July 26, 2010

We spent the day with Chris' family yesterday. His sister Jen, her boyfriend Jason and our niece Grace spent some time on the boat. We were happy that they all seemed to like it. Grace especially, she wanted to be hoisted up the mast. With the look of the overhead clouds we decided to wait until the next visit to haul her up 60ft in the air attached to a big metal pole. Jen agreed.

We all went out to dinner at Seafood Sam's. In my opinion...the best fried seafood. Chris was made fun of for being cold. His blood has gotten thin!

July 25, 2010

Yesterday, we went to my cousin Natalie's wedding. She was a beautiful bride, and the reception was a blast. We didn't get to stay until the end, because Dahlia needed sleep, and we had a long drive home. Deason stayed, and I was told he danced up a storm the whole night.

It is amazing how adaptable you become living on a boat. We had to borrow a friends car to get to the wedding, and ended up getting a flat tire on the way home. We were in Falmouth when the flat occurred, and rolled into a local bar parking lot where there were flood lights. The car didn't have a jack, but the bouncer had one and was more than willing to help us. I think he was happy to avoid his job of dealing with the many conflicts that were going on in the parking lot. There was an abundance of colorful language being shouted back and forth, and we were happy to leave once the donut was on.

We were only 2 miles from the boat when the donut went flat. At this point we pulled the car into a church parking lot, packed up, and walked home at 1 am. A few months ago this would have been a big deal, and I probably would have shed a few tears out of frustration. Now, not so much. Dahlia was even happy to be walking around in the middle of the night too.

July 23, 2010

We are finally getting our new chain today, thanks to Pete and Leslie. We will be able to go and anchor if we can't get the work done that we need. Dockage can add up quickly.

Dahlia got to see her friend Will today, they are 3 weeks apart in age, and it is amazing how much these kids change is such a short period of time. They have gone from being babies to being toddlers. Next stop....teenagers.....scary!

Deason has been busy too, he has had one sleep over on the boat with his friend Aidan, and has spent two nights away staying at other friends houses. He has become what we all use to look forward to....the summer friend! We just hope this winter we will find more families with kids Deasons age, in our warmer climate travels.

July 18, 2010

We were going to spend another night in Tarpaulin Cove, but I couldn't do it. I literally felt like I had ants in my pants, I wanted to get to Falmouth so bad! I even cried! It must have been the long journey, lack of sleep the night before, and the fact that family was so close and I could get to them.

It was a short sail over to Falmouth harbor, one of the best days out on the boat thus far. Chris' Dad was on the jetty taking pictures of us coming in, and then he and my Uncle Barry and Aunt Marsha met us at the dock to help us get in. It was such a welcome sight to see them all. Thanks to Barry and Marsh we had all the charts we needed to get up here, and all of their plates and cups from their old boat! It's great to be home!

July 17-18, 2010-Massachusetts

The wind blew hard all night while we were in Port Jeff, I was in fact very nervous, as Deason had mentioned. When we had the chain for our anchor, we used a bridle that helped prevent us from swinging around so much at anchor. We can't use our bridle with the replacement line that we have. So, we do a great deal of swinging or "sailing" at anchor, and it can be very nerve racking, especially since just two days earlier we had dragged. We were fine as Chris had assured me!

We left at 5:30 am, we wanted to try and make it to Newport. We had to motor sail until about 1pm, there was wind, but only about 5 knots. Then about 2pm the wind really started to kick up, just like the previous day. It was blowing 17-20 knots, and we were sailing at 7+ knots, we decided that we just wanted to get home. We sailed all the way to Naushon Island. We had double reefed the main and single reefed the jib by about 6pm, because we were getting gusts up to 30knots. On the catamaran, that makes for good sailing. Plus, I can still cook dinner and it almost feels as if we are on land....almost.

We got to Tarpaulin Cove at 1:30am. We had trouble getting to sleep after that, we were so excited to finally be so close to home. In our courtship, Chris took me over to Tarpaulin Cove on his Cape Dory sailboat 11 years ago! That feels like a different lifetime ago.

July 17, 2010-entry by Deason

Yesterday we had lots of wind to sail. We were flying like a motor boat. We anchored in Port Jefferson. Mom was very scared because we had line and not chain. Dad said it is alright and then Dad said remember line stretches and chain doesn't. Mom wanted to check and see how much a mooring was. She called the guy at the yacht club, he said $45 a night. Mom said we are good here because it was too much.

July 16, 2010

We left our wonderful dock at Port Washington, and made a short run to Oyster Bay. There is a small anchorage right at the head of the bay called "the sand hole". It has a switch back channel into a quiet, protected anchorage. We all slept well after dinner and a swim.

The trouble came when we went to leave. We entered the channel 2 hrs after high tide the night before, and were trying to leave 1 hr before low tide. Well, the abundantly wide channel that we entered, appeared barely wider than our boat as we were trying to navigate out. A lot can change with a 6ft tidal range. In the middle of the switch back there was a small area where we decided to anchor again and wait for more water. Deason and Chris even swam to shore to try and get a better look at the channel to see how wide it was and if we could possibly make it. They determined from their trip ashore that it wasn't worth the risk. (you can see a little of the channel on the middle/left in the picture, between the two sand bars)

Once we set the anchor and the tide started to flood in, we were swinging all over the place, and don't you know we swung right around an old mooring with a crab pot buoy marker. Our line couldn't have gotten more tangled around this thing if we had tried to tangle it ourselves. It took us a good 45 mins to untangle the darn thing. We would rather work all day at untangling than have to deal with the loss of another anchor! Thankfully, this one was salvageable!