What a week!

Chris here... It's been a few days since I last posted. OK OK - it's been like a week. I'd say "Sue Me", but I guaranty that most of you would probably take that as an invitation and follow through. I don't know that you'd get much as we've dumped most of our livelihood into a beautiful piece of fiberglass with a bunch of holes in it. Go figure! Following a dream - we'll get there yet!

I'm sitting here in our main cabin, surrounded by STUFF, piled to the ceiling in places. Kristen is asleep in the V-Berth and the kids are snuggled soundly in their aft berth. Sometime in the past few days I picked up a major cold - the kind where it feels like the snot starts somewhere behind your eyelids and quickly rolls down your nasal cavities, spontaneously exploding out your nostrils at the most opportune times. Couple this with sneezing fits of 30 continuous sneezes, continuous coughing, sandy eyes... I think you get the picture. Working on Pelican while trying to get healthy again is pretty much an oxymoron.

It's been a rather eventful week or so. I believe you read a couple of Kristen's posting about our move. Things went fairly well, except for the movers completely understanding that we were paying them hourly, and then taking full advantage of it. Even so, it still came in close to budget, which is good since little else has. We managed to lend enough stuff to neighbors so that we could fit most everything in our storage facility. Yep - I'm sure they are all complaining about having to store our wide screen TV, HD Tivo, Piano, Wii, PS3 and lots of other stuff (yeah - just try to complain). What we couldn't fit is going to Kristen's parents house. It's amazing how much stuff you can still keep after having ridiculously huge garage sales. Where did we put it all??

Speaking of Kristen's parents, I have to say that they have been absolutely incredible over the past few weeks. There is absolutely no way that we could be here today if it weren't for them. I know that it's hard for them to see us do this, and that makes me appreciate them even more for being with us day after day, laboring till the wee hours to help us pack, clean our house, paint, move and more. They are still picking up after us even after we have left. They are incredible, and my appreciation and fondness for them is too deep to even express. Thanks Noni and Poppi!

On Thanksgiving day we headed up to their place for a Thanksgiving dinner with family. Due to various reasons, several completely within our control, we ended up staying nearby for a few extra days. It was nice to be able to do a more gradual goodbye than just eating a turkey dinner, coming back in the morning for breakfast and then immediately heading to my Mom's. We also got to spend mucho time with Kristen's brothers and their spouses, and their kids too. Kaitlin pretty much stayed at their place the entire time, only pausing for the briefest of moments to say goodnight to us before she was back playing with her cousins.

From Kristen's parent's we headed south to Stamford, CT to see my mother, sister (and kids) and my 96 year old grandpa. I swear that he's going to outlast us all. I sometimes wonder if it's the last time I'm going to see him, but then I realize that he's still enjoying life, and that's a great thing. My mother cooked a wonderful meal while we all sat around and talked. It was great to spend time with her and the rest of my immediate family, and it all ended too quickly.

On Monday morning we stopped by Landfall Navigation to pick up a few random items such as Bahamas and Florida charts and a ditch bag (a fully waterproof and buoyant bag where we can store lots of emergency supplies). We then headed south to Annapolis, eager to arrive at our home for the next 20 months.

Our arrival at Pelican was both joyous and a bit of a letdown. Every time I set foot on her it makes the world seem right, and this time was no exception. We arrived just before dark, and seeing her in all her glory stirred up some strong emotions in my heart - in a good way. The letdown was seeing her cockpit, and then her interior, after we climbed aboard. The cockpit was filled with wires, parts, tubes, hoses, tools, dirt, dust and more. Entering her interior seemed more like walking into a tiny closet where a 5 year old had just stashed all of their toys while "cleaning their room". Apparently the work being done was not as complete as we had hoped. Everything from every storage closet had been placed on berths and seats to make room to run ductwork for the air conditioning. The generator and autopilot were not completely installed, so maintaining access to the work areas was a priority while cleanliness was not.

In all fairness, the crew from Engineered Marine Systems was given a very difficult task with an impossible timeline. They have done a remarkable job of ensuring that things are done right while still trying to push forward to meet difficult deadlines. They are working long days, past dark, and we greatly appreciate their efforts. Of course, with our arrival, their list of to-do's got longer.

Let's see... what do we have going on? Completion of the generator installation, installation of sound shielding for it, completion of the air conditioning install, autopilot install, install of a wireless repeater, install of a cellular repeater, moving of our VHF charger to the helm, fix the refrigeration, install a new LED mastlight, install antennas on the mast for the repeaters, install engine hoist, install engine mount, install macerator, install additional 12v outlets, and much much more. In the meantime, we're working on our own projects just trying to get ready as quick as possible to head out. We're very late in the "season" to be heading south, and if we wait much longer it will be blizzarding as we have our sails up. We woke up two days ago with a skim of ice over the surface of the creek. I don't think Pelican was designed to be an ice breaker.

