Friday, May 19

Heading back from the May voyage.
We are at a little marina called Point Lookout, where we ducked in on Thursday morning.  We got started at sunrise, hoping to make 80 miles or so up the Chesapeake..  Did I say PLAN.... darn, that's what did it. We pledged not to plan.  Sure enough by 9 am the seas were getting pretty stiff and there was a small craft advisory.  Waves were 3-4 feet and the wind, very very windy.  We kept hopping over and into waves and kept getting salt spray in our faces.  Don't forget our helm is 15 feet above the water - and my hat got wet.  After an hour or so it was getting old.  The nearest exit ramp was into the Potomac river so we took that one.  Once in we found this marina and tied up.  Several other boats, some larger than us, did the same.  We have now proven that we do not get seasick even after this experience.  So we made about 20 miles total and decided that those small craft advisories were posted for a good reason.

All day we went back and forth about "toughing it out" or not on Friday, or Saturday.  Now they have posted small craft advisories for Friday - through next Tuesday.   So that shoots down the plan to complete the Chesapeake on this leg.  We have arrangements to leave the boat here and Dennis will come back in two weeks, hopefully finding a better weather window, and keep going.  Flying home on Saturday from Baltimore.  We went to find a rental car to get to the airport and drove around the nearby villages today.  We are very near Pax River Air Force base.  This is a very pretty part of the country, nice farmland.  So nice that it stands still while you travel across it.

Learned?  Dennis is not good at sitting around doing nothing (surprise to no one),  and I value my kindle more highly every day.  At least here we can go for a nice walk and I even did laundry.  This is so exciting I better stop before you start yawning.

See you soon.

The boat is named

Well we've known the name of the boat for a while, but actually putting the name on took a bit longer. Yesterday Eliot and Dennis squeegeed on the name. It's kind of tricky trying not to fold or stretch the letters while maintaining balance on the landing.

Jenny and Eliot sign on as Crew

Jenny and Eliot arrived in Charleston the last week of July - schools out and teacher and principal opted for "changes in latitude and changes in attitude" by taking a couple of weeks to crew Reunion on the voyage home.
The parrot head journey will cover the time when one pirate (Jenny) looks at 40 and another (Dennis) has a milestone birthday for starting new adventures.  It just means he's growin' older but not up.  So the 2 intrepid sailors are closest thing we've got to the sons of a son of a sailor and it is going to be a grand ride.
Sometime Friday the Reunion will leave this one particular harbor and turn fins to the left.  Come monday, they will be heading for the north star.  
Wishing you nothing but breezes
Love and Luck, Carol

Finding the right boat

Our friends and family had listened to us daydream for years about finding a boat that would take us around the Great Loop - a circumnavigation of the eastern half of the U.S.   We spent evenings on the internet, read books, listened to boat people - and designed a spreadsheet that outlined our most important criteria.  Then we went out visiting boats.  After 5 or 10 we had refined the criteria and expanded the spreadsheet - and reviewed the budget in great detail.   We narrowed it down to a 36'-40'
single engine diesel trawler with a sundeck, a walk around bed, a reasonable galley and room for a comfy chair in the evenings.

Dennis had a long list of electronics and refinements - most of which he could install or repair if we found something close to our specifications.   By spring of 2011 we visited boats in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Maryland, and New York.  Then Dennis found a boat that fit the bill in Charleston, South Carolina. It was time to take a leap - or stop talking about it.

We named the new boat "Reunion" and started getting acquainted.  Dennis spent a month in Charleston fixing, cleaning, changing, installing and learning to dock a 40' boat.   Docking lessons lasted 1/2 hour and from then on it was learning by doing.   I flew out to meet her and spend a week with Dennis around 4th of July.  Then I came home again while Dennis continued banging the air-conditioning into shape, changing a head and putting in an auto-pilot along with hundreds of other tiny details.  The boat was almost ready for the trip to Wisconsin.  Next step was finding a crew and heading out - 1600 miles to bring her home.