This is the old original introduction to the site. Read ON!
Sailing to the Caribbean – the prequel
Welcome to our blog
This blog was really a long time coming. I wanted to do it for those of you out there who are just starting to think about it and for those of you who have begun to take steps toward living that sailing dream. Hopefully we’ll give you some encouragement and some insight into the fact that you really can take a dream and turn it into reality. This first installment is just the beginning. I want to tell you what it was like, how we did it, what we did right and what we did wrong. I’m also going to give you some background information to illustrate just how green we were. When we left we weren’t sailors, that’s for certain. Sailors grow up in sailboats. Like horsemen learn horses from growing up with them, sailors learn sailing as their parents teach them the ins and outs of sailing from the day they are born so that it comes as natural to them as walking. As we went along, we did eventually become decent boaters, and eventually we were boaters who did an okay job of sailing. Every trip, every leg, every outing built upon the one before it.
Annie and I originally started our dream cruise back in 1999 when we headed south from the Great Lakes. We started things out incrementally, leaving our berth at Bay Harbor Marina in Bay City, Michigan in early July and heading down the Great Lakes waterway and across upstate New York via the Erie Canal and down the Hudson River to the Atlantic coast. At the time left, we had already sold our home and business the year previous, but since we still had our youngest daughter at home finishing her final year of high school and about to enter her first year of college, we both took jobs locally for another year in order to ease the transition of our sailing off. To make this first leg of our intended journey, we temporarily left those jobs, allowing ourselves three months to make the trip from Bay City down to the Chesapeake. Prior to our departure we had already made tentative plans for the boat to be hauled for the winter at a Maryland marina.
We thought we had done some pretty good advance planning when preparing for this trip, but we quickly and repeatedly learned that plans, like promises, were made to be broken. So often did things require a quick revision that we soon started telling friends, acquaintances, and family that our plans were “carved in mud.”
This trip was such an educational experience for us. From working our way across the Erie Canal through more than 30 locks, to dealing with tides for the first time in our sailing lives, navigating our way through pea soup fog as we headed south along the Jersey coast, and a sudden crash course on dealing with crabpot piloting on the Chesapeake, it was all new.
When we finally hit Chesapeake Bay we headed over to the Chester River where we were nailed by a major squall that knocked out power to a large portion of Annapolis across the bay, our anchor down in just the nick of time but not without some superficial damage. After the storm we moved on to Lankford Bay Marina off the Chester to leave the boat while we drove down the eastern shore and across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel to visit my sister in North Carolina while Hurricane Dennis wandered aimlessly for several days off the coast of the DelMarVa. Once that situation resolved, we sailed over to the City Docks of Annapolis to spend several days visiting some of our favorite haunts. Surprisingly our plans suddenly took one of those unpredictable turns. On the heels of Dennis, Hurricane Floyd came roaring up hellbent from the Atlantic but fortunately just crossed the mouth of the Chesapeake and headed up the eastern shore. Because the holding is so poor in Spa Creek (With sufficient wind, anchors just seem to plow a major league furrow along the bottom in a good blow.) we felt extremely fortunate that we had been invited by a nearby landowner to tie up to his very sturdy, heavily built dock where we rode out the storm – our first hurricane aboard, but certainly not our last. The best part of where we tied up was the 30 to 40 foot high riverbank to windward immediately off our bow. To use quote Bob Dylan, it gave us that important extra “shelter from the storm.” For us, tied up in Spa Creek, the result of the passing hurricane was a sudden negative tidal surge which left us becalmed and sitting nearly high and dry after the storm passed, as a massive amount of water was sucked out of the entire Chesapeake Basin.
Finally it was an easy trip back over to Langford Bay and our marina and preparation for our departure. My last recollection of that trip was of me covering the boat with our heavy winter cover prior to leaving Fidelison the hard for the coming winter. As darkness settled over us and I was finishing the job, the mosquitos came roaring out in full force and I spent more time swatting and batting at the insects than I spent working on my appointed project. Then it was back to Bay City and work until the following spring when our new life was scheduled to begin. The excitement was palpable – we had finally embarked on the first stage of a trip that had been nearly 10 years in the planning. More on that to come….
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