It’s been rather difficult to keep this blog going – we’re still working stiffs and we know that some folk at the companies occasionally (no doubt mistakenly) stumble across the blog and well, there are certain things that it just wouldn’t be right to share prematurely… but now we can… 🙂

We have given notice of our intention to retire!    Laurie and I are cutting our respective chords – just when we’re making decent money(!) – in order to pursue a life of layabout cruising gypsies! Scary times, but we can’t wait!

Our last day at work will be June 3^rd – so we’ve given tons of notice, so that the companies can plan accordingly (in my case, the celebration party that they’ve finally gotten rid of me!) – and which also gives us some time to make final preparations without having to hide the details… It all works out with our landlord too – who announced to Laurie just a couple of weeks ago, that they intend to sell – so timing couldn’t be better 🙂

 

 

So, where to from here?

First plan is the OCC’s Southern New England Cruise which we are organizing again.

 

The Cruise starts on June 24^th in Newport and takes us through some favorite anchorages up to Boston for the July 4^th celebrations and ends in Gloucester on July 9^th.  http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ec335o6i8a3a0fac&llr=kp8hgejab

This handily poises us ready for a trip down east (feels north!) to Nova Scotia where we will join the Royal Nova Scotia Yacht Squadron’s cruise up to the Bras d’Or lakes and then go on to Newfoundland where we plan to spend August exploring the Outports on the southern coast – as well as the two little French (as in France) islands just off the Newfoundland coast, Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

The summer cruise should be a great shakedown cruise for us – not too far away, but full time living aboard – plus it’ll give us some opportunities to practice some of the more unusual cruising methods (like using shore ties) which we will need for the next leg of our trip. Unfortunately it’ll probably allow us to practice our use of radar too – since it’s quite likely we’ll encounter significant fog up in Newfoundland.

In October we’ll head south down to New York City and Washington and then cross to Bermuda and on to the Bahamas for Christmas/New Year. We then plan to visit Cuba before heading across the Caribbean Sea to Costa Rica and to Panama, passing through the Canal in February or March. We’re then heading south along the South American coast, stopping in Columbia, Ecuador and Peru on the way to southern Chile and the Patagonian Channels. With any luck we’ll make a day-sail rounding of Cape Horn in January of 2018 if weather permits.

It’s a stupid route – bucking both wind and current – but I would really like to see the Incan remains in Peru again (have been dying to show them to Laurie) and both of us have been itching to get to Patagonia.

From there…?  Who knows!