It's time for another Raft Up Blog.  This month the question is  "Do you think your view on travel and sailing has changed at all since you started? and How does the boat help vs hinder your ability to travel?"  Since I think that Steve and I will have very different takes on this subject, we're going to each have our say in a she says/he says blog. 

She says:  I never sailed until I was 42 years old.  In fact, I was never even on a sail boat until the day we moved aboard Celebration. We bought the boat, moved to Florida and then took sailing lessons. But even after our lessons and taking our own boat our a lot, I was never comfortable and I never felt like I knew exactly what to do or what was going on. Sailing was confusing, loud, scary. For me it was something to be endured to get from point A to point B.  (Point B was always going to be some tropical fantasy land, filled with sun and fun, close to a wonderful grocery store and a clean laundromat.) I used to get so anxious when we were headed off shore, that I would get sick. 
It took me a couple of years to figure out that I was making myself sick.  My anxiety came from a lack of working knowledge about sailing and about the boat in general.  I decided to fix my ignorance and hopefully in the process, get over being sick with worry.  I took a Captains Course and got my 6-Pack license, I spent 2 days going solo down the ICW in Florida, I asked A LOT of questions.  I got some confidence that I really could turn the boat around and get Steve if he fell over (IF he was wearing his life jacket and IF it was a perfectly calm day and IF I felt like it). I have for the majority of the days, gotten over my sea sickness.
So,  to answer the question, my view on travel and sailing has done a 180.  After 9 years I can now enjoy sailing for the ride itself and not just the destination.  Sailing has opened up the travel world for us.  We couldn't afford to go and as we did last year, spend a month in Martinique and then a month in St Lucia and then a couple of months in Grenada and then a month in Trinidad if we were paying for a hotel room every night and eating out every day. Being able to live on Celebration keeps the costs where we can afford them.  It allows us to spend big chunks of time in a country, really get to know the people, explore, and taste the foods.

He says:

Sailing verses Traveling

 SO my thoughts, is this sailing or traveling? Clearly it IS both, but what of our priorities or which do I prefer might be the question.

Sailing: I love the sailing, and even more so when the sailing is great. You know the right wind, low seas, not too hot, or too cold. But the best sailing is usually when there is little in the form of schedule or sailing with several good destination options. To a sailor this should be obvious, but to others less so. Without schedule we can sail off the wind, never having to motor. If we can't get there because the wind is blowing from the wrong direction we have options, more so options that are comfortable, don't overstress the gear or the crew. We can tack(zig-zag) with the wind on our beam (side) taking all day or all week/month perhaps to get there, wherever "there" is. Or without a hard destination or as mentioned several destination options, we simply change "there" to be somewhere we can sail to instead of going toward the wind to reach. Again making it a comfortable, fun sail instead of straining us or the good ship Celebration. Frankly the easiest sailing is when we are far offshore. Bad wind, bad seas become so much less bad with a simple course change they can even become good seas and winds.

Traveling: Yup, love the traveling too. For us however it seems to be more of seeing places in depth over seeing more places. When we arrive in a port we like we tend to stay planted to the bottom for a longer period than most, A month or more is common, allowing us to see more of the place, learn a bit of the culture, how to get around, meet some of the people, and become a regular on the streets and in the markets. There is a comfort for us in spending more time, but trading off the stopping in every port possible as we've moved north/south with the seasons and storms.

I guess in the end the sailing as a way of traveling is a good match for me. No schedule, no return flight, no deadline for seeing what I wish to see then racing off to another land or back "home" for our home is here. If there is work to do, or more to see we simply stay put a bit longer...then move when the wind is forcast as right for our next destination, accepting another if the forcast isn't quite right.

