All Hands On Deck   Adventures on land and at sea

        One of two things is going to happen: either Lee and I are going to get used to crazy, horrifying disasters or we’re going to perish in the ocean. That’s what I’ve decided the fates have in store for us after our latest and greatest adventure.         Let me set the scene.         We’re motoring South along […]

We’re so close, how can we not stop in New York city? After spending a few fun-filled days on a mooring at the 79th street boat basin during the summer we know it’s an opportunity not to me missed. This was actually a much more difficult decision than I make it out to be. Pirat […]

The timing couldn’t be better. We pulled into the Housatonic River and picked up a (free!) Housatonic Boat Club mooring yesterday afternoon. This morning, the rain began. We’re in for a couple days of solid rain. The past two jumps down the sound have been uneventful. We left Mystic expecting 15-20 knots and were prepared […]

Quoting myself, very late on Friday night. One of the handful of pictures I took before things got crazy on Friday. Where do I even begin the account of our sail on Friday? We left Newport at 5 am. It was cold and dark. It got windy as the sun came up. Then it got […]

Newport is a nice place. Of all the ports where we could be stuck, I’m glad we’re stuck here. The weather just isn’t cooperating for a hop to Cape May, NJ, or even Sandy Hook, NJ on the northern end of the state. The wind vacillates around the West/Southwest/South directions, none of which are ideal […]

We made it to Newport! It really does feel fantastic to be here and know how hard we worked to get here (even if it isn’t that far compared to where we’re eventually going!). The passage was windy, wet, rough, cold, and long. It wasn’t any longer than we thought it would be but it […]

I’m really getting into this whole fall thing. It’s beautiful! There are apples and giant pumpkins everywhere. It feels like really Fall rather than a season contrived for selling Halloween candy. The temperature is just about perfect, although I can tell it’s cold enough to motivate us to move south. Pirat went back into the […]

Yesterday Lee and I washed and waxed Pirat’s topsides (the sides of the boat above the waterline). Actually, we washed twice: once on Thursday and then again yesterday because we had to come back to try to get a few more stains off. A kind boatyard employee brought us a little Fiberglass Stain Remover (FSR) […]

So much to do and so little time seems like the wrong thing to say in this situation. We’ve been hanging out in Maine all summer and it seems like everything we need to do before we leave for real has been put off till these last couple weeks. Certain things, like the auto pilot, […]

Maine has a strange kind of time-warp going on. It seems like forever since we brought the boat up here with my dad and sailed to Acadia with Doug. The weeks go by slowly but days pass in a flash. Pirat is happily anchored in front of the house. Lee has been going down his […]