Travel
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Exiting to the Exumas
It took us longer to leave Nassau than we anticipated. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, because weather and boating problems tend to dictate our progress more than our own plans do. Fortunately, we did manage to leave, and the Exumas really have been a lot of fun to explore. Last Wednesday we were planning to leave Nassau and started the morning by doing a fuel run and run to the store to pick up some birthday presents for Norah, who is turning 7 this week! Unfortunately, the fuel dock was very slow and by the time we got back to Seasura and calculated the time it would take us…
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Regrowing our sea legs
We are back on the boat! While our time on land was good, we are happy to be continuing on with our journey, and not just because we are heading to hotter weather. It was great catching up with family and friends (and for me patients too)! We had several nice dinners with family and walks with friends. I didn’t realize just how much I missed everyone. However, being away from the family for most of the time while I worked was really hard. They managed to do a lot of schoolwork and swimming while they were at Kevin’s parents house. I think that helped pass the time and I…
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Soaking up the weather before a trip home
We left Wrightsville Beach when the weather report suggested that we would be tailing behind the storm front that had rained us in for the last several days. We were promised 14 knot winds and clear skies. The good weather actually even blew in a few hours earlier than expected, but with the rain finally clear we decided to take the morning to see the actual beach at Wrightsville before leaving. The beach is a beautiful sandy beach with intermittent entrances between beach houses and long grass and cacti. It was very nice to walk along the beach. The waves were quite generous coming up on shore, reminding me of…
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Moving on from Maryland, because summer is over
This week has been a bit of a roller coaster. Nothing really too bad, but certainly there have been some ups and downs. We spent our last two days in St. Michael’s doing schoolwork in the morning and then going to shore in the evening to get the kids moving. One day, we scootered (and I ran) over to the elementary school and another evening we played tag at the playground. Tag is a more difficult game when you play with teenagers, especially those that have longer legs than you. Saturday the wind finally settled down in the bay and we headed out for Solomons. It was an uneventful motor…
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A return to traveling
We are in back in the Chesapeake! We got here, after back tracking through New York and down the coast to the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. It seemed that as soon as we sailed under the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge into the Lower Manhattan Bay we entered into ‘peri’-tropic waters; complete with dolphins, cleaner waters and bigger waves and winds. We were so happy to be back sailing. Our trip back through the East River was almost equally interesting as the first time. We were happy to pass back under the Brooklyn Bridge and see the South Street Pier from the vantage point of the boat again. This time we turned to…
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Poll: Where Next? Help us decide.
So, as we heading south to the Chesapeake to wait out the rest of the hurricane season, we are trying to figure out where we are going to go from there. We will have to obviously head further south to be warm through the winter. Our boat is not very well set up for wintering. We have a heater but it would mean running our generator more than we do now that we have the new improved batteries. We would prefer not to do this. Plus, being cold for the last week, we can see how it is easier to be on a boat in warm weather. Water is easier…
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NYC, Take two
We are continuing our attempt to enjoy our southward journey and have been exploring New York City more this last week. Of course, we still have to make sure the kids are doing their schoolwork. The first day saw us kicking around the boat as the hurricane passed the east coast. It was a weekend, so we had a nice breakfast and then kept ourselves busy. The younger kids and I did some painting and Owen had us rolling with laughter doing his usual antics. The next day was Sunday and we took the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) into the city. This is a super convenient way to see New…
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Big waves!
This last week and a half has flown by. I was hoping to write this post right after the last one, but I forgot and now I have lots to catch up on. Should make for some good reading though. As I stated before, we decided to take our time going back to Port Washington from Newport and we did. We enjoyed a four day trip back. Our first stop was Block Island. It is part of Rhode Island State and just at the entrance to Long Island Sound. It is a popular place to visit for the locals and we could see why. It is a small island and…
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Explorations
Our last week was a fun one. We managed to do a slightly better job at enjoying ourselves but still got more work done on the boat. The tasks are getting smaller on the boat and usually can be completed in one day. The only major task left is the assembly of the solar panels and Kevin has managed to hook up one quarter of the panels that are on our roof. The panels that are now connected are giving us up to 650Watts already, which today was enough to power what little things we had going and even start to recharge our batteries. We are excited to hook up…
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Waiting . . .
A quick update. I am sure that some of you are aware that there is a fair amount of storm activity in the south Atlantic. It cropped up quickly last weekend and has put a wrench in our plans. So far, we are not sure how much. We moved ourselves to Newport, Rhode Island, in preparation to leave the country. Our cruising license expired on the 21st and we were hoping to leave that day. However, one of the storms that came up was tropical storm Emily, and it’s projected path was directly in line with ours. So, of course we couldn’t leave. We thought perhaps we would give it…
