracted and surly. Of course, I’m not complaining, because I’m taking the rest of the year, and the next, off. It was so much fun seeing everyone here at work again, and it’s a little weird to think that I won’t be back for at least another year.

I’ve enjoyed spending time alone with Mom and Dad. Mom and I wore our jaws out talking every night and I got to go through all of the pictures Dad has collected over the years. Since we’ve always lived so close by, I haven’t spent the night at Mom and Dad’s house for 15 years; spending two weeks with them was a really neat opportunity. I’m over at Lori and Chuck’s now to return the car and wear my jaws out some more. On Sunday, I’ll be heading out to Austria to finally join Reinhart and visit with his folks. Oops, I better hurry up and practice my German.

Reinhart and I will get back in town on December 18 and I’m sure we’ll be updating you soon afterwards on what went on in Austria. I don’t know if you can tell, but we’ve moved the blog to a beta version of blogger. Theoretically, we should have some new options, so the blog may start to take on a different look. It would be great if we had more success in publishing pictures; we’d love to show you more of what we are seeing!

Our vacation from our vacation

Gosh, so much has happened I don’t even know where to begin…I guess from where we left off. We arrived in Beaufort and glided gracefully nicely into our slip; so we haven’t lost our touch with all of that anchoring. Lori and Chuck came all the way from Charlotte to Beaufort to lug us and all of our junk back to Charlotte. Thank goodness they came, because I don’t think we could have fit all of our stuff in any other vehicle than the van. We brought home lots of things we’ll need while we are home and we also brought home a bunch of stuff we decided we didn’t need on the boat anymore. They brought us to Charlotte and we spent a couple of days lying around with the dogs and watching the huge TV before the big Thanksgiving celebration. It was great spending Lori, Chuck, Cortney, Erin, and the whole crew at the Spencer house.

After Thanksgiving we came on home to the triad. We spent a night at the Whitings’ place, visiting with Christopher who is just getting cuter by the minute with his giggles and 2-tooth smiles…oh, John and Stef were there too. Stef fixed a fabulous dinner and we tortured them with endless pictures. Then we were off to Emily’s for a couple of nights where we hung out in the attic getting winter stuff ready for the visit to Austria. We ended up bringing even more stuff back to my parents’ house than the huge pile that we had already left there. We met the regular crowd for dinner to celebrate Nicol’s and Rosemarie’s birthdays; Robin and Jim made it to dinner as well, which was the best birthday surprise of all for Nicol.

Then I was off to work and Reinhart was off to Austria. He had a great flight and got to spend a couple of days with his family before heading off to ski. We’ve been emailing back and forth and it sounds like he and the guys are having a great time. Work has been a lot of fun for me. If you are ever wondering how long your vacation has to be for your job to become motivating again, it looks like 5 months off will do the trick. Of course it has been great to visit with everyone at work again and see what’s up, but I am actually enjoying the work I’m doing as well. Don’t worry about me getting second thoughts; it’s only a two week gig!

I had dinner at Giovanni’s one night with Lisa and the rest of the GSOC race team which was a lot of fun. I got to catch up with Nicol and Christy & Clay this weekend. Poor Clay, he got caught in the middle of our incessant girl talk. We thought we might have to take him by the hospital for an emergency testosterone shot, but he ended up being a real trooper. Next time we’ll make sure there’s a least one man around to fend off the fashion of-the-80s reminiscing; no man should have to sit through that! Sunday was John Christopher Scott Whiting’s christening. It was nice to be part of that very special occasion. Christopher was about as charming as he could be and I would swear he had two new teeth since last week. I hadn’t seen Hanna, Becca, and Harrison since we left in the summer and it was great to catch up with them and see what they were up to.

I’m just starting my last week of work…the one that comes right after my first week of work. There’s lots of shopping and researching to do before I head off to Austria, but at least I’ve got an epirb (emergency beacon) and some cruising guides on the way already. I may order a couple of sails before I head off as well. I’ll wait for Reinhart to help me decide which SSB receiver we’ll be buying and hope to have that ordered to come in before we head back down to the boat after Christmas. We’ve been procrastinating on so many of these things; I’m not sure it will all be ready to go for our trip.

Sailing Maia home for the holidays

First thing's first: Happy Birthday to Gregor Piuk!!!!

Reinhart and I analyzed the weather and decided since no good weather window was going to present itself; we would go with the best of the worst. So we left Friday morning to ride light variable winds to NC. Oops, we left on a Friday, which breaks one of the cardinal superstitions of seamanship; good thing we aren’t superstitious! We actually ended up starting on a beautiful slow sail and decided 4 knots wasn’t really so bad and we could just take an extra 8 hours to get to Beaufort with lovely weather like this; but of course once our speed dropped to below 3 knots, and our sails slacked after each 8 knot “gust”, we started up the motor. Our newfound speed was rewarded with a large and loyal pack of dolphins that played in our bow wave and escorted us for hours right until the sun set. Who knows, they might have stayed along with us into the night. In the morning, Reinhart continued his losing battle with the sport fish of the Atlantic; he got something on the hook and battled a very heavy fish, but in the end it broke his line and took his lure causing the rod to come back and smack him in the head leaving a gash. Score: Fish - 2, Reinhart - 0. We found ourselves in the warm turquoise waters of the gulf stream for a few hours on Saturday, and thought of the beautiful waters we’ll be visiting in another 2 months. Just after we finished a chic lunch with Chef Boyardee, Reinhart won a hard fought battle and pulled in a nice mackerel. He filleted it in the cockpit and we stored it in the fridge…now I have to figure out what to do with it! Originally, I looked at this last offshore run of 2006 the same way you look at any journey home (its never as much fun to make the long trip home as it is to make the long trip “there”); however, the 35 hours held a great deal of charm and finished off our east coast cruise delightfully.

Our boat broker, John Warrington of Beaufort Yacht Sales, helped us find an economical solution for storing the boat while we go home for the holidays, and we ended up bringing Maia back to the neighborhood marina where we fitted her out when we took delivery in April 2004. So, it turns out as Reinhart and I prepare to make our trips home, Maia also gets to visit home as well. We entered the marina well after dark and slipped into our space at N34 46.046 W76 40.313

Lori and Chuck very sweetly and generously volunteered to bring us along with all of our gear home for the holidays. They’ll drive up tomorrow afternoon (Sunday) so they can get in a little boat-shopping and Beaufort-visiting before we all head inland on Monday. We’ll go home with them and stay for Thanksgiving and then come up to the triad on Friday. I’ll be starting with Syngenta on Monday after Thanksgiving and Reinhart will be heading to Austria on Tuesday to do some visiting and skiing.

We’ll continue to update the blog during our vacation from our vacation, and we may even update the site a bit. We’ll post as we make the big purchases of safety and communication gear and as we make the big decisions about where we’ll be going in 2007; but our sailing trip won’t start up again until between Christmas and New Years. Stayed tuned!

Here’s an unusually short one

We’ll see if I can publish the blog as we sail past a good wireless signal. We had a nice return to Charleston and then a really rough weather night. We’ve decided to ride the tail end of the pressure system up to NC on Friday morning. We’ll tell you all about it when we get to Beaufort, NC.

The weekend in NC

This weekend was a good indication that our holidays home will be packed with fun and friends. Currently we are looking back to getting back to the boat just to get some rest! Nancy dropped us off in Charlotte on Friday evening and Cortney and Dave picked us up. We had pizza and hung out at the house, and a couple more folks dropped by to say hi. Kelly showed up with what had to be the cutest dog on the planet. On Saturday morning, Cortney and Dave showed up with bags full of groceries and made us every breakfast food you can think of. At noon, we hopped in Lori’s fabulous car, put the top down and made our way to Greensboro.

We got to Emily’s house and checked out the new landscaping in progress before she got home. We got to do some visiting before running off to a birthday party at Stephanie’s house. Both Pam and Stephanie’s birthdays were on Sunday, so a Saturday night bash was in order. The party was great and we got to see some old friends as well as meet some new folks. On Sunday we woke up to tackle our storage in Emily’s attic, but we kept on letting other things distract us rather than finding our winter clothes. We got a lot of research done that we needed to do, but we’ll definitely have to spend another day in the attic after Thanksgiving. We finished off Sunday with a nice dinner at my parent’s house. I dropped by Syngenta on Monday morning to iron out some details for some temporary work I’ll do for them from November 27 to December 8. It was great to see the folks at work again and I got to catch up with Lisa and Ruhi at lunch.

Reini and took care of some bank stuff and then headed back to Charlotte to stay with my sister so he could attend his early morning meeting on Tuesday. It took us 30 minutes to get from their house to the INS office during the heavy afternoon traffic, so he thought 45 minutes might do. When we ran that by Lori and Chuck they said he should allow over an hour to get there. Well, he left one hour and 15 minutes before his meeting and he ended up being quite late. He called several times while underway and Chuck talked him through some detours. I can’t imagine how much stress he was feeling with each back-up he encountered and I wish I could have cleared the roads for him with a magic wand. They weren’t concerned about his tardiness though and started taking care of his situation right away. The lady at the INS said he overestimated the efficiency of their system, but now it is all okay because his green card has been extended, and he has completed his biometrics appointment for his green card renewal. Now Lori and Chuck are running us over to meet Nancy near the highway and we’ll be back on Maia in Charleston before dark…yippee. We’ll let you know how things are going in Charleston before the week is done!

