Leaving on a sailboat

Don't know when we'll be back again.
Oh, Babe it's time to leave . . .


Today's the day!!! We're very excited to be starting this journey and thankful for all of the help and encouragement that's been passed our way. It's very cool to look and use certain things on the boat and know that so-and-so made that or painted that or whatever. So very appreciative of the good vibes, especially as we frustratingly untangle from land!

Enjoy the journey ~ even the frustrating parts!

Plan is to head up the Chesapeake, down the Delaware to Cape May, NJ where we'll wait for a weather window. Probably head off-shore from there to Martha's Vineyard for a few days. Then we'll point our bows North and see how far we get.

Roots to Fly

I'm editing my Mother's letter to her grandchildren.  It's more like a book and is a delightful look at her growing up years.   It's gotten me to thinking about my roots.  The faces in the old photos look out in an unblinking stare at the world.  What were they thinking?  What were their lives like?

This is my Great-Grandmother, Maggie Barton Mahaffey. With hands folded in imitation of his Mother's is my Grandfather, James Wylie Mahaffey. Before them stand generations of Mahaffey's, Barton's, Robert's, Harper's, Phillips', stretching back to the late 1600's when my ancestors stepped on a ship to cross an ocean. Once they arrived in upstate South Carolina they stayed put for another 400 years.  

So what motivated those people that stepped foot on a ship to cross into the unknown? Courage, desperation, a search for a better life? What drove them to leave behind all they knew to sail to foreign place? What were their hopes, dreams? What were they striving for? What made them different from the generations before and after that they would undertake what had to be an exciting, but frightening, journey? Leaving everything they knew behind. Knowing they would never see their families again and journeying to what had to have seemed like jungle wilderness . . . it's hard to fathom the guts it took to do that.  

Our summer adventure pales in comparison and I'm taking heart in that and sometimes feel their presence standing at my shoulder. What would they think of our trip? It's not done out of desperation but we are seeking something ~ a little adventure, exploring our personal limits, living a little closer to nature and getting away from some aspects of modern life for starters. But it's really a luxury in a way. Not something we have to do to survive, to eat, to put a roof over our heads. What would they think of an era where people have the luxury to do something like this? I hope they would smile and say the 17th century equivalent of "Go for it! Live the dream. We did and it turned out stupendously."

List Management

So you're going along doing things.  Checking 'em off the list.  You keep doing . . . then you realize the very important things you've just spent the last 7 or so hours on aren't even on the list!  Do you:

a) add them to the list so you can have the satisfaction of crossing them out 

b) have the task, and the doing of it, remain anonymous by not adding it to the list

c) fall to the floor in a hysterical mass because of all the things left on the list

I go for A!  

Ice, Ice Baby!

We've been prepping for the trip, looking at charts, getting the boat ready, trying to finish up some niggling work projects and entertaining ourselves by looking at the ice conditions around Newfoundland & Labrador. Some years there's a lot of ice, some not so much. Some years a lot of ice comes down the Straits of Belle Isle which separates Newfoundland & Labrador. Some years not much.   We're aiming to head up through the Straits first and go around Newfoundland clockwise so it's important how the ice is doing.

The Canadian Weather Service has done a terrific job with the ice reporting. I'd like to think they're doing it for us but mostly it's for the off shore oil rigs that dot the area.

Visit the website at Environment Canada and you can see 5 day animations of ice movement (click up near the top where it says view); satellite photos of different areas and you can learn about the Petermann Ice Island.  It broke off from the Arctic shelf last summer and is making its way south.  Currently moving at 9 nautical miles a day, it's at the end of Baffin Island.  The size of Greater Toronto, it'd be pretty stunning, and more than a little scary, to see.  Something that large would make its own weather system.  Also check out the Ice Tongue Development.  Evidently the ice has extended out further than is normal and gotten pretty close to some off-shore rigs.  

We've also been learning how to read "ice eggs".  It's a way of reporting ice conditions & types that's displayed in an oval.  If interested in the details this site is helpful:  Ice Chart Symbology

That's all for now . . . back to sorting, packing, and making lists!

Connections & Communities

Some think of cruising as a solitary pursuit but, especially in this wired age, it's first and foremost a community. Last week our land and cruising community got stronger and bigger.

Sailing is tied to seasonal weather patters so cruisers, and the ships of yesteryear, move in groups as they avoid winter storms in one hemisphere and seek out good wind in another. Ships used to meet on the high seas and exchange mail, gossip and occasionally visit via riding in a barrel on a line between the two. Today, boats hopscotch around the world encountering each other in various ports. And often you'll meet a boat who rafted up with the people you rafted up with 2 years ago. The other thing that quickly becomes apparent is that cruisers don't have last names it's Russ and Alison from Andante or Nat and Betsy from Bahati. Boat names morphing into surnames.

When we cruised to Maine in 2007, we docked at Mystic, Connecticut's Mystic Seaport Museum. We met Rachel & Claus from Kyanna and began following their blog. On hearing our Newfoundland plans, they e-introduced us to Jim & Ellie aboard Meta Fog who have cruised extensively in Newfoundland. They've been a great resource of practical tips, e-introductions to others in Nova Scotia & Newfoundland and lots of encouragement along the lines of "Just go you'll love it!" Last week they were in Washington, DC touring and picking out where to bring their boat this fall. We were able to meet over coffee and put faces to those internet identities!