The rest of this month's raft up participants:

1 Dana svnorthfork.blogspot.com

2 Jane morejoyeverywhere.blogspot.com

3 Steph sailblogs.com/member/nornabiron

4 Behan www.sv-totem.com

5 Jessica mvfelicity.blogspot.com

6 Tammy ploddinginparadise.blogspot.com

7 Jaye http://lifeafloatarchives.blogspot.com/

8 Diane http://maiaaboard.blogspot.com.au/

9 Lynn www.sailcelebration.blogspot.com

Land Cruising

      It's been awhile since blogging; Lot's to catch up on so I'll hit a few highlights.  It all begins by taking the boat out of the water. Never comfortable as your home is hanging by a couple straps as it' lifted, washed, then moved over land to some precarious looking stands and blocks to rest out of the water for a while. This time we expect around three months.

The Haul

First stage was a week to prepare her to sit that long without use and do a bit of basic maintenance:

Our Home Away From Home

Cleaning out/defrosting the fridge, changing the solar controller,pulling the prop and sending for a re-pitch, removing all the sails and awnings, marking, and grinding out a few fiberglass blisters.




Next stage roughly two months poking around the US to visit our girls, attend Mom's 80th birthday party, see the rest of our parents, and visit a few friends. The last stage will be returning to Celebration to re-glass in the blisters, install the prop, fix the bent anchor Lynn mentioned, and put on a few new coats of anti fouling bottom paint.

 

Bursing? Adjima Was Very Supportive but No Cash,
 Have to Keep Practicing

     So far so good. The first stage is long done and went without a hitch. Next we spent five days heading west camping along the way. Nice since we took five days to do this trip what we usually do in around two.




Made it to Minnesota by driving all small roads. With the exception of around 25 miles going north from Iowa City we drove no Interstate Highways. All in all a nice, slow trip winding through the Blue ridge Mountains where we saw many deer, a black bear, and across the heartland seeing parts of the country we haven't ever taken the time to see.

Not Sails, But Looking up at the Tent is the Closest We'll Get

We stopped in Iowa City to see our friend Jeff Hazzard who is working there this summer and one of my military brothers (and Dream Team member) from my Mac Dill assignment (now Major) Randy Larson.  Two cool.

Lynn, Me, Mom (Jean Kauffmann), Daughter Amanda

   

On the 4-5th we went into the "Twin Cities" to visit our daughter Amanda and Lynn's brother Tom where we had a BBQ, played a little guitar and got caught up....at least a little after all these years. Now back at my Moms in Glencoe MN and celebrating her 80th birthday which is actually the 10th but the party is on Saturday 7 July. Soon of to Lynn's parents in North Dakota and off to her families reunion. Should be a lot of fun! I'll have to post more updates later.....

Mystery Injury Log II



At left, our bent 60lb CQR anchor and the 45lb backup on the right.

We've been having some trouble anchoring lately. About half of the time, when we try to back the anchor in, it just drags along the bottom. We have to pull the chain back up and try again. And in some cases, again. This is very frustrating because a: we've been doing this for a long time now and setting the anchor has become pretty routine and b: it almost always happens at the end of a long day when we're both in the 'it's 5 o'clock right here, mode'. We didn't give it too much thought, we have a lot going on right now, what with all the socializing and stuff.  But one day, after yet another double attempt, Steve walked back to the cockpit and said with amazement: "It's bent." I gave him my best "         "   blank look.  He pointed to the anchor and repeated "It's bent."  The entire head (?) is bent off to one side, so when that side hits the bottom first, the tip can't hit the bottom to dig in. There is our reason for it only setting half the time.  Somewhere between St Thomas and The Bahamas we managed to bend the anchor.  The funny thing is, we didn't anchor anywhere between St Thomas and The Bahamas. There were no pilings to hit and no bad weather.  This ranks right up there with Steve's mystery broken elbow.  I realize that to some this isn't an injury, per se, but since we tend to feel every bump and scrape Celebration gets, this may take some time to heal.

ahem: I guess I can justify not noticing the bent anchor by saying that our anchor hangs under the bowsprit, we can't see it very well from the deck.

Osprey, Fish Hawks and/or Sea Hawks

We left our anchorage this morning in a light, misting, almost cold rain. The ICW through northern North Carolina into Virginia runs through the Currituck Sound and then up the North Landing River.  It's a winding narrow channel through swamp and marsh land.  The bird life was plentiful and so, as usual, I let Steve do the navigating while I sat with my binoculars and camera.   The osprey were abundant, with the babies just getting big enough to poke their heads up and out of the nests to check us out as we went by.

