We left our slip earlier than we intended to this morning -- a lot of nervous energy and we just wanted to get going.
Arrived at the Tides dock and settled in relaxing in the cockpit waiting for them to open the doors at 9 o'clock.
Lots of special friends showed up to bid us fair winds and many stayed and enjoyed breakfast with us! It was a wonderful send off.
We docked at Blake Island about 1:00 and after lunch enjoyed our favorite 'round the island hike. I've entered a collection of photos from this morning in the gallery to the right.
Looking forward to a nice relaxing evening and leisurely morning.
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Comments [1]
We're packed and provisioned and ready to go!
We plan to leave our slip between 7 & 8 tomorrow morning, then after a stop at the Tides Tavern for breakfast we'll be off! First stop: Blake Island.
Our daughter Carly will be going with us on this first leg -- Blake Island has always been one of our family favorites. Then the next day we'll go to Bell Harbor (right by the Pike Street Market) so she can go home and then we'll begin our trip to the San Juans the next morning.
I've spent the last couple weeks stashing and stowing and filling up every nook and cranny with food and supplies. I've put some of the provisioning pictures in our photo gallery.
Remember to send an email to FollowCetus at gmail dot com (or just click on the send email button to the right) if you'd like to be on our email list for updates along the way!
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It sounds like life is good and so is the weather. Great start to your jouney! Sorry we couldn't get together before you left but will see you and hear all about the trip when you return. Have a great time.
05/09/2009, Gig Harbor Yacht Club
Check out the photo albums on the lower right for recently added pictures from our Bon Voyage party on May 9th!
We threw the party not to say good bye, but rather to have fun and as a way to thank all of the special people in our lives: family, friends, fellow boaters and those we've worked with through the years.
I've always said the hardest part of cruising is saying good bye to new found friends when it's time to set sail. It's very bittersweet with the excitement of the new adventures laying ahead mixed with the sadness of leaving.
Leaving from home is the hardest, because then it's not just new acquaintances, but family and very dear long time friends.
But this time I don't think of it as saying goodbye. We plan to be back home to visit at least once a year and we hope to enjoy the company of family and friends who will come and meet us on our journeys. Plus, with the much improved communications in the world today, we will be able to keep in touch so well, in ways it will be like we're still right here in Gig Harbor (but hopefully out of this nasty rain!)
So don't say goodbye, just wish us safe voyages and look forward to the times we'll be together again -- preferably somewhere tropical!
Aloha!
Heidi & Terry
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04/30/2009
We've changed our Countdown Calendar!
Today is Terry's last day of work, so the "Day's Till Freedom" link at the right has been changed to "Set Sail!" and is now counting down the time till we cut the dock lines and leave Gig Harbor.
After leaving the slip, our first stop will be the Tides Tavern for breakfast, then we'll head up to Blake Island for our first Port o'Call.
Our daughter, Carly, will join us on that first leg, then the next day it's across the Sound to Bell Harbor Marina in Seattle to drop her off and enjoy Pike Street before heading further north to explore the San Juan and Gulf Islands.
Whooo hooo!
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04/24/2009
Terry just has a handful of workdays before his retirement on April 30th!
It will make the last of the preparations easier, since we won't have to try to fit everything in to the all too short weekends -- now every day will be a "weekend" day!
In May we will continue on changing the boat over to "cruising mode" -- taking off the things that we need here for life as usual -- work clothes, some decorations, and other odds and ends. And we will start the hard core provisioning to stock up on foods and supplies to keep us going for the next 4 - 5 months.
We do have a trip to the Indy 500 over Memorial Day Weekend again this year! This will be our third time attending this exciting event and our friends, Liz & Tom will join us for the 2nd time.
Terry will be talking at a "Meet the Author" event on May 19th! It's put on by our local bookstore, Mostly Books, and will be held at the Chapel on Echo Bay on Fox Island at 7 pm. He'll be talking about the events building our 1st cruising boat, Cassiopeia, and the adventures sailing it to Hawaii and across the South Pacific -- which is what "Adventures Aboard Rick's Place" based on. So join us there to get the "story behind the story"!
Finally, on May 31st we will sail out of Gig Harbor! After we leave our slip at Murphy's Landing, we will stop at the Tides Tavern for breakfast and then continue up to Blake Island. Our daughter, Carly, will be joining us for that trip -- Blake Island has always been a favorite of hers. The next day we will sail across to Bell Harbor to drop her off and then continue up to the San Juans and beyond.