Tuesday night we headed over to my cousin Lynne's house. Driving through the traffic on the way there made me realize how much I can't wait to slow down a bit. She showed us some wonderful middle-Atlantic hospitality, and it was great to see her kids and her house and her life. Living away from my family, I realize how nice it is to have people make the trip to your abode so you can share it with them. We really enjoyed our too short time with her, but I'm sure we'll be getting together again soon.

Wednesday we pulled Pelican out of the water to do some work below the waterline. We had to enlarge one of the existing thru-hulls (holes in the hull) to allow for exhaust water to exit the generator. We also had to add a new thru-hull to allow the air conditioning to suck in water to cool or heat Pelican with. Kristen and I took the opportunity to do a few things ourselves, such as drill out the anchor mounting hole so it stays put on our bow (see our blog entries for our trip from CT to Annapolis), put marks on our anchor chain so we know how much we've put out as we drop anchor, verify how the anchor rode is attached to Pelican, change all the zincs, check all of our thru-hull valves to make sure they opened and closed properly (we had one that was sticking - it's better to play with it out of the water just in case the handle decides to break - you don't want water gushing inside your boat - that tends to be a bad thing), and service the propeller. We were out at 8am, and we made it back in just as they were shutting down at 4pm. They actually wanted to re-launch us the next day, but Kristen showed them her sexy smile and they put us back in the water posthaste!

A great longtime friend of mine (one of our two best men from our wedding and someone I've known forever) - Brian - drove in from DC to hang out with us on Wednesday night. We went to Joss Cafe, an excellent sushi place in Annapolis and one of the best sushi restaurants I've been to in the US. It was wonderful catching up with him and hearing about his... Wait - I can't tell you what he does or I'd have to kill you. He works for one of those agencies in DC that protects us from all the bad people.

What else is going on... Kristen has started homeschooling the kids. Kaitlin jumped right in, but Casey was having a few issues dealing with the changes of how his new teacher does things. I don't blame him - he's a guy like me. We're allergic to change. We should be able to stay the same while the world changes around us. It's our right, isn't it? Is that Kristen I hear waking up so she can punch me in the arm and tell me to shut up? Well, if it isn't, she surely will when she reads this blog entry :). Anyway, it turns out that Casey's science book is by the same company as his science book from last year, so once he saw that not everything was going to change he started going along with things. I can't believe he caved :)

We picked up our new dinghy today. We're upgrading from a 9' inflatable floor dinghy with a 6HP to a 10' rigid floor dinghy with a 20HP engine. Apparently, it's like going from a Yugo to a Hemi. Kristen and Casey motored it over from the dealer on Spa Creek to our slip on Back Creek. It's a few miles, yet she still arrived back at Pelican before I did, and I was driving our rental! Casey had an ear to ear grin - "It got up on a plane at only a quarter throttle!" Kristen just said "That was scary." I can't wait to try it out! We're having a big debate as to whether we're going to keep our old dinghy and bring it with us, or put it up for sale. On the one hand, it would be nice to have a second dinghy so the kids can go out and play and not strand Kristen and I on Pelican (that wouldn't be so terrible). On the other hand, it takes up a lot of storage space. We're still having this debate.

Tonight we made new friends and had an awesome dinner with a bunch of Sailnetters, a message board I frequent and have learned quite a bit from (http://www.sailnet.com/forums). We went over to The Boatyard Grill which seemed like a fitting place for a bunch of sailors. It was great meeting new people, and their generous offers to help us while here in Annapolis were very much appreciated.

I'm having a hard time figuring out when we're leaving the safety net of our slip. We should be leaving tomorrow or Sunday, but there's still lots to do on Pelican, including moving in, before we go. Half our stuff is still in our rental, and the other half is spread out between our cabins, the floors, the cockpit and the dock surrounding our boat. I think we brought too much stuff. We'll see how it goes. Anyway, back to the leaving part. We should be heading south ASAP, but we're waiting to finish up the work on Pelican. On the other hand, there's a low pressure system bringing rain and other instability for all of next week. If we don't get out ahead of the system, we're here for another week. Every week we're still here brings us deeper and deeper into the middle Atlantic Winter, which brings cold temperatures, snow, ice and other nasty stuff that I'd rather not be sailing in. It's not really about safety, other than figuring out how to stay warm. Oh well, we'll figure it out.