Osprey build huge stick and debris nests on almost anything close to the water. They're large birds, 24 inches long with a 71 inch wingspan, white on the body, with a cool black eye patch and black wings  They are found on all continents except Antarctica. They are mainly fish eaters. (Although, at one time we had an osprey hanging out and hunting from a neighbors mast. He was there so often,  and was so interested in Adjima on her walk-abouts on the deck that I called the Florida Fish and Wildlife to see, if by chance, he would eat a small mammal.  The answer was a definite 'yes'. I had to start accompanying her on her daily constitutional.) Osprey, along with the owl, are the only birds whose outer toe is reversible, letting them catch fish with two toes in front and 2 behind. 

Osprey mate for life and return to the same nests each year. There are nests that are recorded to have been used for 70 years by succeeding generations. I like the one on the left with the spanish moss added for a little softness.

This was the biggest nest we saw, about 3 feet by 5 feet, the baby is just visible on the top left.

You lookin' at me??

As some of you may have noticed by the numbers on the channel markers, we've reached the northern end of the ICW, red buoy #1 is just outside the window here in Norfolk.  We'll go a little way up the Chesapeake Bay early next week and haul Celebration on Tuesday or Wednesday. Fun fun fun.





Trip Summary

    So what of the off-shore trip you ask? Are you ready to cross oceans? Was it exciting? Boring? Adrenalin filled, how did the two of you do together? Lots of questions out there as well as kind of banging around in my own head. I have been thinking about drafting a sort of summary and haven't yet. Been having too much fun. Things like seeing old friends, visiting our home-away-from-home Oriental, walking around Target gazing at the stuff we really haven't missed at all (yet strangely drawn by the multi-million $ marketing research woven into the packaging, displays, descriptions telling me my life will not be full without this item) and enjoying the cool nights as we poke our way north. I do however owe a great deal of gratitude to those who helped us stay in the loop. Thanks to Amanda who posted updates and Ian, Anne, Greg and Gail who all helped with the locations. We appreciate the concerns from those of you who saw crap weather approaching and were left hanging as to our whereabouts for a couple days.

   For what it's worth I'll give it a try today. Maybe a bit of commentary on us, and a bit on crossings in general as we have seen yet another ARC depart on "schedule" with boats and crews thrown to the weather gods...more there later.  Our trip was for the most part just basic sailing. Most of it was well off the wind, roughly 80% of our wind was from aft of the beam. A tribute to the time of year and the wind pattern gathered through history, proffered by the pilot charts, looked at briefly by me before I fell to the software solution offered by Virtual Passage Planning. Simple way to plug in your route and get a report of wind direction, change it if it looks tough and try again. All based on the historical averages of course but it is almost the best avaialble when off shore for longer than a 2-4 day forecast.  There are other things in the weather mix, but more there later.

The Obligatory Sunset Photo

    The good ship Celebration did just what she was designed to do; sail smooth with her narrow beam, true to the course with her full keel, take care of us with her blue-water construction and run fast (not like a racer of course) with her supersized sail plan. Even with most of our run well off wind we rarely had the full sails in the air. We, and she, prefer to have the vessel upright and even slightly underpowered on long crossings to enjoy what comfort and leisure can be splitting a 24 hour watch schedule just two ways. More so at night as we never go into darkness with a full main and often carry a double reef just so we won't have to reduce sail at night. How can you stand to do that my racer friends ask? Easy when the crew is but two and both must be well rested just in case the unexpected would occur. Besides, we do this for fun, as we both left work to make this extended journey. Stressing gear, me, crew, breaking equipment, tearing sails makes it work. Even so we did have a bit of sail repair underway.

