Friday, October 26, 2007

Ready For The Off!

Annapolis, Maryland
38 58.22'N 76 29.9'W


Finally we are ready, we have wiped over 100 things off the to do lists and have bought and stowed all the food and spares we need for extended cruising - which as we are heading to the yachting capital of the world may be over kill!

We decided to buy up most of the grocery wholesalers stocks here, so we have bought 100s of rolls of toilet paper, a years supply of cask wine, filled the freezer with meat, cans of everything imaginable and miraculously it all went in the cupboards eventually - some of it we even wrote down so we may be able to find it in 4 months time.

The weather has finally turned bad, we watched the world cup final with Kate & Roger in blazing sunshine, but since then it has got cold and very wet, in fact it has barely stopped raining for a minute in the past 48 hours. We should get some relief early next week, so we plan to up anchor and scoot down Chesapeake Bay and around Cape Hatteras ASAP so we can start to get some warm weather again - they have started giving the season to date snow fall on the weather channel - time to go south!

Hopefully our next post will be from the high seas as we zoom southwards to the sun (or a pub in Charleston)
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Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Working Hard In The Heat

Annapolis, Maryland
38 56.09'N 076 30.54'W


Following the shock of the cold front, and all our fears about needing a heater for the brief spell of autumn before heading south we have had endless hot and sunny days! This past week in particular ha been ridiculous with temperatures in the 30's, we have even been back swimming again!

We have been working hard, new batteries and battery box, new bimini, servicing engines, sourcing spare parts, dealing with the beauracracy for international voyaging, buying charts and guides for new areas and hundreds of small maintenance chores for me, and sewing for Linda. Linda has made an amazing new boom bag for us, not easy in a sail loft, very hard in a cabin, the bag is nearly 20 feet long, so the logistics of moving the material around and sewing in zippers and batten pockets are quite a challenge - even more so when Charlie insists on sleeping on it all day!

On the break from work front we spent an excellent couple of days at the Annapolis Boat Show where we proved once and for all that we do have the best boat in the country by looking at all the others and picking holes in them, and then toured endless stands of useful gadgets and "stuff".

The Wilson's came for the weekend, coinciding perfectly with England crushing the Aussies in the RWC so a few lagers and G&T's were consumed to celebrate - the fact that we then had to have even more to celebrate the further demise of Southern Hemisphere rugby as NZ crashed out perhaps contributed to a more restrained day the day after!

A couple more weeks here and then we are off south, starting to get very excited about clear water and snorkelling.