Charleston to NC by car

We woke up on Thursday and radioed goodbyes to our friends who were leaving the anchorage to go to Georgia. About 9 boats headed out within a couple of hours of each other. Those of us remaining sighed in relief since we now had a little more space and didn’t have to watch so closely to see if any of us were going to swing into anyone else. A boat near us that was having such a difficult time at anchor took this opportunity to move over a bit and reset his anchor. Boy, were we surprised when he pulled up his chain and found no anchor at the bottom of it! I guess he lost it during last weekend’s heavy blows when he pulled through the anchorage; but Reinhart thinks something a little fishier than that might have occurred. As we were watching him scratch his head in disbelief, we looked to the southwest and saw another flock of boats making their way in. Seven boats came in as quickly as possible and threw out anchors even closer than the boats which had just left. Many of them hopped into their dinghies and headed into town quickly, leaving us to watch nervously for the turn of the tide. Once the tide had turned and it was obvious we were safe we decided to take advantage of the gorgeous day and go for a bike ride. We rode over the new Highway 17 Bridge over the Cooper River, just because it was there, and then we headed out for the Charleston Battery to check out the historic mansions.

Claus and Barbara on “Jonathan” invited us over on Thursday evening. We had wine in the cockpit as the tide turned and watched the neighboring boats swing dangerously close. It gave us a little chance to laugh and visit with them before they weighed anchor and moved to a different spot within the anchorage. Barbara fixed a delicious dinner for us and we had a lovely evening.

I don’t know if it is possible, but Friday turned out to be even prettier than Thursday, with incredibly clear skies and a high in the 80s. Right around lunchtime we heard someone call our names and lo and behold it was Nancy and Paul on their Caliber “Aurora”. We got to do a little catching up with them and found out we had been stopping at all of the same places since we left Annapolis, but our paths didn’t cross until now. Too bad, since we were just a couple of hours from leaving the boat alone in its anchorage to drive with Nancy to NC. Claus dinghied us over to the marina and Nancy picked us up; currently, we are at Nancy’s to pick up her doggie, Jasper, and publish the blog, but we’ll be on our way soon. She’ll drop us off in Charlotte and Cortney will pick us up for a fun night with her. We hope everyone has a great weekend!

Autumn days in Charleston

We had a great time with Andreas and Nancy over the weekend. We had a relaxed Sunday morning and Nancy cooked a wonderful brunch for the four of us. Andreas headed home in the early afternoon and Nancy shuttled us around for a couple of errands and then dropped us off at the dinghy dock.

Monday was sunny and cool and it was a good day to do some boat projects we had been planning…we now have cockpit lights. We noticed a few new boats in the anchorage and decided it was getting a little overcrowded in here; but a very rainy Tuesday was in the forecast, so it was probably just folks settling in somewhere for the weather. It was the perfect rainy day for washing the boat and trying out some rain collection ideas. We were a little bashful to try out some of our more elaborate water collection ideas in the middle of a crowded anchorage; we’ll have to try those out during another downpour when we aren’t under the scrutiny of our neighbors. After the rain died down, some contrary winds set in and the entire anchorage started to waltz; boats sailed and drifted on their anchor lines and neighbors who were perfectly comfortable with their space found themselves right on top of each other. While sitting in our cockpit I could carry on a perfectly normal conversation with the man anchored behind us…everyone was either in their cockpits or up by their anchors on stand-by just in case a re-set was necessary. Some folks just picked up and left, including the man behind us. We heard one of the boats nearby on the radio calling one of their neighbors, and it ended up being Sally and Conrad aboard “It’s About Time”; we worked the same gate at the boat show with them, and we were thrilled to bump into them again.

Once the boats had settled down we all listened to the turmoil on the VHF radio as a 60 foot sport fisher, “Water Witch”, in the channel started taking on water rapidly. The captain remained calm and gave the Coast Guard all of the information they needed; he continually told them how much water the boat was taking on and asked for a TDA from the coast guard. Where we were all sitting in the anchorage, we could tell the coast guard hadn’t left the station yet. Oddly enough, a fast coast guard vessel came into the station and then they finally sent out a slow behemoth of a rescue, but the vessel in distress was almost under by then. When the coast guard lost radio contact with the vessel, it was the first time I ever heard a mayday called and it was disturbing. Other boats were rushing to the rescue to try to get him some pumps aboard, but we really don’t know how it all turned out. I hate to say it, but I think a lot of folks in this anchorage lost some faith with the coast guard when we saw what appeared to be a poor reaction to this disaster.

We joined Sally and Conrad along with some other friends on their boat on Tuesday evening for dinner and drinks and caught up on what everyone has been up to and what everyone’s winter plans are. When we left their boat, there was a new neighbor anchored very close to them. I actually wrote most of this entry right before sunrise on Wednesday morning because the waltz started up again about 5am and I just couldn’t sleep through it. I noticed Sally and Conrad’s new neighbor is no longer anywhere near them, but is quite close to someone else, and another boat is breathing down their necks. It doesn’t appear that we were too close to anyone this time, but with the way we all move around our anchors, you never know who you’ll snuggle up to in 15 minutes…maybe its more like a square dance than a waltz.

Today (Wednesday) we borrowed Nancy’s car to see a plantation with Claus and Barbara from “Jonathan”. We visited the Magnolia plantation on the Ashley River and the gardens were just breathtaking. I can only imagine how lovely it must be in the spring when everything is in bloom. We also have some new plans to catch a ride to the triad with Nancy on Friday, so we may very well see some folks at home this weekend. Obviously, we are indebted to Nancy! I’m a little nervous about leaving the boat at anchor for days after the hassle of the past 24 hours; however Claus and Barbara said they’d keep an eye on her while we are gone so we can breathe easy.

Old and new friends in Charleston

We had a fantastic warm Thursday in Charleston followed by a lovely evening drinking wine on the neighbor’s boat. Barbara and Claus aboard Jonathan came all the way over from Europe and they shared wonderful stories of their travels of the past several years. It was wonderful practice for me to listen to German again, but no amount of wine was going to get me to speak much. I’ll have to get past my phobia before I go back to Austria in December.

We met up with Nancy, who lives outside of Charleston, and Andreas, who is visiting, on a much chillier Friday evening. Reinhart dinghied them over to Maia and we all had gabby dinner catching up on what we’ve all been up to lately. We went over to Folly beach on Saturday afternoon and had a fantastic lunch at Taco Boy…if you like fish tacos, that is the place to go! Andreas tried to rescue a drunk who fell over with his motorcycle in the middle of the street, but the guy decided he was fine to drive, so we removed ourselves from the area as quickly as possible before he figured out how to restart his bike. Currently, we are over at Nancy’s place (with a fantastic wireless signal) doing our laundry and looking at Kevin’s videos online. We’ll go out to dinner at Hank’s in Charleston tonight and we’ll probably come back here to spend the night in a nice warm home.

Charleston, South Carolina

We sailed out the ferocious Cape Fear Inlet on a stormy Halloween…well, actually, Halloween was warm and sunny and the inlet was calm as a lake, but that’s not very Halloweeny, is it? We had an uneventful trip to Charleston and arrived on a gorgeous Wednesday morning. The Ashley river anchorage was pretty crowded, but we nuzzled ourselves in at N32 46.614 W79 57.252. We’ve tried a lot, but it doesn’t look like we are going to have a reliable wireless connection here, but maybe it will be enough to send and receive emails when the boat turns the right direction.

As the evening set in, the snowbirds were settling and the anchorage was getting more and more crowded. We recognized some of the sailboats we saw at anchorages in northern NC, but none of our boat show colleagues yet. We are right outside of the Charleston City Marina and could also see some of the larger power yachts who passed us each morning last week tying up to the mega-dock…not all of the snowbirds are on the same budget! The boats in this anchorage don’t lie into the wind; instead, the boats lie with the current. This means that the boat turns 180 degrees about every 6 hours. Once the current turned at 6pm on Wednesday we realized we were a little closer to our New Zealand neighbor than we had originally been when the current was flowing up the Ashley and by 8:30 we were uncomfortably close to him. So we pulled up our 100 feet of chain and found a roomier spot within the anchorage at N32 46.521 W79 57.095. We’ve got lots of turning room here, or I should say we had lots of room until 9am on Thursday when a German couple in an Amel anchored nearby. We took the dinghy over to his boat this afternoon to say hi, and we are going over for drinks this evening.

We are planning on having a couple of quiet days in this lovely historic town and we’re really looking forward to spending some time with Andreas and Nancy this weekend.

Happy Halloween: The Krewson Clan in Southport

When last we left you on Thursday, we had stopped over in Oriental for a fix…yes, we are internet junkies, and we need our e-mail. From Oriental we headed down the ICW and out the Beaufort Inlet. We were trying to take it slow, but the current was with us and we screamed down the waterway at 8 knots; so we needed to take it slow out on the ocean. The winds wanted to take us slower than necessary though, so we ended up motoring our way down in order to come in to the Masonboro Inlet at sunrise on Friday morning. It was another 4.5 hour motor down from the inlet to Southport, NC, where we pulled into the marina where my sister and brother-in-law keep their boat, the South Harbor Village Marina (N33 55.240 W78 03.643). We have no wireless once again, but we can hook up to cable TV at this dock! We decided to stay for Friday and Saturday nights with plans to move to the anchorage nearby on Sunday afternoon.

What a treat, the whole family was there. Kevin came and stayed with us, Mom & Dad stayed at the beach house, and Lori & Chuck made it down to their boat as well with 2 very excited and happy dogs in tow. I hope we didn’t overwhelm Kevin with a highly-condensed family weekend, when he was just looking for a little private time. He had a pretty overwhelming first night as well, with the winds gusting to 40 knots and keeping us at a hard lean on our dock all night long. Now, I am again really hoping we make it to California with the boat in 2007, so we can come visit him on his coast. He warned us that the Pacific has quite the reputation for rough water and said he’d rather visit us in a Caribbean port just in case we end up choosing not to cross over to the Pacific; so we’ll see him in Spring over on this side of the continent no matter what we decide for later in the year.

