I kept promising to fill in details on the last few postings when I had time. I guess you've figured out by now that I never did take the time to sit myself down and write the words. Thank goodness there is a new season and a new cruise and a new opportunity!

I do, however, have some statistics to report - thanks to Jim, who loves those neatly entered notations in his log, and who loves to add them up and see how they look - and who gave them to me way back in June!

We travelled 2449.6 nautical miles last season. That is roughly the same as 2818.9 statute miles, or 4510.24 kilometers. Those figures are from Solomon's Island, Maryland, where we started our cruise "for real" - not from Nova Scotia, where we aborted our initial sail and put Madcap on a truck instead. We still managed to travel a pretty fair distance! From our departure point in the Chesapeake Bay in November, we travelled down the US coast as far as Fort Lauderdale, and rambled in and out through the Bahamas as far south as Ragged Island before heading north again and ending up at the northern edge of Florida in May.

Madcap was at anchor 80 nights, on a dock for 56 nights, on mooring balls for 42 nights and at sea for 3 nights, for a total of 181 nights. The dock time includes a whole month at Fernandina Beach, Florida. We were home in Nova Scotia for Christmas for 2 weeks of this time, and grateful to be plugged in and able to use the electric heater for the rest of it. The figure for mooring reflects the number of fronts we endured in the Bahamas - when we chose to seek out mooring balls rather than see if our anchor would hold.

The longest distance we travelled at one time was 240 nautical miles, from Charleston, SC to Fernandina Beach, FL. The shortest distance was 1.7 nautical miles, from Staniel Cay, Bahamas, around the corner to Big Major's Spot.

We used 264 US gallons of diesel and 431 gallons of water. This water figure reflects not only our conservative approach to water consumption, but also the number of nights at dock when showers were available.

Now that I have finally wrapped up the cruise of 2009/10, I'm looking forward to getting the 2010/11 blog started. Keep reading and come on along!