Heading South

So we finally left Annapolis this morning.  It’s been a month since we moved on to our floating home. We have been busy unpacking, cleaning, sorting, organizing, storing, donating and tossing, fixing, and buying, followed by two weeks of working the Annapolis boat shows.

 


Every fall Annapolis has an in-water power boat show followed by the in-water sailboat show.  The water crew of the boat show builds 50 floating docks to accommodate the boats that are on display.  We had front row seats from our mooring watching the transformation and all the boats being brought in. Depending on if you are a power boater or a sailor, these shows are like walking through toy stores as a kid.  You get to go on all the latest models of boats and there are hundreds of vendors here to shop.  


This morning we dropped our mooring ball in the harbor and headed out on a fun, but cold sail, down the Chesapeake Bay.  We enjoyed light winds with gusts to 15 kts and averaged 7 kts in boat speed.  We are currently sitting on the hook (also known as anchored) in Solomons Island.   We will call this area home for the next week or so to restock the galley, do laundry, catch up on school and do some sightseeing. 


The fall colors are starting to show and the days are still sunny and beautiful.  Nice time to enjoy the Chesapeake and surrounding area

Location: Solomons, MD, USA

Comments

  1. SamcinOctober 20, 2022 at 10:34 AM

    Hi Duers...love hearing your progress! I went from Walla Walla to Sandpoint. Home tomorrow... then Az til holidays.
    Snow expected in Sandpoint. NW has terrible air quality...worse than India ( no joke) because of fires. Three burning, bur rain expected tomorrow. Over and out!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Chris and Mark LignoulOctober 24, 2022 at 6:28 PM

    It is wonderful that you are sailing again! I totally am going to live vicariously by following your Blog!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cruising The Bahamas with Friends

Image
For the past week we have been traveling with our seemingly life long great friends on board, ok only 30 years but you get the picture. The Bahamas in winter are a bit tough when planning a week adventure, weather and tide are a huge factor as well as distances between useful ports for arriving or departing guests. Accidentally, or with great luck it seemed to all work out as we were able to meet in Nassau, get out 36 hours later make our way through the Exumas to Staniel Cay where our friends departed about 30 minutes before a strong cold front arrived that left us at anchor with 30 knots of wind and 12 hours of torrential rain. During the week - nothing but blue skies and relatively light winds. We were able to stop at Allens for a visit to the pre-historic iguanas, Highborne for some fuel and grocery, Warderick Wells for hiking, snorkeling and wildlife before arriving in Staniel for some swimming pigs, snorkeling and an afternoon at the Staniel Cay Yacht Club to celebrate Rae’s birt...
Read more

Sailing the Bahamas

Image
The Bahamas provide a great training ground for working on sailing skills, whether knocking off the rust, learning new skills or learning a new to us boat, well for us all of the above. The winds generally have an east component while the islands roughly run in a NW/SE direction so there is always a sailing angle. We have been sailing on the banks the past month, thus seas are 1-3 ft chop so very stable and easy conditions.  We have never used a spinnaker or asymmetrical spinnaker on any of our previous sail boats. Tenacious came with an asymmetrical spinnaker. We had brought this on deck in Annapolis to see if we had the bits and pieces required. We had a nice down wind run in the past week that gave us the perfect sub 10 knot winds to give the spinnaker a try. We were able to make 4-5 knots with an apparent wind of 6-8 knots. The sail was reasonable easy to handle with a sock to pull down/dose the sail. The sail is big and all 3 crew members were fully engaged to manage her....
Read more

All the Places We Have Been

Image
 Well it has been a while, apologies, we are in Georgetown now, arriving on March 7, 2023 to the Mecca of Bahamas cruising. Georgetown has a fabulous, large, well protected harbor and a substantial local support network built up around the cruising community, which first started coming here in the 1960's. We passed through in 2009 as well, very little has changed - a few more resorts but for the most part, same beach bars, cruiser volleyball and a lost of boats. Georgetown is also referred to as chicken harbor, because the sailing gets much more difficult/more open ocean exposer/fewer anchorages/longer distances, very few people leave until it is time to go back to the U.S. in April/May.  Let's roll back the clock three weeks though, we found ourselves in Oven Rock on Great Guana Cay, hiking into a fresh water cave - plenty of bats. Fishing was pretty poor.  A stop at Black Point Great Guana on our way north for some provisions and some hiking to some very nice ocean side...
Read more