We thought we’d move over to an anchorage after Kevin left, but it was so nice to visit with family while in a Marina that we decided to stay for Sunday and Monday night as well to get a little more time in with Lori & Chuck and Mom & Dad.

We’ll be heading south to Charleston, SC at noon on Tuesday for a Wednesday morning arrival. We never got the biometrics appointment for Reinhart, so now he’s had get a special appointment for approval to leave the US in December. They made the appointment for November 14, so we’ll have the boat in a secure place by then where it will stay for 6 weeks. We’ll probably be going back and forth between the 15th and Thanksgiving to do some work on the boat. Hopefully, we’ll have wireless in Charleston and can update you then.

Back in NC…is it usually this cold in October?

First up: Happy Birthday to Kris Buttenberg!

No letter came, so we went. We left Annapolis on a windy Monday morning and planned to sail through the night and the next day to NC where we would start anchoring at night again. We spent all of that time in Annapolis and never really checked out the Chesapeake, which holds a lifetime of anchorages and coastal towns…maybe next year. The forecast had promised NW winds 20-25 knots with gusts up to 30 knots and we were excited about finally having good sailing weather (also known as a small craft warning) and we ended up having an excellent broad reach down the Chesapeake in consistent 25 knot winds with gusts up to near 40 knots. The only problem with this is it got us to the Hampton Roads/Norfolk metropolitan area a couple of hours earlier than expected, and since it is still dark at 5 am, I had a hard time picking out our markers with all of the lights on land. Luckily our brand spanking new GPS chart plotter made easy work of all of it. We hit the first of many south-of-Norfolk bridges at 7:15 am which meant it didn’t open until after rush hour at 8:30 am and this started our 5 hours of waiting on the Virginia ICW bridges. The first bridge tender also let us know that the Coast Guard didn’t allow sails up on the Virginia portion of the ICW, so it was motoring from then on. We were in a big pack of 11 power boats and 5 sailboats that waited at each bridge and entered the Great Lock together; I believe we were riding along with the “snow birds” who are making their way from the north to Florida now that hurricane season will soon be over. We found a lovely anchorage off the Broad Creek on the North River, just north of the Albemarle Sound. This creek is wide and deep (enough) and completely undeveloped…how nice! Our coordinates are N36 12.166 W75 57.715; if any of you have been google-ing our coordinates, these should bring you to a different type of anchorage than you’ve seen with us since we left NC. Of course with the seclusion comes no wireless internet access, but our phone has a great signal.

Have I mentioned how cold it is? Its amazing how 50 degrees while sailing can feel just like skiing at 30 degrees; and the 30 degrees while sailing overnight felt downright artic. I know we’ve told people we like our weather on the cold side, but this would be far more comfortable with our cockpit enclosed; which we are looking into. Now I understand why so many of the cruisers were getting eager to get south quickly. While we were in Annapolis we were researching our heating options, since it is not possible to run our air conditioning/heating at anchor for long. The first idea was to install a diesel heating system which would cost about $3000 - $4000…it would keep us cozy warm, but that’s pretty high just for heat. Then we thought about a diesel generator; it cost even more, but it could run anything on the boat at any time. Then we thought about buying just a portable gasoline generator (Honda 2000); its only $1000 and it could run just about anything. Then we came to our final answer; the solar panels can handle all of our energy needs except for heat and air, so we just bought a portable propane heater for less than one hundred at the hardware store. An added bonus: it looks like a freaky little fireplace. Reinhart has already burned some of the hair off his legs.

We left our unspoiled hideaway (and nicely warmed cabin) on a cold Wednesday morning to continue our trip south. I spoke with my brother, Kevin, during the trip and he said he we love to meet us in Southport, NC this coming weekend, so that is our new plan; we should be there before noon on Friday. We did decide to anchor one more night on the way down and pulled into a lovely spot just south of Belhaven, NC on Pungo Creek (N35 30.861 W76 38.609). The shoreline is dotted with lovely homes and none of them have wireless AND we don’t have a phone signal; too bad, we really wanted to call my parents, and Kevin, and Emily, and Kris, and Arne & Bev. We can always think of a multitude of folks to call when there’s no signal!

We weighed anchor earlier than necessary on Thursday morning; we are heading down the ICW and out the Beaufort inlet, but I don’t want to start entering the Masonboro inlet (near Wilmington, NC) until sunrise on Friday, so we’ll have to slow ourselves down a bit. To make the schedule better, we are stopping by Oriental to kill a little time, have lunch, eat some ice cream at The Bean, and publish this blog. Have a great weekend, and we’ll catch up with you in Southport.

We are outta here! (but where are we going?)

Most folks don’t know this, but we’ve been waiting on a letter from the government letting Reinhart know when his biometrics appointment with the INS in Charlotte will be. He had requested Oct 23-25 hoping that we could leave the boat at the dock here in Annapolis, rent a car, and drive to Charlotte for a couple of days, then come back and resume our trip. We haven’t received the letter yet, or more accurately, Emily hasn’t received it in Greensboro, and now we are trying to make up our minds what we are going to do over the next few weeks.

The best thing for us would be if that letter shows up by Saturday…but that is looking doubtful. If the letter hasn’t surfaced, we’ll just go ahead and start heading south in the next several days, depending on the weather. It turns out there is a large meeting called the Southbound Cruisers Rendezvous in New Bern, NC from Oct 25-29; it looks like it presents a wealth of info for us; we probably couldn’t get there by Wednesday, but maybe Thursday or Friday. It would be fun to hang out in our home waters for a few days. Of course, we’d been hoping to go to Charleston before we stopped for the holidays and maybe we should just head straight there and get a little more offshore experience under our belts…heck, maybe we should just leave the boat down there for the holidays. We could even stop at Southport on the way down and see if anyone in the family would like to meet up there. We are also looking for someone to install an enclosure for our cockpit (so we can stay warm and dry no matter where we are) and if we find someone to do it, that will dictate where we are for a week or so.

We aren’t getting any better at making decisions; can you imagine how indecisive we are going to be when it comes to making up our minds about which islands we are going to visit. A little info on that: every cruiser we meet says we shouldn’t bother too much with the Caribbean and should just go to the Bahamas because they think it’s cheaper, the water is nicer, and the snorkeling is better. But most of this crowd doesn’t like long overnight passages either, so it makes sense they would prefer the areas that don’t require days at sea. We’d been pretty much in agreement that we didn’t want to go to the Bahamas, but now that we’ve looked at the charts a little closer and seen how many islands and cays there are, it is starting to look more attractive. There are so many other pros and cons to doing one or the other, or both; we just have to make up our minds by New Years!

I believe this is our last post from Annapolis (unless the weather keeps us here a few more days than expected); so I guess you'll all find out where we decided to go the next time we post.

The Wind-Down

By the time the Annapolis Power Boat Show was in full swing, we were getting a little burned out on the whole experience. There is definitely a different feeling with the powerboat show; it’s far more aggressive and masculine, while the sailboat show is easier going and light hearted. The crowd was not nearly as international as the sailboat show’s was; however, it was far more diverse. The powerboat show was more boat driven, while the sailboat show seems equally driven by the boats and the boat “stuff”. We did hop on a few spectacular boats; the Aicon 64, the Ferretti 55, and the Azimut 55 represented the opulent luxury of Italian yachts, and we finally got to tour a NC made Hatteras yacht and were impressed with its quality and elegance. Nothing compared with the Nordhavn 64 for us, though; it isn’t a yacht, it is a ship. When we finally got onboard the Nordhavn, the only person available to show it to us was the captain, and he spoke with us as if we were captains who were also considering taking positions on an owner’s Nordhavn. We ended up getting one of the most technical and informative tours we’ve ever gotten in a boat show. I actually left the two of them in the engine room and headed back to work after a while.

Once the horns finally signaled the end of the show on Sunday night, everyone was ready for it to be over. Some vendors had been there for 2 weeks and were just as burned out as all of the staff was. We didn’t do too much work on Sunday night, but we were all there at 6:30 am on Monday morning turning the boat show back into the Annapolis waterfront. We broke down all of the tents and gathered up all of the signs and temporary buildings and took them to a central parking lot in front of the harbormaster’s office, where everything was organized, placed on pallets, and put on tractor trailers to take to “site X”, a holding area about 3 miles from the show grounds. I was really surprised how fast it went, and at 8pm they let most of the staff go for good. They only have a small crew finishing up Tuesday, which includes Reinhart but not me. They’ll be taking out the last of the floors and moving the 8 trailers which made up the boat show office complex. Both of us will be working Wednesday through Friday, though; making sure everything at “site X” is packed up properly and moving it from “site X” to its actual storage area 25 miles from Annapolis.

They are throwing a dinner for all of us on Thursday night and we are really looking forward to that. Some of the cruisers will be heading south before that though, so there will be a pre-party Tuesday night. It seems funny that folks with such casual existences as cruisers can’t wait another day or two for the party; however, lots of these folks are at anchor and these nights in the 30s are getting old. I expect the ICW will be crowded with sailboats headed for Florida in the next week! We still haven’t made up our minds when we are leaving; it is almost like leaving home again, since we have spent half of our time in Annapolis since leaving the triad. It will be sad, but it will be great to get back on the water again…then we’ll get to see how cold it actually is since we won’t be hooked up to shore power again. Everyone here has been trying to convince us to buy a generator before we leave though, and we might actually do that…but we are also interested in a satellite phone and a spinnaker, and at some point we have to make some tough choices.