Saturday was dinner with some dear friends who'll be keeping an eye on "the store" while we're gone. Always great food, conversation & laughter. We're hoping they'll join us for some part of this sailing adventure.

Do you have a friend that you see once in a blue moon and you're able to pick up like it's been yesterday? Terri's that kind of friend. We interned at the Pee Dee Area Health Education Center in Florence 25 years ago. Yikes! We stayed in touch and began writing real letters. She was in DC a few years ago and we met for breakfast. That's the only time we've seen each other in that 25 year period. She and her family were in Annapolis yesterday and we met for an hour at City Dock. Our husbands came along and it was instant fun, catching up in person.

So take a minute and get in touch with someone you haven't chatted with in a while or make a connection with someone new or have pure fun with someone you see every day! Cheers

Where are we?

Well there's the metaphysical aspect to that question and then there's the practical.  Here's the answer to the practical:   Our marina map.  Click on Mill Creek Marina in the upper left and zoom out to see where we are. If you put the map in satellite mode you can actually see the dock.  Way cool.  

Like Sands Through the Hourglass

We have a chalkboard in our kitchen that's been used for leaving notes, grocery lists, calculating math homework, phone numbers, etc.  One great suggestion we received when talking about leaving on this sailing adventure was set a date & stick to it.  You'll never have enough money and the "to-do" list will never be complete. At some point, if you want to go, you just have to go.  So we have our date and barring some great work opportunity, we're planning to stick to it.  Sorry, we're not ready to go public with it yet.  Every morning we erase out a number and fill in the new countdown number on our trusty chalkboard.    

Last week I looked at the number and started thinking it didn't seem right.  It wasn't.  Yikes!!!!  Our countdown was 30 days too long.  So in one fell swipe of the eraser we've lost 30 days. . .  Just breathe!

1 17/32" Equals One Less thing to Worry About

Last week was huge in terms of checking things off the list.  We put in the counterpoise for our Single Side-Band/Ham Radio.  The SSB/Ham will let us talk to people and, once we add another expensive piece of equipment to the system, send & receive e-mail.  The counterpoise is composed of 2" wide copper foil that we've glued to the hull in the cockpit lockers.  The more counterpoise, the stronger our signal.  That's the theory at least.  We haven't tested it yet. 

The other problem we tackled was giving us the heebie jeebies.  This

used to be the bottom 1 17/32" of our 58 foot mast.  It's supposed to be flat across the bottom.Notice the pitting in the metal and the missing metal!    That's the base of the whole rig.   The mast is aluminum and it goes through the cabin top and rests on a stainless steel plate that sits on the keel. Very strong but dis-similar metals corrode.  The chemical reaction between the stronger, more noble, metal corrodes the weaker, less noble metal.  Stainless steel is one of the most noble metals and aluminum is not.   Visions of being in a 30 knot blow and having the weak side of the mast bottom collapse, sending the whole rig into the ocean was not comforting so we took action and advantage of the warm spell last week.   We made our way over to Bert Jabin's Marina where they'd agreed to pull our mast, lay it on the ground for a few hours and put it back in at a fixed cost.  

We did this procedure 10 years ago and it was quite dramatic.  The less experienced yard had a crane not quite big enough for our mast.  They lifted up and the corrosion was so bad all 9 tons of boat lifted up out of the water too.  It let loose with a bang and the boat dropped back into the water as the mast shot up narrowly missing Russ but taking out our cabin heater.  

Jabin's knows what they're doing and they have the equipment to do it right.  At 2500 pounds of pull they stopped tugging and Russ pounded on the base as we jiggled it from on deck.  Pull was increased to 3100 pounds we jiggled more, hammered more and out she came.  Not with a dramatic whomp which was just fine.  

As often happens with boat projects a small project turns into a bigger one.  We decided as long as the mast was down to add spreader lights that will illuminate the deck, fill a bunch of holes, fix the corrosion and try to prevent it from happening again and a few other items.  An overnight stay was planned and we'd go back in Thursday morning. 

To try to slow down or prevent the corrosion problem we painted the new clean edge with rust prevention paint and then multiple coats of base paint.  Then wrapped the whole thing in super electrical tape. 

 

A separation between stainless and aluminum was called for so we cut out a piece of 1/4" Lexan that would sit in the tabs of the mast step and then the mast would sit on it.  We also sprayed CRC on the step to prevent corrosion.  And since sailors are a superstitious lot, we siliconed a coin onto the Lexan as tradition requires.  Don't know how we'd been lucky in our sailing so far since there was no coin under the mast!

Thursday morning a gale was blowing, literally.  Winds gusting to 40 knots.  No way was our mast going to be swinging from the end of a crane in that wind. So we got another day to find more projects to do on the mast.

So glad we put that lucky coin in place

 because the mast was put back in on Friday the 13th!

A few puffs made getting the mast back in a bit of a challenge.  Russ was below guiding the base onto the mast step and I was on deck holding onto our roller furling to pull the mast upright against the wind.  I was glad when one of the yard guys lent a hand.

The black lines on the mast are measuring the kids' heights.  We started doing it when we first got Andante and updated it when we got to interesting places or events.  So now they'll be 1 17/32 shorter and then add 1/4" for the Lexan . . . 

We put the standing rigging back on and tightened everything enough to see us back to our slip.  Fine tuning will come later . . .