Hopefully we'll continue to crank through our list tomorrow. It's all about going slow, so I have to learn to deal with things as they come up as opposed to stressing about them. A step at a time. With that, I bid you adieu until my next entry.

P.S. Once we get Pelican cleaned up and more of a pattern going, I'll get some pictures going.

The Long Haul

Kristen here - Today is Thursday December 4th. Yesterday was boat hauling day. We woke up at 7AM to yet another nice layer of frost on everything. It took us a while to get going, and we finally made it to the travel lift at 8:00. As soon as we pulled in, they grabbed our lines and pulled us into the lift. In no time we were up and out onto some stands in the boat yard.

With a finite time to get our out of the water work done, we got to work quickly. Bob and Matt, our crew from Engineered Marine Systems had to put in a thru hull for the air conditioner, enlarge the generator thru hull, put in an above water hole for the air cond and make the various connections. I had to exercise all our thru hulls, service our prop, mark 10' increments on the anchor rode, drill a bigger hole in our anchor, and put new zincs on (note from editor [i.e. Chris] - I love the "I" in this sentence. I helped some!).

We were just wrapping up at 4:00 when the travel lift pulled up behind our boat. The guy operating the travel lift seemed to think we weren't moving fast enough, so he kindly mentioned that if we didn't hurry he could come back tomorrow.

As we were put back in the water, our good friend Brian came walking down the dock! He lives in DC, and drove down to visit us. After exchanging hugs and friendly insults we went out to the Sailyard for Hot Buttered Rums. Mmmmmmmmm...nothing is better than a Hot Buttered Rum after a hard days work in the cold! The sailyard knows how to do them right too!!!

After the Sailyard it was off to Joss for the best sushi ever. We lasted a couple of hours and started falling asleep in our sukiyaki. Brian dropped us off at our boat and we said our goodbyes. It was great to see you Brian!!!

We Made It To The Boat

Kristen here - it's Tuesday December 2 and we've made it onto the boat...sort of. We arrived on Monday afternoon to find everything from inside our storage areas in our living areas. This means there are pretty much no living areas for us. There is also no propane which means no cooking. Ok, maybe no cooking isn't so bad.

The reason for the mess is that they're still working on installing the generator, air conditioning, cell and wireless amplifier, engine hoist and various other stuff. We've decided to keep our worldly possessions in the rented minivan until the workers are done. That way our stuff won't be in their way, and hopefully they'll be done faster.

Our first night on the boat was simply heaven! I haven't slept so well in ages. I was even rested up enough to go for a run in the morning. Life felt almost normal after a run and a refreshing shower. After that it was off to run errands. We had to check on engine work, get the kids foul weather gear (you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find offshore gear for an 8 yr old!), find a collapsible shopping cart, and buy a dinghy. We managed everything but the shopping cart. We also managed to fit in a trip to a favorite Annapolis restaurant, Chick and Ruth's Delly. Yes that's Delly and not Deli. It's an absolutely amazing Jewish Deli in the heart of Annapolis. Go figure!

Tonight we went to visit Chris's cousin Lynn and her two kids Ben and Sarah about an hour away from here. It was great to see Lynn (sorry we missed Karl!), and the kids were so cute. Casey and Kaitlin proceeded to chase Ben and Sarah around the house the whole evening with a 5 minute break for dinner! Thanks for the hospitality Lynn!

Tomorrow we get the boat hauled for the day. I believe they're putting in a thru hole for the air conditioning, and I'm going to service the prop. We also need to enlarge the hole in the anchor and mark the anchor chain. As Chris realized on the trip from Long Island, the temporary fix didn't work. Also we never marked the anchor chain, so every time we let it out it's a guess as to how much chain is out. Now that I'm writing this I realize that we never bought paint to mark the chain. Good thing we still have the car!

Speaking of the car, we only have it until Friday. This means it's a mad dash to get everything done before then. Once the car is gone it's kinda tough to run to Home Depot! Even for me :)

Oh, we also started homeschooling! Well, again, kind of. We realized that there is a ton to do before we have to give up the car, so school is happening on the way to places and during downtimes. I read through Kaitlin's history book and found out that God is mentioned an awful lot. Not that I'm against God, but I would like an unbiased history of the world. Not one that starts out with God created the stars. After a brief panic and a check of the web, Calvert is actually toted as the most non-religious home school out there. Phew!

So we're here but still in limbo. It will be nice once we can actually move on board and put everything away and get on our way.

Moving Day!