    The stationary front we encountered midway between the Caribbean and the US was our "big" engagement. My watch, I knew it was there and we'd been approaching it for a few days had seen the lightning the prior night so no surprises. Right. I allowed the wind vane to steer us down the face of it on a reach until we were abreast of an area where the wind "seemed" lighter and I was sure I could see well into the weather. Confident this was a more gentle area than the rest I rolled up and in. In minutes I was aware of my poor judgment. With a small part of the working jib flying but only one reef in the main we were grossly overpowered. No more chance of a quick cut through the front we ran off doing 10 knots and our old worn out underreporting wind meter showing 30. Short lived but a little stitching was required afterward. Like always there was a dead calm after the storm so we putted along under power with the jib and the Kenmore (sewing machine) on the foredeck putting a bit of thread back in the line channel at the sail foot. Maybe a bit of Sunbrella re-stitched too but who needs to count. We consoled ourselves with the fact that the blow didn't cause the damage, but the accumulation of Caribbean sun and wind did, today’s blow just moved it up on the repair/maintenance list.

The Route as Planned. Later Turned into a Large
Zig/Zag North, Even into Florida, Finally to Beaufort

    In all other aspects the days were quite slow. Preparing food, eating, doing basic chores around the vessel, sending e-mails, and getting weather faxes/files really took up some time. Then reading. The wind vane Rejse steered, and navigation is easy when off-shore and heading in a general direction. In fact the planned course had but two turns between the end of St Thomas and Beaufort Inlet. Way easier than coastal cruising.

    By the time of our last (after Beryl) leg we had a lot more figured out despite the numbers of off shore miles under our belt already. We followed Beryl up the coast from Florida to North Carolina as it was pushed out to sea by a significant front. We were of course not fast enough to stay ahead of the front. As it overtook us the wind was our wind, headed our way pressing us ahead. But the squall lines leading well, were squall lines, stronger than the gradient wind and with thunderstorms, driving rain. The first approached, we set sails accordingly and sat in the cockpit waiting for the excitement. The wind picked up 35-40 knots, the auto-helm steered, the rain rained, and Celebration headed on her course without a blink or waiver. Lynn and I looking at each other sitting in our full foul weather gear; pelted by the driven rain and smiled, “no problem” we said and broke into our regular night watch schedule. Both dealt with squall lines through the night and neither off-watch had to be awakened to help.

     What did we learn: We still don't know if we want to cross oceans but are confident we can cross oceans, and by ourselves if we opt not to take extra crew. Two people can easily handle a well found vessel if she is not pressed. The self steering must be functional and capable of handling weather when small crewed. Wind steering added to our comfort and speed as it adjusted to minor directional changes, even in light downwind conditions, backup is the electronic auto-helm. SSB is important to us if not for the weather and mail, hearing and talking to friends on the cruiser nets was a  nice link back to the continent, more so as the days went on. Schedules are bad. Lastly weather patterns must be given grave consideration.

    Weather patterns and schedule lead me back to the start, sailing crossings on schedule. Unfortunately as I write this at least one boat sits in the Azores doing repairs after departing on schedule with the ARC Europe. Just like two recent Caribbean 1500's the show went off per the booking, this case while weather patterns created a high probability of storms impacting the North Atlantic. Meanwhile, we have friends underway right now to Europe, one from the Caribbean, and one from the US both of whom heeded this forecast and departed after the patterns changed. We too heeded the patterns by planning our route closer to options than we would otherwise have done and in the end took the option when prediction models indicated tropical storms. My point is just this; being part of a group does not make offshore sailing safer in itself. Worse yet, departure dates and locations may be driven by impacts beyond weather making it far more dangerous. I love the concept of the Rally, but the sailor must make his/her own decisions, have the right ship, have shaken down the vessel themselves after major repair/upgrade, know how to sail their own boat safely, and maintain/repair at sea the items that will jump up on the list. Sorry, a little rant maybe but being part of a rally will not make up for poor weather decisions, a well found ship, or crew experience. Unless it is truly unpredicted and brutal we cannot simply blame the weather and the ocean.