We’ll let you know when we decide to leave and where we are going from here in a few days.

The Changeover

The Annapolis Boat Show changeover from sail to power was just incredible. I can’t believe we’ve been coming up here for over 10 years and we’ve missed this each time. From now on, when we come for the boat show, we’ll always stay Monday night.

There was a lot of excitement in the air Monday afternoon and once the cannon was fired to signify the end of the show, Marci, my boss lead me over to her favorite place to watch the festivities. I wanted to see if Reinhart made it back over to the Caliber Yachts float, so I ran up there to look for him. I just met him as he was coming back from his off-site work. Everyone remaining at Caliber was on-board the 47’, Bright Ayes, having wine and crackers and we joined them. In the background we could hear the huge crowd down at Pusser’s celebrating and cheering & jeering the boats that were already leaving. We were all the way at the top of Ego Alley, so we had a long time to wait while the water crew removed the maze of docks to free our section. As time neared for us to leave, we joined our captain, Mel, and another Caliber owner, Gus, on Mel’s brand new Caliber 40 LRC. I was getting quite nervous because I felt like we wouldn’t be very special and the crowd would just do nothing; especially after I noticed the Sunsail charter catamarans heading out before us were throwing T-shirts and other giveaways into the crowd. However, Mel wanted me to film the crowd and they just went absolutely nuts waving at the camera. Reinhart had them waving in unison with the bar’s music for a little bit, and they really cheered when he blew the air horn. Mel was just grinning from ear to ear at the wheel. We were looking up at all of them crowded on the docks, rooftops, and balconies and it felt like we were on a football field looking into the stands…it was a great feeling. Once we got to the marina behind the Spa Creek bridge, Mel opened a celebratory bottle of wine and we chatted about his new home in eastern NC before we headed back to see who was still hanging out at the show.

When we got into work on Tuesday morning, there were lots of hangovers. It was a relatively easy day though, and we just needed to adjust a few things as the powerboat vendors made their way in. We only worked about 7 hours and we actually got to come home and see Maia in the sunlight; I only got a couple of bruises and didn’t bleed once. We get to go in late, 8 am, on Wednesday, and hopefully we won’t have to work until dark either. Then on Thursday, the powerboat show starts and we’ll be back to 10-11 hour social work days.

Check out this website if you’d like to see an article about the Changeover in 2000: http://www.bayweekly.com/year00/issue8_40/lead8_40.html
It’s pretty accurate, except for the part about Pusser’s being a reluctant participant…now they have lots of beer specials and separate tent bars set up outside for Pain Killers, Red Bull drinks, Jagerbombs, etc. They also didn’t say anything about the other waterfront business, like Fleet Reserve and Fawcett’s who have people on their rooftops as well.

The Annapolis Sailboat Show and a visit from Emily and Nicol

Working the sailboat show has proved much easier than setting it up. We work about 10 or 11 hours a day just taking tickets and putting wristbands on folks and making sure none of the hoodlums at the Marriot’s Pusser’s Bar sneak into the show. Reinhart sometimes has to help out with saving some piece of equipment from drowning or putting in temporary flooring, because, as is typical in October, Annapolis floods every 12 hours. The combination of high winds and high tides makes foul weather boots a handy investment.

Emily and Nicol made it up here on a miserable Friday afternoon, the high was just shy of 60 degrees and it rained all day. It really is unfortunate they had such bad weather since the weather has been lovely since we’ve been here. We wore our foul weather gear to work and were surprised how many folks actually showed up. It takes a lot to scare off a sailor. The folks selling jackets and bibs did a great business though. When the show day was over and we all got back to the boat, we only wanted to put on our sweats and eat Emily’s pineapple dip! Simon and Christy Lewandowski caught up with us and came over after they finished dinner and we caught up on what we’ve all been doing the past several years. It was wonderful seeing them again and I do hope we bump into them more often…we can barely understand how we haven’t been bumping into them a couple times a year since we have such common interests and existences.

We woke up to a slightly less rainy Saturday and by the time the show opened, there was very little rain…we were glad we wore our foul weather gear again all day because of the general cool and moist atmosphere. I guess standing out in the rain for hours on end isn’t so good for you, and I started to realize I was coming down with a serious cold on Saturday afternoon. I had been so excited about attending a Sunsail party after hours on Saturday night, but there was no way I was doing anything after work but heading straight to bed. Too bad, as well, because Simon’s little sister, Magda, and her husband, Doug, and Greg Husemeier were all in town as well. Nicol and that crowd headed out to dinner for a mini-reunion. Emily also met up with some old friends and they went out to dinner and stayed out to the wee wee hours of the night catching local bands at different bars. Reinhart took me to dinner at Chez Reini and tucked me into bed early. Now that I’ve got some medicine in my system, I’m feeling much better.

Sunday was absolutely gorgeous and I wish Nicol and Emily could have stayed a little longer; it seems like we only saw them for a couple of hours. Hopefully, both of them will get back to visit us when we have more time and when I am better company. We bumped into Jerry Newton and his gal and he treated us to lunch. He was busy doing some serious shopping and planning at the show, so we decided to meet after the show was over so they could check out Maia. Reinhart and I ended up getting off a little later, so we really didn’t have very much time with them before they had to hoof it back to downtown to catch a shuttle bus back to the show parking lot. I expect we’ll see some more of them though, since sailing is obviously in Jerry’s future.

Tomorrow (Monday) is going to be a great day though. I had no idea that all of the sailboats leave and all of the powerboats come in on Monday after the show closes at 5 pm. It turns out it is a huge party, with folks lining the roof of Pusser’s to commend and criticize the captains and their exit strategies. Reinhart has been asked by the owner of the Caliber 40 in the show to help him move his boat out, so maybe he’ll be part of the entertainment tomorrow night, if our boss lets him off early enough.

The Annapolis Sailboat Show is Ready!

I swear we aren’t asking for sympathy, we are just having a darn good time doing very hard work. It's just like mountain bike riding; you are bruised and scraped, but exhilarated. Reinhart worked 36 hours and I worked 35 hours over three days (Monday-Wednesday). Monday and Tuesday were definitely the hardest, starting at dawn and working well into dark. Wednesday wasn’t so bad and we clocked out (with the 35 and 36 hours), and then we immediately got hired to unload a vendor’s van and trailer. Reinhart also backed the guy’s large trailer out of the show with such grace and accuracy as to attract the accolades of surrounding vendors. I think if we were willing to work 16 hours a day, we could just keep unloading trailers and toting boxes for overwrought vendors for $20 an hour. We are so happy we are at a dock and can enjoy extra long hot showers and air conditioning when we get in at night. We also really appreciate the meals over the past three days, since we never have the time to eat breakfast before we leave and don’t have the energy to make dinner once we get home; but that’s over now, and we are on our own for meals for the next 5 days.

Reinhart has fallen into a trio of boat show workers that have reputation for doing anything very quickly without complaint. He even got a six-pack of Corona today from a vendor as a tip. They are letting him do all the driving and he has gotten the same reputation he has in NC for driving "sporty"…but he can maneuver the golf carts around the boat show traffic with such speed that he doesn’t even hear the vendors cussing in his wake. I’ve got the reputation of being willing to run any message, package, or materials anywhere in the boat show; I think they see me as highly energetic, when the truth is my hands are so cut up from building tents on Monday and Tuesday that I was happy as a lark to stick to leg work on Wednesday. I was also given a compliment on my decorating abilities in a little corner of the boat show.

But now the furious work of building the show is almost over. We start at 7 am tomorrow for the last touches and then the show opens at 10 am. We’ll both be working at the same gate of the show (yacht basin, near the bridge), and I guess our jobs will be to make sure folks have tickets, people-traffic is flowing safely and efficiently, and vendors are happy.

A visit from the Parks sisters

Reinhart left for work right after 5am this morning (Monday), and I just got up so I can leave around 6:30, but there is always a little time for the blog. It’s a new thing for us to be setting alarms again. We actually did end up being called into work for a few hours on Sunday, but it was such a beautiful day that it didn’t bother us a bit to set up a few more tents in the Fawcett Boat Supplies parking lots. The Fawcett lot was the only place we were allowed to do anything this weekend, but starting Monday morning, the entire waterfront is available to us and the building of the show will go into overdrive so the show is ready to go on Thursday morning.

We were thrilled that Lisa and Amanda Parks could stop by on Sunday. It is just such a treat to see friends. We sat outside at McGarvey’s and soaked up the beautiful afternoon and Lisa treated us to drinks and crab dip (thanks Lisa!!!) Then Lisa turned the car over to Reinhart, and Lisa and I rode the bikes back to the boat so we could show Maia off. I’d include a picture of us on the boat, but Reinhart took the camera with him this morning…too bad, since he made the three of us gals pose for umpteen photos!

Back to work!

Saturday was our first day at work. The whole staff here was split into 3 groups, those new folks working Saturday with Sunday off, those new folks working Sunday with Saturday off, and those who have done this before not working this weekend. Everyone will be working on Monday and will work 17-19 days straight through from there, but Monday – Wednesday will be the longest and hardest days.

Reinhart was with the gang putting down the floors and had to be at work at 7 am on Saturday. I was erecting tents on those floors, so I didn’t have to start until 9 am. When we woke up on Saturday morning, we cut on the radio and the Beastie Boys “Girls” was the first thing that came on, which reminded us of good times with the race team at Silvercreek…a big howdy to the Greensboro Ski and Outing Club. This was pretty much a training day, so we could see how things worked and we ended up only working until about 4:30. Reinhart actually learned all he needed to know by lunch and after that they took him to another site to load trailers; the team leaders were even fighting over who gets him on Monday. I enjoyed erecting tents…it’s just like playing with an erector set from childhood. We officially have Sunday off, but we think they may call us (or maybe just me) to work a few hours anyway. I’ll have to start at 7am on Monday, but Reinhart has to start at 5:30 am!!! Lunch was included Saturday and it turns out we will have 3 meals provided on non-show days (when we are doing the hardest work). Funny, normally we’d do this kind of work just for the food; so the pay is a big benefit. It was a lot of fun, and I can’t imagine it will be nearly as hard as people have been preparing us for.

