Daily Life
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A rest and starting preparations
Our time on the Kevin’s sister’s farm was enjoyed so much. Not only because we saw family, but also because we, and Kevin especially, got the chance to relax a little and think of something other than the boat. Furthermore, our kids got to finally meet their cousins! They were very excited to have a couple days to play with children other than each other! It turns out they also got to spend those days getting to know, and playing with, their Aunt’s puppies and dogs. Simon has often been intrigued by animals and studies them well. He used to be very eager to meet dogs and puppies when he…
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New York!
Wow, it has been a very busy week! We made it to New York! We started the week traveling through the Delaware/Chesapeake Canal which took us into Delaware Bay. We anchored that night in a quiet spot just behind an island that was made mostly of reeds. The kids thought it was weird because there was no town nearby and there was nobody else around. Of course, there was a thunderstorm that night but otherwise it was very peaceful. Delaware Bay was surprising differently from the Chesapeake. I can see why it is much more popular to visit the Chesapeake. Delaware Bay seems relatively unpopulated, with much fewer towns to…
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Annapolis and more
We left Solomons with the engines running and electricity coming from our house batteries. However, after only a short 6-hour motor up to Annapolis, we arrived, made dinner and the batteries died. We spent the next day and a half without electricity and running water. It was not very pleasant, mostly because it is was very hot and we really wanted our air-conditioning! The reason that we were without electricity and water was because the house batteries needed to be charged, but at the time, with our electical system still not fully set up, they needed to be charged by the alternator and regulator. However, those required 24-volt power to…
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A week. . . in Solomons
Sorry it has been a little longer since my last post. We have been spending long days working on the boat to get the electronic system upgraded. This meant completely taking out the batteries, the wires and switches for the DC power system all the way up to the distribution chanel (break panel). Kevin is reconfiguring it to add in the new batteries as well as 3 new 5 kW inverter/chargers. This will allow us to have AC power all the time, and lots of it, to support our electric galley, as well as decrease our dependance on our generator. We are also adding in over 3kW of solar panels…
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Into the Chesapeake
We ended up spending a total of 4 days in Beaufort, and left on July 1st. The extra days in Beaufort gave us the chance to stock on food, pick up a package (which contained a bolt to replace the one that fell out of our power winch on our mast, actually, it fell out and we though we had lost it but later found it in the anchor locker when pulling up the anchor), and enjoy the beach. The package was actually in Morehead City, which was just across the water from Beaufort. It was more industrial looking, Kevin and I caught an uber over to the area, and…
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Moving up the coast
We finally successfully made it out of Florida and all it’s thunderstorms. We sailed overnight to Charleston without any problems. The trip was a peaceful one, although this was in part because the weather was calm, meaning no wind and few waves. We had to motor the whole way. We were itching to get our sails out again, but this was not the time. Happily though, we had two exciting encounters. First, flying fish decided to attack our boat. Not sure why, or perhaps we were just in their way, but we ended up with 6 flying fish landing on our boat. Then, we had a good long ‘play’ with…
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Can you outrun a thunderstorm?
No, no you can’t. We tried, in two ways. We tried to get out of Florida before the storms started to worsen and we also tried to avoid a storm4 directly. Both failed. We are still slowly working our way north and out of Florida, but have had to wait for ‘weather windows’ that would allow us to sail without thunderstorms. Which means that we have tried to mostly stick to short day trips that get us into anchor before the storm hits. From Boca Raton we travelled up the ICW to West Palm Beach. It was a very nice, easy sail. We have to motor up the ICW, so…
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Florida!
We have spent the last week in Florida, in the Fort Lauderdale area. We knew we would be here a few days because we were meeting up with Kevin’s parents to collect the stuff we couldn’t bring on the plane to the boat at the start of the trip, including our much needed new batteries. We also had more boat parts that we were collecting that we had sent to a postal office here. Yes, more boat parts. As I have previously written, we completed a lot of the repair of our boat in Carriacou. Then, we started the process of refitting (or upgrading our boat) on Sint Maarten. However,…
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Sailing hard to Florida
We headed out from Puerto Rico on Saturday afternoon. We figured we were going to do 48 hours to Grand Turk before heading on to San Salvador, Bahamas. However, quickly after setting out on that first day we started to wonder if we might be better going a little further to Mayaguana, Bahamas. As that evening and the next day progressed, we realized that we weren’t going to make it to Grand Turk during daylight. Since it is surrounded by reefs, we didn’t want to make this approach and anchor in the dark. We would be arriving in the dark partly because we had left later than planned, but also…
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Puerto Rico!
Puerto Rico was a fun place to visit, and we wish we had more time. We struggled to balance our time between site-seeing and boat chores, but I think we did well in the end. The good thing about boat chores is that it often requires you to run around a city looking for appropriate parts (like deburring tools) which means you get to see more of the day-to-day life of the city, not just the touristy areas. We arrived late on Monday so we checked in then went to get groceries and dinner. We ended up having most of our dinners out when in Puerto Rico. I was thankful…