Sailing with Nine of Cups

Vessel Name: Nine of Cups
Vessel Make/Model: Liberty 458
Hailing Port: Denver, Colorado, USA
Crew: Marcie & David
About: We've lived aboard Nine of Cups since 2000 and have managed to accumulate 86,000+ nm under the keel since that time. We completed a circumnavigation in April 2015 and managed to sail around the five great southern capes. Come along with us for the ride!
Extra:
Visit our website at www.nineofcups.com for more photos and info about Nine of Cups and her crew. We also have a more extensive blogsite at www.justalittlefurther.com. Are some of our links broken? Links break from time to time. Please let us know which ones are broken and we'll fix them. You [...]
05 January 2017 | Chesapeake, VA
07 July 2016 | Us: East Walpole, MA / Cups: Chesapeake, VA
06 July 2016 | East Walpole, MA
04 July 2016 | East Walpole, MA
02 July 2016 | East Walpole, MA
01 July 2016 | Virginia Beach, Virginia
30 June 2016 | Chesapeake, VA
29 June 2016 | Chesapeake, VA
28 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
27 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
26 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
25 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
24 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
23 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
22 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
21 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
20 June 2016 | Charleston, South Carolina, USA
19 June 2016 | Charleston, South Carolina, USA
18 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
17 June 2016 | Intracoastal Waterway from St Augustine to Norfolk
Recent Blog Posts
05 January 2017 | Chesapeake, VA

Happy 2017!

Happy New Year, Everyone!

07 July 2016 | Us: East Walpole, MA / Cups: Chesapeake, VA

Taking a breather ...

Since we'll be off the boat during July and August, we plan to post only three times per week. The Captain will continue writing a practical Blue View post each week, we'll keep you up to date on what's happening with us and then throw in some cruising nuggets as well.

06 July 2016 | East Walpole, MA

Keeping fit

We’ve written before about keeping fit on the boat. David is so much better at a regimented exercise program than I am. I have all the best intentions, but I can always think of something better to do than sit-ups, push-ups, leg lifts and running in place. It doesn’t take much to distract me. Walking, [...]

04 July 2016 | East Walpole, MA

Happy 240th Birthday, America

Growing up in New England, I took for granted just how lovely a summer’s morning can be in Massachusetts. It’s comfortably cool and everything smells clean and fresh. Spider webs glisten with morning dew and it’s just great to be alive and breathe in the new day. Being back at Lin’s house conjures up wonderful childhood memories of summer mornings past. And this is not just any morning … it’s the 4th of July, the best holiday of the summertime in the USA.

02 July 2016 | East Walpole, MA

Leaving Cups and a Road Trip

Leaving Nine of Cups is never easy. We know she’ll pout while we’re gone and so we do our best to make sure she’s as comfortable as possible before we leave. We were whirling dervishes trying to get everything ready.

01 July 2016 | Virginia Beach, Virginia

Hunting & Gathering - Virginia Beach

We had lots to do before leaving Cups. David was intent on getting as many chores done in advance of our departure as possible so that once we return in September, we can spend time sailing in the Chesapeake rather than doing repairs and maintenance. Much of what we needed in the way of parts and supplies, [...]

Aussie Flicks and Reads

13 November 2012 | Kettering, TAS
Marcie
While in Australia, we've been trying to watch movies and read books which enhance our understanding of the country, its history and its people. Without a doubt, the book we've found most fascinating and descriptive of Australia's founding history is The Fatal Shores by Robert Hughes. It is a painstakingly grim and accurate account of the the UK's settlement of Australia as a penal colony. We read the book before traveling to Tasmania's west coast and visiting Macquarie Harbour and the infamous Sarah Island. The squalor and execrable living conditions of the convicts were almost palpable as we walked around the island and vividly remembered its deplorable history. When we visited Strahan, the only town in the Macquarie Harbour area, we also saw the play The Ship That Never Was, a comedy (hard to believe considering the subject matter) based on fact about a group of convicts that escaped on a non-commissioned ship they were responsible for building.

In A Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson is a light-hearted look at Australia from a travel writer's point of view. Bryon's previous book, Lost Continent, based on his travels through small town America whet our appetite for his humorous exploits in Oz...from cities to the bush to the Outback.

There are lots more Australian movies beyond Crocodile Dundee. We've recently watched the film, Van Diemen's Land, the true story of Alexander Pearce, aka the cannibal convict, who escaped with seven other convicts from the infamous Sarah Island. The group found themselves lost and unable to cope with the savage harshness of the Tasmanian bush. The film is brutal, but reckons to be a fairly accurate account of what may have happened as the men struggled to survive starvation and the wilderness.

We've watched The Rabbit Proof Fence aka Long Walk Home several times. It is the poignant, true story of three young aboriginal girls who were plucked from their family home by the government in 1931 and placed in a native settlement camp. The girls escaped and began a 1500 mile trek across the Outback back to their home village with a tracker close on their heels.

On the lighter side, The Castle is an Australian classic in which a working-class family's home is to be taken by eminent domain in the name of progress and the expansion of the Melbourne Airport. Filmed in 11 days on a budget of less than $20K, this film was evidently not widely distributed outside of Australia and New Zealand, but was quite the hit down under. You'd be hard pressed to find an Aussie or a Kiwi that hasn't seen it.

We just watched Kenny the other night on loan from a friend. It, too, is a comedy … off the wall. A fellow who installs and services port-a-loos at public events narrates his escapades in the business. Irreverent Aussie humor is evident and we really needed to concentrate on the dialogue to understand what he was saying. Beyond the accent, the vocabulary itself sometime required an Aussie dictionary. Yes, we have one!

As an FYI, there have been quite a few actors/actresses from Australia that we never realized were Aussies like swashbuckler, Errol Flynn, for instance, who was born in Hobart, Tasmania! There's a long list that you'll recognize like Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Dame Judith Anderson and Geoffrey Rush. It's the novelists and writers that surprised me even more like Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark (inspiration for Schindler's List), Paul Brickhill, The Great Escape, Morris West's The Shoes of the Fisherman and little did I know, Pamela Lyndon Travers' Mary Poppins.
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