I know I've said it before, but one of the really good things about this lifestyle is the opportunity to meet people and do new things. As you know, we've been writing our blog for about 3 years now, and now we have the opportunity to participate in what's being called a 'Raft up'. A group of bloggers all write about the same subject and link their posts to the next blogger. I'll do a post and put a link to the person from day before and also the day after. The reader gets to go from blog to blog and get many different views or opinions on the same subject. Since our group is composed of cruisers, our topics will be mainly boat related. This weeks subject is 'Hobbies'.

Before Steve and I started sailing, we had nice homes with room for just about whatever hobby we wanted to do. We'll call this time period 'BS', for Before Sailing. I used to be a machine knitter. Machine knitting takes up lots of space, needs lots of storage space for supplies, needs a room with a door to shut out the noise, good lighting, etc. It doesn't transition well to boat life. And since I can't hand knit at all, knitting is no longer a hobby of mine.

Also BS, Steve was a beer brewer. He'd spend all his time in the garage, cooking up batches of the stuff and doing a lot of sampling. Now that we're on board, he's become a rum connoisseur. We've visited most of the distilleries in the east Caribbean and have evaluated them all. He's currently working on spicing our rum, trying to get the Captain Morgan flavor. This also involves a lot of sampling. Is this a hobby?

I also have an extremely green thumb and love to have a house full of beautiful plants and trees. Alas, another hobby that doesn't transition to boat life. I have one plant on board, a ficus benjamin that I bonsai'd back in '96 and can't part with. It's still tiny, but finding a safe place for it is a challenge.

Finding hobbies to do on board has been harder to do than I thought. I'm actually sitting here trying to think of what I do now that I would consider a hobby. Watching the sunset? I guess photography would qualify. It's one thing I'm constantly trying to improve and learn more about. But, nice cameras and salt water can be a bad mix, so it's also a challenge to carry stuff around and not damage it in the dinghy or climbing in and out of the boat and up and down docks.

I'm also a voracious reader. I'll literally read about anything if it's written well enough. One of the great things about all the little marinas with book swap shelves is that I never know what I'll find to read next. I like Sci-fi and there's usually some really old stuff collecting dust on the back of the shelf that I'll bring home. But, books and boat life don't always mix, either.  They weigh a lot and take up a lot of space. They always seem to be under the one leak we have, where ever it is. E-readers seem to be the way to go, but I just don't really like mine. It's just not the same.

So as far as hobbies on board go, I'd have to say they have more to do with location and opportunity than anything else. For example: when we're in the Caribbean I love to snorkel and swim and do it whenever I can. Not so much when we're on the east coast. I love to cook and when we were in Trinidad we had a great time shopping at the local market and trying to reproduce some of the Indian dishes we had there. When we spent a lot of time in Martinique, I worked hard at learning french and reading the dictionary (yes, I will read anything) to find the right words. I think we have to be very flexible as cruisers, be willing to put the interests we have on the back burner and try something new, that just might fit into this lifestyle a little better.

If you're interested in more on the subject, here are some more blogs to check. 

June 1: svnorthfork.blogspot.com

June 2: ploddinginparadise.blogspot.com

June 3: morejoyeverywhere.blogspot.com

June 4: sailcelebration.blogspot.com

June 5: sailblogs.com/member/nornabiron

June 6: lifeafloatarchives.blogspot.com

June 7: svnorthfork.blogspot.com guest blogger LeuCat

June 8: sv-totem.com

June 9: svnorthfork.blogspot.com

Still Waiting

 So, we've been back in the country 7 days and we're on our second out of season tropical storm.  I guess at this point I should apologise to the boating community on the Eastern Seaboard and confess: the storms follow us around like a cat does a gecko. (I used to put the blame on Mr Mac, as we were generally in the vicinity of each other when these storms came around, but now that they're in Tobago, where it's nice and sunny, and we're here, with the storms, that's a little harder to do.) 
So, anyway, we're making the best of being weathered in in St Augustine. Not that it's in any way a hardship, a beautiful old city, cobbled streets, little shops and taverns, a winery. We went out for cheeseburgers and fries and cold beer and margaritas, all at the same time! We walked to Target and strolled around for an hour in the air conditioning , marveling at all the things we weren't missing. We did buy an extra large bag of Twizzlers, you know, to sustain us on the 2 mile walk back.

