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July 15, 2005 - Rhode River,
Maryland
We are thrilled to share our adventure with all of you.
Many have endured our endless threats and musing about
buying a boat and going cruising and I am happy to say that
we have finally begun our journey. So far we have made it
about a quarter of a mile! Our good friends, the Cunards,
have been kind enough to host us at their dock while we run
around getting all of our last minute preparations
completed. We have sold the cars, rented the house, packed
up or gotten rid of all of our belongings and have been
living on the boat since July 1. We have some repairs to complete
on the boat and we are hoping to depart the Annapolis area
on or around July 20th . We have already learned
that it is a bad idea to tell everyone when we are leaving
because the date has changed at least a half a dozen times
already!
Our current plan is to head directly
for Block Island. We will stop in the Sassafras river
to spend the night, and time our trip through the C&D Canal
and the Deleware river with the tide in our favor. The
voyage from here to Block Island is a total of 340 miles.
We are not sure if we will go straight to Block or make a
few stops to spend the night along the way. We do want to
hit New York City but are planning on stopping on our way
back to Annapolis in September. We have friends and family
visiting in early August, and we will be in Boston starting
August 16th or so. We plan on spending the 19th
in Bean Town, celebrating Christy’s 40th
birthday. I am sure we will visit Martha’s Vineyard,
Nantucket, and many other beautiful East Coast hot
spots along the way.
Our plan is to arrive back in Annapolis
in early October. There is a three day
Emergency Offshore Medical Course in Hampton, Virginia
that starts October 28th. Christy has signed up
for that, so she will be the ship’s medical officer. Then,
we will head out with the
Caribbean 1500 Cruising Rally on November 7th,
arriving in Tortola, BVI mid-November. That is about as far
as we have planned. We’d like to head to Europe in the
spring of 2006, but it all depends on where we wind up going
in the Caribbean. We’d like to get to a Spanish speaking
country so that our girls can get more proficient in their
second language. You never know, maybe the adults can even
work on it.
All of this is very new for us, and we
aren’t sure how it will all work. We don’t have satellite
communications, yet, but we just set up internet access
through our cellular phone service. We will be able to
check emails and update the web site any time we have
cellular service. Our mobile phones should still work all
summer long so feel free to call us.
We’d love to hear from you!
Take care and stay in touch.
Christy, Joe, Cassie and Juliana
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Many thanks to our friend Craig Homenko for his
assistance in setting up the website.
We also would like to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who
has been kind enough to host the website on his server.
7/15/05 - Joe went up the mast to check the
spinnaker halyard and discovered that the main halyard was quite
frayed right at the top. We are sure that this
happened after we took possession of the boat since our rigging
survey would have certainly caught a frayed main halyard.
We called our rigging man in Annapolis who promptly made a new
halyard. When he went up the mast to replace it, he
noticed that the swage connecting the forestay to the mast was
badly deformed. It had actually been twisted and bent.
Yikes! Although it is unlikely that anything would have
happened, it is possible to lose your entire mast if the
forestay fails. Much to our chagrin, Joe and I immediately
realized that we had done this during a "fire drill" we had
rolling up the genoa a few months ago. It was very
difficult to roll up, and we couldn't figure out what was going
on. We unrolled it and didn't see what was causing the
problem so we kept trying to roll it in. The whole time we
are getting closer and closer to shore, adding to the frenzy.
We tacked around away from land and finally discovered that the
spinnaker halyard was caught in the genoa, preventing it from
furling properly. By forcing it, we caused the damage to
the forestay. It is amazing that a line could deform a
huge wire cable like. Our new forestay is scheduled to be
installed today.
7/15/05 - July in the Chesapeake Bay without air
conditioning sounds absolutely miserable, doesn't it? I am
truly amazed to say that it really has not been that bad.
We owe a huge debt to Bruce and Alison Cunard for hosting us at
their dock for the last two weeks. We did spend our first
night on the boat at anchor but have been at their dock ever
since. They have a little girl, Holly, who is 6, and great
friends with Cassie and Juliana. Sam (13) and Kari (11)
have been wonderful playing with and babysitting the girls while
we run around doing chores. The facilities are truly top
notch with a pool, internet connectivity, laundry, an amazing
post 4th of July neighborhood fireworks show, and first class
companionship. Bruce has been taking us wakeboarding
(Christy's wipeouts have been unanimously voted the best) and
sailing on their new Hobie Cat. Alison is busy working but
we have enjoyed her company during the many dinners they have
invited us to and on the weekends. A couple of nights ago
I cooked us dinner on the boat and was shocked to realize that
it was the first dinner on the boat since moving aboard!
We have been going out with friends or eating at the Cunard's
every night. We are looking at this as our pre-cruising
vacation. It has really been wonderful. We are going
to be very sad to leave, but knowing that we will be back in
October makes it a little easier.
7/15/05 - While we were boat shopping about a
year ago, we met our new friends Claude and Rike Dussaud.
They have two girls, Celine and Anouk, who are just a little
older than Cassie and Juliana. They bought a Soubise 46
catamaran and are planning to cruise up north this summer as
well. They live outside of Charlottesville, VA.
Their boat was a bit of a project and they have put a ton of
work into it over the last 6 months or so. They are hoping
to be ready to take off sometime next week. Assuming our
boat is ready, we are planning to sail north with them. We
figure it will be great for the girls to have some playmates, we
can collaborate on the weather and navigation issues, share
companionship and meals, and baby sit for each other on
occasion. I am sure we will go our separate ways from time
to time, but it will be a huge benefit to have a buddy boat
close by. They are great people to boot! Claude is
French and Rike is German. They have a very similar agenda
to ours, heading to the Caribbean in November and then over to
Europe next spring. We'd love to piggyback on the insider
scoop when we hit Europe! It is amazing how much it
enhances your experience when you are able to see things through
a native's eyes.
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