Tourism and Maintenance

We are having lovely weather, so we took a tourist day on Wednesday and biked the streets of historic Annapolis, looking at all of the old houses and the historic society markers. We took an outside table and enjoyed drinks and a fantastic crab dip at McGarvey’s on the waterfront. It’s still a week until the boat show, but the waterfront is already getting crowded with folks speaking every language you can imagine.

The exceptional weather also means its time to do some maintenance on the boat before we start working from dawn to dusk for the show. We’ve spent a lot of time sanding down our wood, taping off, and varnishing. The outside dining pieces created a challenge, finding a way to paint all sides and allow them to dry without any marks…now our little dock area is full of pieces hanging to dry (the picture was taken right after the second coat). We are hoping to get 4 coats of varnish (cetol) on, but we might just get in 3 coats before its time to start working for the boat show folks. We have our orientation meeting at 3pm on Friday and then (we’ve heard) it will be constant work from that moment on until the boat show opens on 10/5; then we’ll have “normal” working days during the shows. We are also going to try to store everything we’ve impulsively tossed into our aft cabin to make room for Emily and Nicol who are coming up during the sailboat show. We are really looking forward to having them on the boat. Lisa Parks also called and we might meet her for dinner this weekend as she drives through the area…but we’ll have to wait and see what our schedule is like. It’s always great to see friends though, so we hope it works out…and maybe we can convince her to come join us for a whole weekend sometime.

A social weekend in Annapolis

Our Happy Hour on Friday night lasted into the wee hours; it’s a fantastic crowd of liveaboards and land dwellers and everything in between. We got to meet the owner of one of our favorite boats, a Hallberg Rassy named Cracker Jack and we got to meet another one of the “Caliber couples” who is working for the boat show. Caliber isn’t a well known brand in the outside world; however, I am leaning, in the cruising community, we are like a cult. The owners of Aurora invited us to a Caliber rendezvous on Saturday south of Annapolis. So on Saturday morning we sailed down a wild Chesapeake in a small craft warning to the Harness Creek off of South River and anchored for the night right off the park where the picnic was held (N38 56.344 W76 30.663). There were 7 Calibers there for the fall rendezvous and many other people who drove to the party. It was a great time and we got lots of tips from folks who have been cruising for years. The advice isn’t always the same and equipment debates sparked up quickly. Later on that evening, 14 of us met on Paul & Joyce Wheelers’ boat, “Time”, for drinks and snacks and chatted the evening away (picture shown). It was nice to see the folks from “Eclipse” again since we parked ourselves on their boat during the rain showers at last year’s boat show. We met lots of great folks but we were particularly fond of Matthew and Gail Jenkins on “Alisios”, who we hope to see again. We actually checked their Caliber out pretty closely on Sunday morning when they invited us over for coffee.

We decided to get back to the dock on Sunday afternoon and had a nice fast downwind sail back to Annapolis (N38 57.979 W76 29.014). Our dock owner was there when we got in and we toured his Caliber and got more ideas and advice for cruising the Caribbean. So our first weekend in Annapolis found us surrounded by Caliber yachts and folks rich with southern cruising experience; if it keeps on going like this we are going to need a nap when we leave Maryland!

Happy Last Day of Summer

We met with the boat show folks yesterday, signed contracts and filled out our W2s, yikes! We met a few cruisers who work the show every year and we'll be meeting them for a cocktail party tonight a few docks down. We actaully bumped into them again last night when we were walking and it turns out one of the couples actually lives aboard here and has a car, so laundry and grocery shopping runs are scheduled on a weekly basis.

Today is the last day of summer, so we are glad we have a get-together to attend. The weather is going to beautiful today and tommorrow so we look forward to getting out on the town again, after spending yesterday feverishly cleaning the boat (with all of that available water on the dock). Oh, and we got our first "reservation"; Emily Wilson is coming up to join us the weekend of the sailboat show (Oct 7&8)!

New Hampshire to Massachusetts to Maryland…we’re here for a month, come see us!

Last things first: We had several folks saying they wanted to come up and join us for a weekend or a few days while we are up here, but no one has “reserved” a date yet. Well, we are here now, come on up! We’ll actually be working from September 29 to about October 20, but we have our evenings off. The US sailboat show is from Thursday 10/5 through Monday 10/9 and the US powerboat show is from Thursday 10/12 through Monday 10/16. The Annapolis waterfront is completely consumed during the boat shows, so if you aren’t interested in seeing the boats, you won’t want to come during those dates. I’m sure the changeover from sail to power on Tuesday & Wednesday 10/10 & 11 is an engineering feat.

When we last updated you I was typing away in the sleeping Pezza house on Sunday morning. Paul cooked us eggs for breakfast, Reinhart and I took steamy showers, and some of Cassie’s and Allie’s friends came over and we watched dirt-biking, 4-wheeling, go-carting and paint-balling…Paul has an excellent balance of being cool and safety conscious at the same time. Little Allie wants to be a performer and poses every time a camera is pointed at her. I’m not sure what Cassie wants to do, but she could hold a promising career as a rally driver. Allie showed me family photos, Cassie took me for a wild ride in the go cart, and Joanne and I talked about old times in L-building; she sends greetings to all the folks back in Greensboro. Then it was time to go. Once Joanne dropped us off at the marina in Salem, Reinhart and I quickly made the decision to take advantage of the couple of calm days ahead and get a start on Annapolis…swells would be moving in from Wednesday through Friday and it would be great to already complete our offshore passage before they managed to make it to the east coast. So we were off our mooring at 3:15 pm making our way for the Cape Cod Canal. We expected to be underway for over 3 straight days and arrive in Annapolis bright and early on Thursday morning. So our tour of the US Northeast comes to a sudden unexpected end, with no time spent checking out the sights and scares of Salem, MA.

We made the canal at 11:30 on Sunday night and even with the engine in idle we were making 4 knots on the favorable current. I was going to try to enter alone during my watch, leaving Reinhart asleep, but he woke up when I decreased speed and came up on deck. It was good to have another pair of eyes trying to pick out our markers; the entrance to the canal has a lot of buildings and lights to confuse things at night. I was as tense as I get. Once you are in the canal it is clear as it can be, and well lit, which is a bit weird when you are boating at night and used to your night vision doing all the work for you. Reinhart continued on with his 12-3 watch, and then I took over for 3-6. When he was back on watch from 6-9 and I was snoozing away, a strange sound woke me up at 8:30…could that be the reel. Yep, Reinhart caught another fish, this time it was a bonito and this time it made it on to the boat. I was dressed and up on deck just in time to hand him the net and he decided to remove the hook and the let the fella go…we just weren’t quite ready to start cleaning a fish. He’d throw another line out a little later when we were a little more rested and less discombobulated, but he wouldn’t get another bite on this trip. The next day was less pretty, more bumpy, and less fun…Mindy got grumpy. The 48 hour point is hard; we aren’t enjoying the novelty of the first day/first night anymore and we haven’t quite worked into our routine yet. The end of the day; however, brought the Delaware Bay which needs constant evaluation through the night (a great distraction for a cranky Mindy), and the morning brought the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal to the lovely Chesapeake Bay, where we got a wicked sail in for several hours and before we knew it, we arrived Annapolis 75 hours after leaving Salem, MA.

Now we’ve arrived in Annapolis and believe it or not we’ve splurged and taken a dock space for the month. It is behind a home in the Eastport section of Annapolis on Back Creek and the owner also has a Caliber 40LRC; it must be fate. The price was about the same as picking up a town mooring for the month, but here we have power and water available. I believe it is about 1 mile to the Annapolis waterfront, and we also get wireless inside the boat; we think it will be a lovely home for the next month. N38 57.979 W76 29.014

Maine to Massachusetts to New Hampshire?

Something peculiar happened while we were in a little shop in Northeast Harbor, Maine on Wednesday evening. I heard a man ask his wife while he was looking at post cards, "Honey, were we at Thunder Hole?" and she replied, "Yes, we did that yesterday" and then she said "oh, here's a picture of that footbridge we looked at yesterday as well". Then I realized, we spend a week in Somesville looking at her little footbridge from our quiet anchorage, and on this particular Wednesday, we spent the whole day riding our bikes on the side of the island where Thunder Hole is located. It made me realize how lucky we are, they had just a few days to see everything Acadia National Park had to offer and we had three weeks to see it in slow motion. We still saved some for the next time though, because we never got around to seeing the car museum or checking out Bass Harbor lighthouse, and although we did some hiking and biked around 100 miles while we were there, we certainly didn't hike and bike all there was.

