Farewell Annapolis

Left Annapolis yesterday heading for Norfolk in Virginia.  Its always good to leave a place especially after being stuck there for a while.  Annapolis was a nice town - not too big and everything was close enough for us to walk to.  Interesting fact is that it was in Annapolis that Kunta Kinte from Roots fame was landed way back in the 1700's.

We tidied up the boat once the after effects of the Hurricane had subsided.  The most notable effect was the boat was covered in leaves.  It was as if we had been sailing through a forest!  It took us the best part of the day to reinstall all the deck gear but were delayed by the missing halyard for a few hours.  Both Nic and I took turns at the mast head in a bosuns chair trying to feed the messenger line down but it appeared to be getting stuck halfway down the mast somewhere because we could not see it at the bottom exit hole.  Eventually we had to give up and delay our departure for a day.

Annapolis after Sandy

Not as bad as it could have been

This is a memorial to Alex Halley - he is reading to kids who are not supposed to be swimming

It was about this point that I started wondering whether I had bitten off more than I could chew with the whole boat adventure.  Every now and then it kind of overwhelms you for a time and the frustration of the halyard had brought it on.  The issue for us is that when something goes wrong its always a first and we have a learning curve to go through to fix it which is very frustrating and takes time.  Next morning I got back up the mast head with a couple of new ideas.  It doesn’t help that it extremely cold at the moment from the back end of the hurricane.  After a couple of attempts we managed to see the line at the mast base, hook it and pull it through the opening (which is only the size of the rope).  It was great and the best thing was that the whole family had been wrapped up in this issue so we were all extremely happy and relieved.  We installed the Genoa on the roller furling and continued tidying up.  Nic and the kids went into town for some essential supplies and a last look around.

Thursday morning we left around 10:00 and motored into the bay.  The forecast was NW 10 to 15Kts gustuing 25Kts so pretty blustery conditions.  We set a double reef in the main and a full Genoa as we were on a broad reach.  Once out on the bay proper we reefed the Genoa also.  The boat took off doing an average of 9kts and was hitting 10kts at times.  Very exhilarating sailing which drew compliments over the radio from one passing motor vessel.  Shortly after, the wind was gusting over 20kts regularly and so we swapped the genoa for the staysail to settle the boat down still making 7 or 8 kts which was very timely as we were getting regular gusts close to 30kts.  It is however very cold sailing in these conditions.

We pulled in to shore part way down the bay and anchored overnight.  We will take off tomorrow and stop once more before we get to Norfolk.  Once at Norfolk we have to wait for a weather window for us to make the big passage to Charleston.  We have contacted a professional weather routing service to try and give us the best shot at this.  The real incentive is the temperature - we were debating whether to bring doona’s over when we were packing in Singapore and eventually settled on thin ones for all the bunks.  Now we all sleep with two doonas and when anchored or in port have the heating on.  The temperature here at the moment is around 10 to 12 deg C.  This should nearly double once we get down to Charleston to a very reasonable 20 deg C.  We have all had enough of the cold.  The boat is really a warm weather adventure and it is set up to be outside.

Calley at school