Ten miles an hour isn’t very fast, unless you are travelling in your 500 sq. ft. home and the waves are eight feet high. – T.B. Ibision
Everything has been made ready; again let the adventure begin.
It is Monday, November 18, 2013 and we are ready to launch. For the last week we have struggled in above average heat and humidity to get her ready and on Thursday she gets her bottom wet. Today, we redressed Chances in her finest suit of sails, strung her wires and cables, wound her coils of line, stretched her halyards and sheets, pressed on her canvass dodger and bimini, and all around made her look like a ship ready and fit to sail. She now is fitted with a brand new auto-pilot, at least the mechanical part at the helm, and down in her bowels she has a brand new macerator. She sports on her deck, a partially inflated, up-side-down, inflatable dinghy, not yet with oars, but as anxious to launch as well. I am ready to install a new Sail Stacker for the mainsail, which I finished sewing last week. Chances had a trial fitting today and although it needs a bit of fine tuning, it looks really good.
As well today just north of us another craft launch is taking place but into a different element. The following bulletin was posted on the NASA website, I had looked up because I was sure if it was clear enough we would be able to see it from the deck of the boat in Ft Pierce.
Date: November 18
Mission: Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN)
Launch Vehicle: Atlas V
Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
Launch Pad: Space Launch Complex 41
Launch Time: 1:28 p.m. EST
Description: MAVEN will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The mission's goal is to determine the role that loss of atmospheric gas to space played in changing the Martian climate through time.
Okay, as it turned out we didn’t see or hear the launch, although it did leave the surly bonds of earth, but we did get a lot of other things done.

Fast forward; now it is Thursday November 21st and a lot has happened this week. So I haven’t had time to complete this blog I started on Monday but we did make a trip to Palm Beach to pick up Dorothy from the airport. Dorothy is a long time member of our sailing club in Toronto and is the first lady captain I knew who sailed her own boat. I know there are lots of others, but back then I didn’t know them, so I was impressed by Dorothy’s spunkiness to sail a boat across Lake Ontario almost single-handed to attend a club cruising dinner in Port Dalhousie. I contacted her a couple of weeks ago and she jumped at the chance to sail across to the Abacos with me on this trip. She is a really good sailor but wants to get the experience of sailing in bigger waters and to cross the Gulf Stream. She will get to use her navigation skills with the Chartplotter and the paper charts in unfamiliar waters on the Bahama Banks. Earlier this week Mike Benson arrived and we drove to his boat Soulstice II, in Indiantown, where he has laboured in the same heat to get her ready. We are buddy boating together because Mike is crossing to the Abacos as a solo sailor. He has already brought her through the St Lucie River Lock on his own and is moored at Sunset Marina here in Stuart. We hope to join up with Heritage and Glory Days and some other boats in Lake Worth to cross over sometime early next week.
This morning Chances was lifted down the path on the Travel Lift from where she sat all summer and was lowered into the water on a very breezy morning. After making sure all systems were operational and the water was still on the outside of the boat we backed out into a near disaster as the wind caught her broadside and wanted to have it’s own way with her. It took all of the small turning area we had to get her turned around and head out the narrow channel to the Intracoastal Waterway. Farewell to Ft Pierce we are on our way to Stuart and the start of another adventure. A great sail the 20 miles down the Indian River then a few miles up to St Lucie River through two bridges that had to open for us and four others we could sail under. All the way there were real gusty winds coming in off the ocean but still really warm. We got to a mooring right beside Soulstice II, although he didn’t see us coming in. We radioed to him and when he asked where we were, he was pleasantly surprised when we told him to turn around and look beside him. Dorothy and I had our first sail together and didn’t fight !!
Tomorrow we will put everything aboard, food, clothes and other gear and leave for Peck Lake for the night then continue on to Lake Worth the following day. Because we sail right by his home in Jupiter, I am hoping Tiger Woods will be out on his small private golf course in his back yard. I have the Lat and Long marked as his little course comes right down to the water’s edge.
I have spoken to George on Heritage twice today and they will meet up with us shortly to wait for a weather window. It has been somewhat exciting getting this little trip started and now when we get a collection of boats together by the weekend it will seem like old times and another season of the best time of our lives.