But now we've left Maine and arrived in Massachusetts. Our original plan with the prevailing southwesterly winds was to leave on Wednesday at the latest and arrive in Salem on Friday morning; however, the large ocean swell predicted in the Gulf of Maine made us delay our plans further. Then the forecast completely changed giving us very desirable ESE winds of 10-15 knots for Thursday evening and Friday...with those winds we could make much better time, leaving on Thursday morning and arriving Friday afternoon. Of course, the forecast is not a guarantee and we ended up having rotten winds, either right on the nose or from directly behind and rarely anything to actually sail our course with; not that it was uncomfortable, because the winds were rarely over 7 knots. Nonetheless, this time I was the one affected by seasickness, or just plain queasiness, once we got out in the Gulf I felt pitiful for about 4 hours. A Dramamine fixed it right up though, and didn't even knock me out this time. It's a sailboat, so we can tack our course, but sailing in this light winds would have added another night to our route, so we fired up the iron genny and motor-sailed. The winds did freshen just as we came around Cape Ann, so we did get to sail towards the skyscrapers of Boston as we headed toward Salem Harbor. I just hope we get some nice sailing in when we make our big trip down to Annapolis next week, which should take 80-100 hours.

We arrived in Salem, MA on Friday afternoon. It's a huge harbor just packed with sailboats. We decided to pick up another mooring for 2 nights (2 x $35, we must stop this decadent behavior) at N42 31.148 W70 52.436. Salem is just packed full of fun witch inspired stuff to do, and we definitely get the idea we are here a month too early because it sounds like it's the place to be anytime close to Halloween...maybe we'll try it some year. Joanne Pezza along with her beautiful daughters Cassie and Allie came to visit us on the boat Saturday afternoon and then we went back to their place in Hudson, NH for dinner and to stay the night. We even stopped at Sam's on the way there and restocked some of our favorite provisions. It ended up being a blast at the Pezza resort; it's a real NH man's man place with a 4-wheeler, go cart, back-hoe, and fire pits on their wooded, hilly 2-acre property! The Pezza's have a lovely home and offered such wonderful hospitality; we just don't know how we'll ever pay them back. Joanne fixed us a wonderful dinner of crab legs and ribeyes (while our laundry spun around in the washer & dryer) and we had such a great time hanging out at the bonfire with Paul Pezza and several of their neighbors. This was our first night away from the boat in 8 weeks and it was a good time to be around such a fun group of people. I'm typing this on their computer bright and early on Sunday morning while the rest of the house sleeps (or wonders who is typing away on the computer).

We hope everyone is doing well and we hope to update you on the rest of our activities in Salem before we head south to Annapolis.

Northeast Harbor on Mt. Desert Island

Here's a couple of photos of Northeast Harbor off season. I understand during season its one of the busiest in Maine, and off season, well its still a lot busier than anything we see in NC. You can see us pulled up to the dock in one of the shots while we are filling up our water tanks and pumping out our holding tank.

Well, with the particular winds we were having, and with the little swell that was making it in, our anchorage in Southwest Harbor was just downright uncomfortable. So we decided to try out Northeast Harbor also on Mt. Desert Island. Northeast Harbor is considered the boating center of Mt. Desert Island and no anchoring is allowed here, only mooring. So we picked up a mooring at $25 a night at N44 17.787 W68 17.000. Its pretty convenient here because we are quite close to the docks, the bus stop, and the town…and we have some wireless every once in a while. We are so close to the docks, we could sit and watch the staff serving dinner to the guests on the megayacht at the end of the nearest dock…no, they did not invite us over for coffee.

There’s also something here we’ve never seen. You usually have docks attached to the land, and then mooring buoys out in the water; up here in the northeast it seems that every harbor is full of mooring buoys with little or no space to anchor. The mooring buoy is attached to a large chain, attached to a granite block “anchor” weighing around a ton. The new thing for us here in Northeast Harbor is a mooring dock…there are lots of docks out in the water which are about 10 feet wide by 50 feet long with a boat along either side, but the dock must be moored just like our mooring buoy is. I’m not sure if I would care for it, because one of the great things about mooring buoys is you don’t have to fuss with any lines. Maybe they have some of the amenities that a landbased dock has like power or water, but we can’t tell.

Oh, I would be remiss not to mention the harbormaster here. Our treatment by harbormasters so far on this journey has been from toleration to scorn, but the Northeastern Harbor Harbormaster was so friendly and went out of his way to be helpful that I wonder if he isn’t a closet southerner.

We are thinking of leaving Thursday afternoon and arriving somewhere in Massachusetts on Saturday morning, but we aren’t going to make any predictions anymore. We’ll let you know where we are when we get there (except of course, for Mom and Dad, we’ll call you and let you know exactly when we are leaving and what our course will be – safety first).

How quickly things change!

I just updated the blog and then sent an email to Joanne Pezza letting her know what day we'll there...THEN I checked the weather. Yesterday the weather was telling us we'd have a SE swell on Monday, but a bearable one (4-6 feet) on Tuesday. Now the weather has changed it to a 9-16 foot swell on Tuesday. Yep, we won't be leaving Maine until Flo's swell has dissipated a bit...maybe we'll get to Massachusettes by next weekend.

Our last days here in Acadia (edit: maybe not)

Here's a picture from the top of Parkman Mt. Maia is almost on the picture herself; she is anchored in Somes Sound just a little off Reinhart's side of the picture.

So, we’ve come once again to our anchorage in Southwest Harbor in front of the Claremont Inn (N44 16.779 W68 18.588). We sailed down on Friday evening after discovering we’d really like to have good internet and phone connection in the last few days before we leave Mt. Desert Island. We love being in communication, but we miss the short dinghy ride ashore and the extreme protection of the Somesville anchorage…no rocking or rolling or banging halyards or early lobstermen there. Its great being in a town again, though, with just a short bike ride to all the museums (and marine stores). We had a big thunderstorm last night with lots of multiple lighting strikes, booming thunder that shook the boat, and roaring winds. We watched a few boats making their way in the storm; they had probably dinghied to Southwest Harbor for dinner and had to get back home. We sat outside for about an hour of the storm but ended up going inside at 10 pm when the rain got too heavy.

We spoke to a bunch of friends at dinner Friday night when they were celebrating Emily Wilson’s birthday. It was great to speak to Emily, Christy, Lisa, and Nicol again. We missed a call from Nicol last night while she was at Rhonda and Jimmy’s party. We hated to miss the call, but we really miss being at the party! It’s too bad we can’t just Xerox ourselves and be everywhere we want to be at once.

We plan on heading to a car museum in Seal Cove today. It looks like it is a rather extensive private car collection. Reinhart is really looking forward to that. He says he doesn’t miss his cars at all, but I’ve noticed he spends a lot of time now looking at engine parts for the dinghy and trying to get it to perform at its maximum. Sometimes he drops me off at the boat and takes it for a quick spin just to see if he can get a little more speed out of it than last time.

We’ve absolutely decided we’ll be leaving here on Tuesday afternoon and arriving near Salem, Massachusetts sometime on Thursday morning. We’ll spend several days there before heading on down to Annapolis to see if we can find anywhere to anchor for the boat show. Someone we met up here told us his secret spot for anchoring at the boat show. He said it isn’t so much “anchoring” at the boat show as it is rafting across every square inch of water in Annapolis. I hope we don’t have to end up in his secret spot though, because it would make for a long bike ride to the port every day.

I’m not sure if we’ll get another blog entry in before we head down to Salem, so we hope y’all have a great week until we write again.

A picture of us from Bar Harbor

Here's a picture of the two of us in Bar Harbor. This is the good picture taken by a kindly passerby; the first picture was set up on a timer and was completely crooked...we set up a timer when we were on a mountaintop as well and almost lost the camera to a strong gust. I don't know why we bothered to buy a tripod before we left since we never seem to have it with us!

We’ve been in Acadia National Park for two weeks now, and are preparing to leave in just a few more days. We really could have spent another week or two here. There is so much to do and only so much time in the day, especially when we are biking everywhere we go. We have one more weekend left to bike ourselves to a few more museums and few more sights and then we are on our way to Salem, Massachusetts.

Happy Labor Day (for all you workers) from Acadia National Park

Back on Thursday we sailed to the tiny village of Somesville. It was actually the first village here on Mt. Desert Island. The Somes Sound, the only fjord in the eastern US, reaches far up into the island and finally ends here in this lovely spot. We are anchored with many other power and sailboats (N44 21.683 W68 19.658); but thankfully, no lobstermen find this cove suitable for their needs, so we’ve had a few quiet mornings.

We were exploring the harbor by dinghy and decided to try to cross a bar which is exposed at low tide to go and see a HUGE yacht, Floridian, which is anchored in the next cove over, along with a HUGE sailing yacht. Well, the rocky bar is not really crossable at high tide either and we broke the shear pin on the dinghy motor. It took Reinhart a long frustrating time to replace the pin after the years of rust which had formed. But he got it done and we have a fine motor again. When we rode our bikes down to Northeast Harbor the next day we found a reading room at the town docks, and we were surprised to find the Floridian on the cover of one of the magazines as the 47th largest yacht in the world (228 feet), owned by the owner of the Miami Dolphins. Someone arrived to the yacht by helicopter on Thursday and Friday and there has been a lot of activity aboard, so we assume they are on the yacht. Oh, and I thought I saw Madeline Albright on a private 90’ sailing yacht down in Southwest Harbor; but that’s another story.

I was surprised to find that not only are we once again without a wireless signal for the computer in this anchorage, but it is also a bad spot for the cell phone, and we don’t have a digital signal on the boat. If you call, please leave a message and we’ll get back to you during the day when we are on land. We’ve been using our bikes and the free island explorer buses to get around on the island, so we come in contact enough with wireless signals to keep in contact. Please keep the e-mails and comments coming…it’s a real treat for us to keep in contact with folks. It’s been inconvenient for Reinhart and I not to be able to check our e-mails, news, and weather since Thursday morning; you can imagine how rough it will get for us once we leave the US next year!

