Still Here…

We are a couple of days late. The weather has not been kind – with erratic winds and cold temperatures, so we wimped out and continued to ready ourselves. Tomorrow’s forecast is much more benign with temperatures reaching the 70’s perhaps and winds starting at 5 – 10, building to 10 – 20.

ready to go

First destination is Marion – meeting up with someone else that’s headed to the Azores this summer, but leaving a couple of weeks after us.

I’ve had butterflies in my stomach the last couple of days – don’t think it was alcohol related! – and so it’s probably a good thing we have the delay – feeling now like it’s time to get out of Dodge. Laurie has also been tense – and saying goodbye is not her strongest suit. But goodbyes are said, we’re ready to go.

New batteries were installed – with great thanks to Brian Gardener for heaving the 175lb monsters out and replacing them with 4 new monsters. The voltage readings are now much more stable and it feels like we have solved that problem…

We now have a spot tracker. It allows me to send a position update regularly via satellite and a link is posted under the menu heading ‘1st: Where are we’   I was hoping to be able to accomplish the same feat through the SSB radio, but have not had a chance to get the thing working right – or at least tested (hopefully it’s working fine). Over the course of our sail up to Boston we’ll attempt to get the SSB going properly – but even so, it’s nice to have the Spot as a backup.

Food and clothing are all aboard – everything is aboard and packed away. You’d never know that we have all our belongings in the boat – it still looks nice and neat – at least on the surface!

The monitor windvane is back aboard with new control lines – and we hope to use it most of the way and avoid use of the autopilot which is a bit of an energy hog.

We will be using a weather router – Commander’s Weather – who we are to contact on May 30th to see if a June 2nd departure makes sense. They will provide us with their advice on which direction to head and where to avoid. In addition we hope to pull on the resources of Herb Hilgenberg for daily log-in and updates to the weather forecast – and his advice on which way to turn.

So, early morning start tomorrow – will check in when we get to our first port of call!

 

5 thoughts on “Still Here…

  1. Peter Sterrett

    Weather is beautiful on the Sakonnet this morning, it’s 6:30am hope to see you sailing down the river shortly,

    Reply
    1. admin Post author

      We’re having a good shakedown cruise -getting all the mistakes dealt with early I hope!!!
      All well aboard…

      Reply

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