Kristen here - Today is Saturday the 29th of November. Wednesday was moving day and everything has been a blur since then. 

 

The movers arrived at 9:07 and spent about 1/2 hour walking around the house and deciding how to approach the move.  I kept thinking to myself, OK, that was just $75 worth of planning and just get moving already!  A move that was quoted to take 7 hours with travel time about 45 minutes away ended up taking 7 hours when travel time got reduced to 5 minutes.  We decided at the last minute to get a different storage facility that was much closer. Thank goodness we did!

 

Thursday was Thanksgiving at my parents house with my two brothers families.  It was so much fun watching all 6 cousins playing together.  At the same time it was sad knowing we wouldnt be seeing everyone for a while. 

 

We were planning on leaving the next morning to head south for CT to see Chris's family and then on to Annapolis, MD.  We wanted to get out early to make it to Landfall Navigation in CT to pick up some cruising guides.  After finding out that Landfall was closed on Friday we decided to stay at my parents house till Saturday and head to CT on Sunday.  YAY! more time with my family.

 

Its been nice having some extra relaxing time.  It's getting really crazy running around so much.  Today (Saturday)  we're all going to the YMCA to swim and just have fun.  Aaahhhh fun...its been a while!

 

 

Last day of school

Hi again! I just wanted to talk about my last day of school. I got out of school a couple of days before Thanksgiving. Since Tuesday was my last day of ACTUAL school, I tried to do my best to make it a good day.

It went sort of like this. When I walked into 1st period, the teacher sent me down to the office with the attendance even though I was the only one not raising my hand. When I got to the office, my principal, Mr. Taylor, started talking to me about the trip. I went back to class and the rest of the day was pretty much average. Until I got to math. I walked into math with a slight craving for cake (yeah I know, weird). Halfway through math a few kids walked into the room holding a jimungo card. It said goodbye, and we’ll miss you on it in several different languages! It was so great! The entire 7th grade signed it! I read through it and thanked everyone, and what does the teacher pull out of the closet? Yup. You guessed it! CAKE!!!!!!!!

It turned out to be a great day. It turns out; the teacher purposely forgot to bring down her attendance. While I was delivering the attendance she called Mr. Taylor and told him to stall me so everyone could sign the card! How ya like them apples?!? The master plan was all devised by my best friend, Danielle. If anyone who made or even signed the card is reading this, thanks!!!!

What do you want to know?

I'm sure y'all are thrilled to read about our exciting days of putting things in boxes and copying files off of computers. Today was another day of the same, but we capped it off with burritos from Bomber's Burrito Bar. For those of you out-of-towner's, Bomber's serves burritos that are as big as a weightlifter's forearm, overflowing with black beans, guacamole, sour cream, various fillings (I had Red Stripe Marinated Pulled Pork tonight) and mounds of lettuce, tomato and cheese. Anyway, that was about as exciting as today got.

With that in mind, and the fact that I don't see life getting much more exciting until we get to Annapolis next weekend (hopefully no "moving" stories!), if anyone has any questions for us please ask them as comments by clicking on the "Comments" link directly under this posting. We'll be sure to do our best to answer them!

Packing Sucks

Alright - I can officially say there's nothing good about getting ready to go. I know the "going" will be great, but preparing is, well, not great. I'm sure we'll be celebrating soon though.

Last night we had our office holiday party and I had the opportunity to see lots of people for the last time until we next return. It was a fun time, but also generated a somewhat melancholy feeling as I truly realized what we are leaving behind. While I'll still be talking on a regular basis with everyone from my office, I will miss being with my colleagues and customers on a daily basis. Tonight we're getting together with a number of people from our marina for a final hurray. I'm looking forward to it, but at the same time it's just kind of sad to have to say goodbye.

Kristen, along with her mother, is in the process of packing up the house. There is still a lot to do, and only a couple of days to do it in. I'm working on pulling our personal stuff off of our home computer to have it on our boat (e-mail, pictures, documents, etc.). I don't think that Kristen (or her mom) are happy that I'm sitting at the computer while they pack boxes. Yeah, I know, I wouldn't be either. The movers are coming on Wednesday morning to bring our stuff to the storage facility, and we have to be ready for them.

Anyway... back to packing!

Casey's first post

Hi! I’m Casey. My dad has decided to let me start posting on the blog! I just wanted to put in my thoughts and opinions on our trip. First, I think it’s great that we are doing this.