We’ve decided to stay up here on Mt. Desert Island through the second weekend in September and then make our way down to Annapolis over the following 2 weeks. Unfortunately Mom and Dad aren’t going to be able to make it up here in the next couple of weeks while we are in Maine, and Andreas’ schedule has him booked through late September at the earliest. So if anyone is thinking they need a getaway…we are here and ready for guests, just give us a call! We have lots of folks planning on visiting while we are in Annapolis though, so we are happy knowing we’ll be seeing friends in the next month or so.

We are having fun...here's what we do every day.

Acadia National Park is full of hiking trails, biking trails, and scenic ways. There are several campgrounds as well, but I don’t think we’ll spend the night on shore while we are here. While we are enjoying our time here, I’ll go ahead and let you know what our daily lives have been like on Maia (Caliber 40 LRC) for the past several weeks.

We wake up each day between 7:30 and 8:30 and dilly-dally our way through breakfast. Before breakfast, Reinhart compulsively checks to see how many amp hours we used overnight and looks to the sky in hopes of ample sunshine to satisfy our hungry solar panels. Every once in a while I make omelets or muffins, but usually its coffee, toast and jelly for Reinhart, and tea, toast and Nutella for me. No one needs to worry about me not getting my chocolate quota! After cleaning up we take our time and hop in the dinghy for a ride to the wharf from our anchorage. If the bikes aren’t on shore yet, Reinhart takes them out of the carry bags and assembles them on the boat, and then we take them on shore with the dinghy and keep then locked up there until we move on. I have a large colorful basket on the back of my bike for groceries, dinghy fuel, laundry, or all of that boat stuff we keep buying.

One day we’ll walk around the village we are anchored in and check out the galleries, markets, and book stores; another day we’ll ride the bikes to another town which may have a museum or a nice historic district. Another day we’ll take the dinghy exploring somewhere. We have weekly chores such as grocery shopping for fruits, vegetables and meats, doing laundry, and bringing our trash to shore. Of course we get ice cream at least once a week if not twice. Most of the time we have lunch on the boat or bring a couple of bars and fruit with us, but we have eaten lunch out a few times as well. We almost always head back to the boat to make dinner. I make scallops quite a bit, and Reinhart has been grilling a lot; we have wine almost every night we are in port. We’ve been eating like Kings!

If it was sunny and we have ample power, we usually heat our water a bit for washing the dishes and taking showers. Our initial plan was to find showers on land, but for the most part we’ve taken all of our showers on the boat. Reinhart only likes to shave when he is on solid ground though, so he’s grown a pretty nice beard. Our hair is getting long too, and blonde. I think our tans have been fading since we left Massachusetts, but I’m sure we’ll look quite a bit darker than our usual pale selves to all of our friends.

We usually aren’t quite ready to leave when we determine its time to move on to the next destination. We bring the bikes back to the boat and Reinhart disassembles them and stores them in the aft cabin while I stow all loose things in the cabin somewhere safe. So far, when we leave a port we’ve been at for a while, we go for a lovely day-sail for several hours and stay in a nice secluded anchorage overnight. The next morning we roll up the dinghy and store it in the boat for our long voyage of about 24 hours. This is where we get into very serious sailor mode with 3 hour watches, quick food, no alcohol, and use our pfd’s (life vests), tethers and jacklines.

I’ve been surprised with how little we are sailing; we enjoy our time in the ports most of all. I’ve been surprised with how little interest I have in being at a dock; it’s so easy to anchor or to pick up a mooring. We plan to dock when we see Mom and Dad; after that I don’t care if we dock until we get back to NC for the holidays. I am very surprised how long our water lasts us, even with taking almost all of our showers on board, and not being overly conservative, the water in our tanks lasts over two weeks! We are so pleased with how comfortable our life is and how we consider Maia our home.

We can post pictures...here are a few

Looky, looky, I can post pictures!!

This is Reinhart and I in front of a sheep farm outside of Kennebunkport. Isn't it precious!

Below is our anchorage on Jewell Island and a typical dinner on Maia.

We've made it to Acadia National Park! (edit)

I couldn’t believe it, we got to Jewell Island, an uninhabited island, at 5pm on Tuesday 8/22 and there must have been a dozen boats packed in that skinny little anchorage…don’t these people work!? It was a sweet spot though and we got in the back of the line at N43 41.444 W70 05.332 for a lovely view of the sunset. There’s lots of turnover in the Jewell Island Harbor (aka Cocktail Cove), some of the boats left right after sunset and the rest of them were out of there in the morning, but a whole new fleet arrived on Wednesday afternoon. Jewell is a very nice island/state park. The trails and campsites are beautifully maintained, and the coastal forest covers the entire island…so you come out of a wonderful wooded trail directly onto the beach. The abandoned military installation made for some really great views as well.

We left Jewell Island on Thursday morning for a 125 mile run east to the Mt. Desert Island area. Coming in was just gorgeous…a spectacular sunrise with the first rays of the sun hitting the big mountains of Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert. We planned to stay at Little Cranberry Island (N44 15.336 W68 14.735), but once we got there we just decided to pull the anchor right back up and go straight on to Mt. Desert Island to be close to those mountains. We are currently in famous Southwest Harbor anchored by the Hinckley fleet (N44 16.266 W68 18.225) in 50 feet of water! How much chain did we put out?...all of it. We plan to spend all of our time here on Mt. Desert Island through Labor Day weekend and then we’ll head somewhere to meet Mom and Dad. We’ll check things out here at SW harbor for a couple of days and then we’ll head to another harbor elsewhere on the island.

Well, we moved again after about 4 hours. We were getting jostled something awful in our spot in Southwest Harbor proper; both pleasure and commercial motor traffic was zooming past us on every side causing far more rocking & rolling than we’ve even experienced while offshore. I almost considered tethering myself to the boat when the lobstermen were coming home. The extremely helpful harbormaster suggested we move around the bend for a quieter ride N44 16.779 W68 18.588. This is a very nice cove with several moored boats which all seem to belong to the same yacht club...but since we were given the harbormaster’s permission to anchor here, I don’t think we’ll have to worry.

We'll be leaving Cape Porpoise for Jewell Island soon

We’ve had a wonderful time this week and now we are preparing to leave the village of Cape Porpoise for an island in the Casco Bay. We spent this week hanging out with the O’Connor family and friends. I hope we didn’t wear out our welcome during their vacation, but they were so much fun to spend time with. We actually got a chance to take a few people out for a sail (another slow sail) and we were really hoping to have another whale encounter, but no such luck. It was a treat for us to have folks on board with us and to go out for a pleasure cruise.

Karen and Kevin Tombs came down from NH on Saturday morning and spent the weekend with us. It’s been so long since we’ve seen them, but it was like no time had passed at all. We spent Saturday biking around the crowded Kennebunkport streets. It started raining overnight and we spent most of Sunday playing Yahtzee inside…Karen won, but we demand a rematch sometime. We also drove up to Saco, ME to check things out. We had a fantastic time and it was sad to watch them drive away.

Today (Monday) is pretty overcast and cool after yesterday’s rain, so it’s a perfect laundry and catch-up-the-blog-day. We are preparing to head north just a bit on Tuesday to an island called Jewell Island in the Casco Bay. If you look at the map, its one of the islands near Portland, Maine, just southeast of Cliff Island. We are sure we won’t have a wireless signal there, but we might have a cell signal. We will stay a day or two and then we will head up to Acadia National Park in the Mt. Desert region of Maine by the weekend.

We are in Maine

We’ve arrived in Cape Porpoise harbor after a nice slow sail north from Cape Cod. We left our mooring at Padanaram, MA on Saturday afternoon and following the advice of a local sailor (s/v Wanda from Marion, MA) picked up a free (!!) mooring on Saturday evening north of Bassett’s Island on the west side of the Cape Cod Canal (N41 40.992 W70 38.253). Local yacht clubs have mooring field’s set up at nice protected anchorages and we were told we should feel free to just pick up one of those. We spent a lovely evening watching fireworks while at our anchorage; we aren’t sure what the occasion was, but the fireworks were festive. We plan on getting local information like this as much as possible; these could not have been the only free moorings available in the northeast.

The Canal has very strong currents and one must pass with the correct current. We set our time for passage on Sunday morning at 9 am. We kept Maia’s boat speed at ~5 knots and we roared through the canal at about 9-10 knots… we would have just been pushed back out had we been going against the current. We entered into the huge Cape Cod Bay and made our way under light westerly winds to the open ocean.

And then came the real treat! Just outside of Cape Cod we sailed though an area with dozens of whales (and whale-watchers). We stayed with the whales for about an hour. At times they were surprisingly close to the boats and even made me quite nervous. There was one, possibly a male looking for a mate, which breached several times and continued slapping his fins on the water. It was very hard to get good pictures of these coy giants, sometimes they surface visibly and the next time they are just under the water, only once in a while do they show off those beautiful tail fins. Even after we departed the scene we still saw many whales on the horizon in every direction. I’m not sure if this is something the people of Cape Cod and Boston are used to; but for us, this was a once in a lifetime (or at least, first in a lifetime) experience….truly unforgettable.

We arrived in Cape Porpoise, ME at 9 am on Monday morning and threw out an anchor in this busy, mooring filled working harbor (N43 21.634 W70 25.830). It’s a beautiful spot, but we can’t get a good wireless signal (hence this late entry). We immediately met Paul O’Connor and went to visit with he and his extended family at his brother’s vacation home on Goose Rocks Beach…another place just packed with that northeast elegant charm we’ve fallen in love with. After we were here a couple of days we again decided we must stay for several days, so we’ll be here at least through the weekend. Cape Porpoise and its surrounding communities are really gorgeous, and we need some time to explore this Kennebunkport area. There is so much history here and it’s been preserved gracefully.

We would like to post some pictures but we have had problems with that lately. We'll try to figure out what the problem is and post some later.

