07/12/2012, Annapolis, MD
We had our Open Boat Party on the hottest day of the year. A number of people stopped by to see the boat. A few came in the morning but most waited until the end of the day. Between 4pm and 6pm there were 5-6 people visiting the boat at all times. It was fun to catch up and say goodbye to many of our friends.
We will be leaving at 8:00 AM on Saturday. Our friend, TJ, will be there with his family to hand us our dock lines. He is a former tall ship captain and is very excited about our pending adventure. If anyone else would like to show up and wave goodbye, that would be great.
We will be blogging every day (except while we are on the ocean) on our way to Rhode Island. These last few weeks have been the most stressful yet. We are looking forward to everything changing.. hopefully for the better!
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Comments [2]
Love to you both,
Jackie
07/04/2012
Stop by and say goodbye and see our new home before we sail away!
We will be all decked out with our colorful signal flags, tied to the dock of our community marina, from 9am to 5pm on Saturday. Stop by and take a look at where we will be living for the foreseeable future.
Please don't bring any gifts - we have no room to take anything else!! If you want to bring some food or drink to share that would be fine.
The marina entrance is next to 135 East Bay View Ave in Annapolis, MD 21403.
Here is a link to Google Maps:
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=135+east+bay+view+drive,+21403&hl=en&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=35.768112,84.550781&hnear=135+E+Bay+View+Dr,+Annapolis,+Maryland+21403&t=m&z=16
We are all the way at the end of the dock. Hope to see you on Saturday. Call us if you need more information or directions. Our email is very spotty.
Bill & Donna
443-995-1974
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06/30/2012
We thought it would only take a few weeks to do all the things we had to do the boat while it was out of the water. Nothing is easy though, and life gets in the way, so it actually took us almost two months but the boat is now floating again. We have gone through a transition period. We moved out of our house, spent 3 weeks living in a friend's basement, moved on the boat on the land for a week, and now we are living in our home marina on the water again. It's been pretty stressful, and a lot of work. We are not eating very well; I think Bill has consumed his weight in cherry pies and strawberry milkshakes. Luckily we are working and sweating so hard that we aren't really gaining weight. It is getting better every day though. The boat went in the water on Friday afternoon and we had an uneventful motor boat trip back on Saturday morning. Now we just need to finish some items on our list, pack up the boat and clear out the rest of the things we still have in our garage. We are both ready to get going - but it will be another week or more.
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06/27/2012, Annapolis, MD
We have finally moved onto the boat full time. Saturday, June 23rd, was our first day as boat dwellers. That makes us real cruisers. Actually, we are CLODs. That stands for "Cruisers Living On Dirt". As you can see from the picture above, we are still on the hard. We look more like West Virginia than Annapolis (no offense to WV). All we need now is a still, a shotgun, and Granny in a rocking chair!
Another big milestone was passed yesterday. We had our insurance survey (boat inspection). The surveyor took four hours to look over every inch of the boat. The surveyor's name was Gale Browning from Hartoft Marine Surveys. She did a great job. We learned a lot and she didn't find any major problems that would delay our trip. We WILL be in the water on Friday and back at our community marina on Saturday morning. The plan is to leave on Sunday, July 8th. We'll see if we make that date. There is still a lot to do.
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06/17/2012
We have been slowly getting things done on the boat. The teak is just about done and today Bill finally put the first coat of paint on the bottom. We use two different colors so we can tell when the paint is wearing away. The first coat is blue and the final coat is black. When we took the boat out of the water on May 7th we figured it would take just a couple of weeks before we put her back in the water. We were obviously wrong. There is so much to do, but we are starting to check things off our list. We expect to go back in the water on June 27th. In the meantime we are still living in our friends' basement but we plan on moving on board next Sunday while the boat is still on the land. It will be fine except for when we need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Then we will have to climb down a 10' ladder and walk across the boat yard to the bathrooms.
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06/06/2012
We are finally done enough on the house to be working on the boat again and it's going slowly but we are making progress. Donna is currently working on making the teak look beautiful again (and doing a great job - in the picture she is working on the bow pulpit). Bill is working on finishing putting the stem fittings (similar to the chainplates) back in place so we can put the holding tank and toilet back so whe can reclaim our cabin.
We have adjusted our schedule so we can be here to help our daughter move to a new house in Pennsylvania, but it doesn't hurt that we were no where near ready to go when we thought we would be. Our expected departure date is now July 8th. We are certain that we will not have to delay it again.
Yesterday we took a break and drove to the beach at Smyrna, Delaware to view the transit of Venus with an astronomy club we belong to. It was right on the Delaware Bay in a spot we will sail past in another month. The transit was beautiful and exciting to see.
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05/31/2012
Well the schedule isn't going quite as planned but we are now finally completely out of the house. We had hoped to be out of the house and living on the boat by now but the house has taken up much more of our time than we expected it to. We still have a few things to finish - and thank goodness our new tenants are letting us keep the garage and shed for a few more weeks or we would be in big trouble. We should have posted a picture of the garage - but that is too embarrassing - so we posted a picture of our storage room on the 2nd floor of the house. That didn't go quite as planned either. It was supposed to contain all the furniture and belongings that we wanted to hold on to - but not need until we were done with the cruising life. It was supposed to contain our 2 nice sofas that we didn't buy all that long ago. Unfortunately the sofas had other plans. They would not make the turn into the room that our storage room connects to. Plan B - sell the sofas - and fast! Luckily Facebook helped us find a buyer. Mostly everything else fit - but the room is quite full. In the picture you can see that the room is actually in the back of a closet. We built a wall across the storage area so, to the tenant, it looks like a normal closet. The room actually extends about 10 feet to the right of the opening that you see in the picture.
A boat related note - we still have not even touched the boat again but we did have to move all our food from the refrigerator and freezer in our house onto the boat. The good news is that the refrigerator system we came up with seems like it's going to work great - and all my food fit in the freezer!
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03/25/2012
Finally the rigging is back in place and Bill is working on getting the interior cabinets installed again. He's been bringing pieces home to varnish them and it's starting to look like a boat again. Everything is still a total mess of course, but forward progress is important.
Besides putting the cabinetry back in, he is also working on installing the watermaker. So far we've had three different ideas of where to install it. Luckily the current thinking takes it out of my berth!
My job is working on the house - but I'm struggling with that. We have so much stuff - what am I going to do with it all??
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