Great Blue Heron, posing along the ICW.

We 'drove the ditch' to get here from Cape Canaveral. It was much different than what I was expecting. Steve and I call the east coast of Florida the Condo Coast. From off shore it looks like an unbroken line of condo buildings all the way from Miami north to the Georgia boarder.  On the ICW, though, it was beautiful! Salt marshes and tidal flats stretched all around us. We saw manatees and dolphins, eagles, herons, osprey, egrets. We actually got pushed aside by one of the manatees. It dove next to the boat and came over and gave us quite a thudding nudge to one side.  It was about the size of our dinghy and looked a lot like a gigantic potato with barnacles. 

Daytona Beach, the Condo Coast.

Today, we're on board, listening to the weather and watching the tide rise and waiting to see where Beryl goes from here. We might just get a window to follow her up the coast toward the middle of the week.

Just a few words to let everyone know we are in Florida, safe and sound.  We came in through the Cape Canaveral entrance yesterday afternoon and then anchored in Cocoa for the night.  It was a wonderfully boring and sometimes dull trip. Just what I wanted. No surprises. Nothing broken. No storms.  No seasickness. Days on end of sailing. It doesn't get much better than that.
We're going to work our way up the ICW for a few days to St Augustine, then go off shore to NC when the weather clears there. Although with the reports of the tropical storm forming there, it may be a while before we can go. 

As of May 15th

A couple of you have have asked for news and the last I heard from them was May 15th, saying they were diverting to the Abacos for a couple of days. They won't have an email connection while there so I'm assuming that's still where they are. The email below is from Tuesday:

 Decision to do a temp stop made firm this AM after the weather report from Chris and a look at the GFS model, we are going into the Abacos. Yesterday afternoon when we saw the development and decided to turn west has turned out great. Then over 170 nm from the Abacos we never thought we would make it today....planed on slowing, heaviing-to or something for the night. The run has been excellent. Genny and Jigger overnight and today added a reef main...been holding 6-7 for hours on end. We will make the Man-O-War cut before 1800 ( now just 17 nm from the cut!) and will be  anchored there for several days unless the forcast changes a lot.  At some point I will send a note letting you know what the plan is, even though we "technically" can't.

     The wind vane steering has made a huge difference in how many miles we are making. It has been flawless, keeps the sail trim steady even though the course may wander with wind shifts, Chris you would love it! Only issue is one of the blocks I relocated for this application isn't aligned quite right and I'm getting a bit of line chafe. So every three days I tie the sopper knot on the pendulum a couple inches shorter to move the chafe spot. But she steers great and we have so much extra power we're actually running the raday all night steady and using fans/other stuff at will. Amazing. Of course that is aided by the lack of ice consumption in the evening sundowners as well.

As of 1445 our position is:
26 deg 34.727 min North
076 deg 41.512 West

Love to all!
Steve & Lynn

Potential Change of Plan

Email from the folks today:

Current update,

May be a change in plans so letting you all know. Right now we are running due east for the northern tip of the Abacos. Master Chris (Parker/weather guru) said there is a trough pushing down and IF it clears NC we will see ENE in th 25 plus knot (up to gale force) range starting Friday afternoon/evening. Won't last long BUT we can't make enough miles to clear the gulf stream and darn sure don't want to be in it for that event. Talked to a NC HAM tonight and he said all the Carolina forecasts are up in the air...a lot of uncertainty. So we will decide after tomorrows forecast to turn north for Beaufort inlet if the forecast has good certainty, or head to Whale Cay and yellow flag a night or two until the BS passes. IF we end up in he Bahamas there will be no update as the freq is a ham band and neither of us has the Bahamas ticket. I will send an update sometime tomorrow to let you in on the decision, and let you know when we leave.
 
 Meanwhile we had a great run last night and today. Now making 6kts under the genoa and the mizzen on a broad reach 10 kt apparent. Sweet.

Position as of 1700 tonight is:
26 deg 26.68 min North
74 deg 33.68 West.