It’s kind of funny what happens in school when I tell people about it. This is how it goes: (Me) “hey, did you know we’re going to the Bahamas on our boat?” (Them) “Seriously? That’s so cool! How are you going to go to school?” (Me) “I’m gettin’ homeschooled.” (Them) “Is the boat big?” (Me) Well… you know… it’s a boat.” (Them) “Why?” (Me) “Because it’s cool!” It’s the same process for everyone I know. Even teachers! I’m super excited. I’m always counting how much longer it will be before regular school ends for me. Just one week exactly left . Then we leave for thanksgiving break and during thanksgiving break we go to our boat!!!

The Garage Sale

It's Kristen here! I'll be posting here too, as will Casey and Kaitlin.

Thank goodness the garage sale is finally over. Two weeks of carting junk to the garage, and then the basement because the garage was full. Two weeks of putting little colored dots, pricing your treasured memories, on over 600 items. Many thanks to Mom for all the help!

I was worried about the turnout for the garage sale. Usually people go out to sales when the weather is nice and warm. Fall is not a normal time for this. We decided to have the sale over two weekends, in case the first one was rainy. I put out a million bright pink signs, and apparently they worked.

The first Saturday morning 7 AM rolled around and nobody showed up. Usually the early birds come by then. I thought to myself, “Oh jeez, I was right. Nobody is going to show up.” Then 8 AM came and the shoppers descended. I swear there must have been 100 people in my garage and basement before noon that first day. And they bought everything!

I had old cookbooks that the cat scratched up and people bought them. A DVD player that I promised would never work got sold. One lady was heading up the stairs to my house and looked at the mat at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you going to sell that?” She asked. I thought about it for a second and said, “I guess I can’t take it with me!” Numerous kids games and clothes. The funny thing was as I loaded stuff into the garage, I noticed we had duplicates of a couple of games. I think we had so much stuff, we didn’t realize we had certain games and bought more. Now that’s a lot of stuff!

When I’ve had garage sales in the past, if I showed a profit of $200 or more, I was happy. Let me just say, this one made much more than tenfold of that! Holy Cow! Many people commented about the pink signs. That’s marketing for ya.

Now that the garage sale is done, and my last big activity at work is done things are taking a huge turn for the better. I no longer snarl at people, or fall asleep in my dinner. All that is left to do is clean out the leftovers from the garage. Then I will move as much furniture as possible into the garage for the movers. They said the easier you make it for them, the quicker they will go, and the cheaper it will be for us.

I ordered the kids home schooling system today from Calvert. They each took tests, and then Calvert determines what grade they are placed in. Casey, who is currently in 7^th grade placed into 7^th grade. Kaitlin, who is currently in 3^rd grade placed into 4^th grade with 3^rd grade math. I think that will work out because Calvert said the only difference in grade levels is the amount of reading and writing they have to do. Seeing as Kaitlin is a speedy reader and writer, being in a higher grade will hopefully slow her down enough so that both kids take the same amount of time to finish their work. We’ll see how that all works out. I’m also eager to get the books and see how much space they will take up. Oops, so sorry kids, we won’t have room on the boat for science….

If any neighbors are reading this, Bonzai Falls is up for grabs! The mice got to it, but I patched the holes and the price is right. If you’re willing to drag it to your house it’s all yours. Hours of waterslide fun! Well at least until the patches break.

It keeps on going and going and going...

Well, the garage sale is finished. Yippee!! It was not fun watching years worth of accumulated "stuff" being sold for pennies on the dollar, but it is what it is - a step on the way to leaving. We made a few thousand dollars, and that will go a long way to paying for some of the really expensive stuff we need to put on board Pelican. Yes, you can do a cruise without getting all of the things we're getting, but I'm not the kind of guy who likes to camp. I need a bit of luxury, and my generator and air conditioning unit is going to give me the little luxury I'm looking for. There is still so much more I haven't even figured out yet, but we'll get there.

I decided that I'm going to make an impromptu visit to Pelican tomorrow (Monday). One of the items we need to install is an outboard motor crane. The new outboard engine for our new dinghy is going to weight about 120lbs. You can't just pass that down to a person waiting in the dinghy like we currently do with our 45lb 6HP outboard. As a result, we need to install a small "crane", which is basically just a pole with a lifting tackle giving us some leverage to raise and lower the engine.

The pole, however, has to be mounted on the stern of Pelican, along with our two outboards, our BBQ, two GPS antennas and the mounts for our cockpit enclosure. This might take some finagling, so I'm going to head south for the day (via my best friends at Southwest Airlines) to figure out how to best position it. I don't want to have any surprises later. It sucks to have to spend the money to fly down last minute, but, once again, it is what it is. I'll let you know how this truly exciting trip works out.