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http://www.sunsetyachtsalesltd.com/Gig%20Harbor%20Cam.html
01/07/2009, rainy Gig Harbor
Terry & I are excited to be going on our first "cruise ship" cruise this month!
It was a great deal offered by our friend Yolanda Essig of Unique Travel (check out her link to the right -- she's the best!). She and her husband Steve did the same trip last year and just loved it, so this year she arranged for a group of us to go along with them. Should be lots of fun. I've always thought that a cruise would be "my dream vacation" so it's great to start out the new year finally experiencing it.
One of the best parts are the destinations -- because they are along the Mexican coast line that we will be sailing down next year.
We've been to two of the ports of call: Manzanillo and Zihuatanejo, but this will be our first time into Acapulco and we're happy to see it from the deck of the Carnival Spirit -- it will make sailing in aboard Cetus much easier since we'll already have a lay of the land.
I will be taking our SPOT messanger with us to record much of our route -- so you can check out the "Where in the World are we" link to follow along if you'd like. We'll also be able to keep the GPS waypoints we record and enter them into our GPS on Cetus to aid us in our coarse plotting when we sail on our own.
Terry's shoulder surgery has been postponed till we get back from the cruise. Originally we thought it would be a great relaxing way to recoup, but since it was all scheduled he had a knee problem crop up and yesterday we found out he can have both the knee and the shoulder done at the same time -- and they don't recommend flying so soon after knee surgery due to the danger of blood clots.
So in a week we're off on a cruise aboard a much bigger boat than we're used to!
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Have a great great time....take lots of pictures.
Happy New Year!
The snow is pretty much gone and right now we're enjoying the first sunny day that's come this way in a very long time!
It's time to take down the Christmas lights and decorations and start plugging away at our list of things to do to get ready to cruise!
Terry's scheduled to have shoulder surgery January 8th, then he'll have knee surgery in March. Hopefully his recovery time will give him a chance to get some writing done on his next book that's in the works.
Wishing you all a healthy and happy 2009!
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10/07/2008, Gig Harbor, WA
One thing that we're looking forward to on our upcoming cruise is the luxury of time.
The last two cruises we had a limited number of days before we'd have to return to the rat race. This one should be more open ended.
And because we'll have more time, we can get into cruising mode as soon as we leave our slip in Gig Harbor. Always before we needed to rush down the coast to maximize our time in the southern climes.
Now we plan to harbor hop down the coast, so instead of staying out to sea for a week at a time, we'll pull into and enjoy coastal towns along the way.
We've been lucky to have cruising friends nearby that have shared information with us on their experiences to help us form our plans.
Steve & Kay Van Slyke of Kavenga have harbor hopped down the coast twice and gave us tips on the best stops and "must dos" in each port.
Then we got together with Roy & Winona of Saucy Lady for an evening of reminiscing and they shared their experiences in the Galapagos -- one of our main goals.
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In addition to the new format we're trying out, to the right you'll now find a link to our photo gallery.
We've only entered a few pictures so far, but many more will be coming, so stop on by and check it out!
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I think the question we get asked the most about our upcoming trip is "Where will you go this time?"
And our answer is vague, because as we've learned in the past, cruising plans are fluid, "written in Jello", as is said. Cruisers must be flexible and ready to change their plans for any number of reasons. so we won't have a hard and fast scedule when we depart.
We do, however, have a couple of destinations that we really hope to see:
1. The Galapagos
2. Australia
What we do on the way, in between, or after those goals remains to be seen, so even though we have a couple definite destinations in mind we don't have a time schedule for visiting them -- that will be made up as we go.
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Here's a beautiful sunrise off the stern of Cetus one crisp winter morning.
When we moved back aboard Cetus last June we were a bit apprehensive about what living aboard in the winter in the Northwest would be like, but sights like this make it all worthwhile.
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We've set a date to set sail, so it's time to start a log!
This will be our 3rd Bluewater Cruise and our 2nd aboard Cetus, our Fantasia 35 that we live aboard in Gig Harbor, WA.
There's a link to the right that will take you to a web page with pictures and info from our last cruise to Mexico and the South Pacific from 1998 - 2003.
Our first cruise was aboard Cassiopeia, a Golden Gate 30 that we built from a bare hull. That cruise lasted from 1992 t0 1994, so it was before web pages or blogs so no information is currently accessable on it, but I have plans to get some pictures and stories together on that wonderful time in our lives.
So follow along as we continue to prepare Cetus and the crew for our next offshore adventure and then finally cut loose the lines and sail off into the sunset.
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