Thursday, September 15, 2016

2016 update


This is very late, so I want to make it short.  A lot happened with us in the past year.  We moved from Peaks Island to South Freeport in October, 2015.  That is a whole separate story, but a lot of work was done to the Freeport property in anticipation of our future there.

At the end of April, 2016, we moved Magus from DiMillos’s Marina (which we loved and where she had been since we brought her to Portland in 2012) to South Freeport harbor on the Harraseeket River.  That started with a couple of months at Brewers Marina on the hard, where a lot of work was done: Topsides painted, second water tank cleaned and painted, electrical things, new speed/ temp unit, replaced back stay, bottom paint, etc., and the big one: rebuild the two hydraulic cylinders at the rudder end of the steering system.   Many of these things were done to satisfy the marine survey that was performed for the first time.  Prior to this, we only had liability insurance, but now we have full boat insurance.  That’s supposed to be a good thing, but it could be debated.  Then, in July, Albert retired from his job as Town Engineer/ Public Works Director for Freeport.  All this was to prepare for going on a voyage somewhere for the winter of 2016-17.

You can find in an older post our thoughts on going to Nova Scotia, the Azores, maybe Europe, maybe to the other Atlantic islands, and down to the Caribbean.  Here’s the current reality.  We have two dogs we are taking with us.  We are not going to be ready to go anywhere until close to September.  Albert really wants to go somewhere warm this year.  We are both worried about the Zika virus that is serious in the real Caribbean.  It will probably be in the Bahamas this winter, but they aren’t so populated (except on New Providence island and Nassau,) so we are imagining that the mosquito risk will be manageable.  We have screens, and DEET, and protective clothing, so we are really going to try to not get stung.  We’ll let you know how it works out.

The Bahamas are relatively easy to get to, compared to the real Caribbean that is much further to windward, not to mention just farther.  So, the plan is to go the Bahamas in the vicinity of Georgetown, Exuma.  Visit the Exumas, maybe Eleuthera, Long Island, Cat Island, Rum Cay, San Salvador.  That’s a lot of territory, actually.  To start with, we have gone through the process to get the Animal Import Permits for Bee and Tigerlily, saying we would arrive in West End, Grand Bahama.  That means we will leave from somewhere in Florida, like West Palm Beach—Lake Worth Inlet.  That will mean a lot of travelling down the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW).  It would be considerably shorter and faster to go straight from Beaufort, NC to Marsh Harbor in the Abacos (northern Bahamas,) so that’s not completely ruled out.  Or, something in between.  At least, we’ll likely do some overnight passages between major ports to reduce some of the longer sections of “ditch” on the ICW.

But before that, we took a “shakedown” trip this summer to Rockland for the SSCA “Gam” in Penobscot Bay.  In previous years, it was held at Islesboro, so this was the first year at a new location— the south Rockland harbor, and the Sail Power and Steam Museum, started by Jim Sharp.  He was very gracious, and meeting the SSCA people was fun and interesting.  The event was organized by Keith and Nikki Davie on S/V Sionna.  They plan to go down the ICW this fall, so we will likely see them at some point.

While we were there, Sophi and Travis visited with the grandkids, Felix and Hazel, ending up spending the night.  That was a nice family adventure.  We also visited with Sophi's friends Colin and Ann on Mimi Rose.  This photo is from another summer sail in Freeport:

Next, we’ll update on how it’s actually going…