Massachusetts is charming

It turns out we are staying in a really quaint town…it seems to have several names though. The signs all say South Dartmouth, but folks just say welcome to Dartmouth, Massachusetts, and all the boats (and the yachties) say Padanaram. As soon as you go ½ a mile east you are in the city of New Bedford. Yes, I exaggerated, there are only about one hundred boats in this harbor and many of them are sweet squat cats. It turns out this harbor is the home of Beetle Cats and Cape Cod Catboats; giving the harbor a particularly old-fashioned salty look.

On Wednesday evening we were extremely charmed to see dozens of sailboats going out for an evening race…they cut such a beautiful line gliding out of the harbor under sail. As they were making their way out of the harbor, a graceful tallship out on the bay caught our eye. The tallship Shenandoah then glided on into our harbor and dropped anchor very close to us. And as Shenandoah was making her way in, we heard music coming from the shoreline. After a while we decided to check it out and it ended up being a concert in the park with a classic car show. What a treat; and it seemed the entire population of Dartmouth must have come out for it.

We didn’t think we’d be running into menus we couldn’t understand until we left the US, but here in MA we ran into several things and tried them out at the concert…Reinhart had Linguica (a type of hot dog/sausage) and I had a Quahog (a huge clam/stuffing thing). Our Linguica, Quahog, and two drinks cost us all of $5.25…the docking may be expensive but the fairground food is cheap. When we got back to the boat we realized another tallship had joined the first and we dinghied by to say hi.

Thursday evening’s weather promised to be rough, so Reinhart and I grabbed a yacht club mooring (New Bedford yacht club in the village of Padanaram within the town of Dartmouth). Once we picked up our mooring ($45, are you kidding me!!!) we hopped on the bikes and took a trip to New Bedford. On the way there, we rode through the old industrial side of town which was interesting and a little sad…a lot of manufacturing plants were still in operation, but there were also a lot of buildings standing empty and old stately homes which had fallen into disrepair. Then we came to the harbor front; I have never seen so many working fishing vessels before…not even in Homer Alaska! Once we had gotten into downtown New Bedford, it was really captivating…New Bedford was once the center of Whaling in the US and was an extremely wealthy seaport in the mid 1800s. Downtown was surrounded by astonishing Victorian homes to rival those in San Francisco. Downtown was very retored/revived with cobblestone streets and parks dedicated to whaling and Herman Melville. We spent the afternoon at the museums within the New Bedford Whaling National Park. Oh, and we spent some more money at West Marine on fishing stuff (to replace the lure Reinhart’s 50 lb tuna swan off with)…no more marine stores for us.

Now we are getting ready to do some laundry and later on this afternoon we’ll go for a hike on a local trail. Saturday we’ll leave southern Buzzards Bay and sail north for about 4 hours to anchor overnight near the Cape Cod Canal for our Sunday departure. It turns out Paul O’Connor will be visiting his brother on the coast near Kennebunkport, ME next week, so we’ve decided to drop in on them. We’ll leave for the favorable current in the Cape Cod Canal on Sunday morning and arrive in Cape Porpoise, ME on Monday morning. We don’t know how long we’ll stay in CP before making our way north on the coast; but we do know there are several folks we’d like to meet while we are in the Maine area and we really need to make some phone calls soon!

The Changes Continue...we are in Buzzards Bay, MA

We got underway from Annapolis just as expected on Saturday morning. We made great time up through the Chesapeake and through the Canal. We spent our first night of the leg making our way down the Delaware Bay with the BIG boats and entered the Atlantic at Cape May, NJ at sunrise on Sunday. Our first day out on the ocean was lovely, Reinhart caught a small bluefin tuna and then it ran off with his good lure! I can't tell you how disappointed he was about losing that fight, but later on he saw a group of whales and that made up for everything. We also saw dolphins and a really large sea turtle along the way as well. As we got further out to sea and in the really deep water, those seas got rollier and rollier. During Reinhart's sleep in the aft cabin (sea berth) on Sunday night he developed a pretty distinct case of Seasickness, even though he'd been taking Dramamine for a couple of days. He was very sick all day Monday and as the sun was setting we decided to change course and head 20 degrees to come right in past Martha's Vineyard and through Buzzard's Bay and take the inland route through the Cape Cod Canal rather than go far around the Nantucket Shoals...then we took it a bit further and decided if we were going to pass through Buzzard's Bay, might as well spend a day or two there. Reinhart didn't get any better until we entered the Bay; he went a day and a half without barely moving and with just a couple of sips of water...we'll do some reading up on Mal de Mer and see if there's something we can do next time.

We entered Buzzard's Bay at 8 am Tuesday morning, and came to our anchorage off South Dartmouth, MA, around 10 am, 491 miles after we left Annapolis. We are anchored in Apponagansett Bay with about 1000 boats...no, I'm not kidding. Our coordinates are N 41 34.426 W 70 56.542, more info to come after we check out town, but currently we are thinking we may stay today and tomorrow and head for Maine on Thursday morning.

Preparing for the next leg

We are getting ready to leave our lovely spot here on Spa Creek in Annapolis. We've been waiting for a good "weather window" for the next leg of our trip and its finally coming. We've enjoyed our long stay in Annapolis though, and feel like locals already. This picture of Maia was taken from the park we are anchored off; we walked on its shady trails and took a dip in the community pool as well.

On Friday we'll head over to the town dock to fill up with water and wash down the boat a bit. We'll anchor another evening closer to the Chesapeake Bay so we can head right out first thing on Saturday morning. We'll make our way north on the Chesapeake Bay, through the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal and down the Delaware Bay to round Cape May, NJ (150 nm altogether). We'll then head offshore 75 degrees for ~300 nautical miles (nm) to get us up around Cape Cod and then 27 degrees for ~200 nm to get us up to Maine. We've got our track headed for Bar Harbor, ME, but we'll probably come into a charming anchorage in Little Cranberry Island, ME.

We are due in Friday, August 11. We'll call Mom and Dad first thing to let them know we are safe...then we'll try to find out where we can find a good wireless signal! The blog will be quiet until then, but look for an update sometime next weekend. In the meantime, feel free to visit our sponsors!

Still in Annapolis

Here are a couple of pictures of us in our new offices...

We are still anchored in Spa Creek in Annapolis. We have spoken to the boat show folks and they've almost ensured us that we will be employed for 3 weeks in October during the boat shows. The money is a little incentive, but it's more about the experience since we've attended the show every year since 1995.

We'll be heading up to Maine toward the end of this week. We are making excuses for staying so long...like waiting on our mail and some packages to come in from West Marine (and Andreas Moser...thanks Andreas!). The truth is, it is so pleasant here, we just want to stay; if it wasn't for the suffocating heat, I'm not sure we wouldn't just throw out another anchor and wait until the boat show! But it is hot, and we are ready to start thinking about leaving and about the 72 degree highs up at Little Cranberry Island, Maine.

We are in Annapolis for a few days

We departed on Monday from Oriental and followed the Intercoastal Waterway north. We anchored out in a beautiful and isolated cove on the Alligator River (N 35 40 05.5 W 76 00 57.4).

Tuesday morning we continued to follow the ICW to VA and went through some heavy rain showers. It turns out, I love rainshowers when we are underway, it cools things off and keeps the boat clean. Once we got up into the Virginia section of the waterway we had to pass through swing bridge after draw bridge after lift bridge...it was rush hour traffic, so we had to wait a while for each of the bridges to open. We just passed through the Great Bridge Lock at their last opening for recreational boaters - 7pm. We went ahead and decided to anchor right after the lock in a convenient sidewater (N36 43 32.4 W76 15 52.7)...it was perfect, calm and deep. However, at about midnight we were awakened by a tug boat with a barge, honking a deafening horn at us and lighting up the entire sky and our boat with their work lights...turns out that lovely sidewater leads to a quarry and there wasn't enough room in there for the both of us. We jumped out of bed, pulled up the anchor and started to make our way in the night. About a mile along the ICW, the tug came along and told us about a good anchorage for us; he said this happened all the time since it was such a nice deep creek right at the Lock. We passed through another draw bridge together (he is commercial traffic, so no waiting) and we anchored right by the bridge (N36 44 12.1 W76 17 48.0). We were surprised to find it only took us 30 minutes to wake up, weigh anchor, make our way down the ICW in the dark, pass through a bridge and drop anchor again. I was embarrassed by the whole situation, but Reinhart was thrilled with how well we ended up handling it.

Wednesday morning we headed on up the ICW and were surprised by the number of bridges we had to go through. The ICW between the Lock and the Norfolk is densely commercial and it is a really interesting ride, we felt out of place as recreational boaters floating through this extremely hardworking section of the ICW. We were often chaperoned through this narrow channel when we were passing naval ships in workyards. I loved spilling out into the Elizabeth River and seeing Norfolk...it is just so huge and lovely from the water. We decided at this point just to make our way straight through the Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis (another 20 hours). We sailed together during the day but went to watches overnight...we had following seas all night, so it was a rocky ride, but pretty uneventful; we were only passed by one huge containership which rocked Maia a little more than usual.

We arrived in Annapolis at 10 am on Thursday and anchored in Spa Creek (N 38 58 11.9 W 76 30 04.4). Its a very nice spot, very close to a dinghy dock and we have free wireless available. As usual, I feel like we've infringed on the privacy of our neighbors by anchoring a bit close, but Reinhart said it is fine. I felt better after the homeowners we are anchored near came out and welcomed us to their creek. We plan to stay here for several days before we head north offshore. Its hot as the blazes here, so Reinhart and I are going to dinghy to shoreand bike into town for ice cream.