Rookies sailing from the Great Lakes to the Caribbean – with patience, care, and attention to detail, you can do it!
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Erie Canal – Part 1
(Originally published in 2012) The Erie Canal – Part 1 Getting started One of the most pleasant cruises we ever undertook was our trip on the Erie Canal. It was one of those “steps” we took in the long series of steps toward getting down to our Caribbean destination. At the time, we…
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Erie Canal – Part 2
(Originally published in 2012) The Erie Canal – Part2 Our Erie Canal Passage We left Tonawanda in the midafternoon after we got the mast tied down, the booms hung up, the awning back in place and everything was shipshape, and we headed up the river for the canal. We were looking forward with no…
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Before We Sailed….
(Originally published in 2012) Sailing – our first time Back prior to about 1990 Annie and I really didn’t have any designs on becoming sailors. We both loved vacationing and visiting the coast. In Michigan we enjoyed Traverse City on Lake Michigan, and when we traveled to Florida, in addition to the expected trips to…
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Nobody Yells
(Originally published in 2012) Back in the spring of 1996, Annie and I were thinking about finally taking that big North Channel cruise that’s so renowned on the Great Lakes. Lake Huron’s North Channel is a remote stretch of Canadian water that extends in an easterly direction from the eastern tip of Michigan’s upper peninsula…
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Learning to Sail
(Originally published in 2012) Back in 1993, after our third trip to the Caribbean, our second camping trip in Tortola where we once again went on a charter trip with Captain Paul aboard the Island Girl, his 44 foot CSY cutter, Annie and I came home with a mission. It was time to get a sailboat.…
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Crossing to the Bahamas
(Originally published in 2012) Miami to the Bahamas Departed for Bahamas in Feb 2005 It’s January of 2005 and we are finally in Miami. It seems like forever and then some that it has taken us to get here but we made it. After the disaster in Portsmouth that took pretty much the entire month…
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The Story of Fidelis
(Originally published in 2012) The Story of Fidelis Here is another story from back in the early days. It’s March of 1997, another long, cold winter dragging on into oblivion. We kept our sanity by anticipating yet another vacation trip down to the BVI, again to Tortola in particular. We had once more invited our…
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Sailing Fidelis Home
(Originally published in 2012) As unnerving and as unpleasant as it may have ultimately been, I still envy Annie this trip. I admire her sense of adventure that allowed her to head off unaccompanied by anything more than her courage and her perspicacity and her ability to grab things by the ears, shake them up,…
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Anchoring
(Originally published in 2012) A recent e-mail inquiry about our book sent to me by a future Caribbean cruiser has prompted me to think about all those nights we spent sitting at anchor. She and her family are still a couple years away from heading out yet, but are concerned about anchorages in the islands,…
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More on Anchoring…..
(Originally published in 2012) This post is aimed at those of you who are out there doing it. It’s a little technical (probably a little too dry for the landlubber…) for those of you who aren’t actually into the sailing or liveaboard life. If you aren’t a sailor, try some of my narrative posts. Those…
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