Alexei and Natasha are back at sea again, on the way to the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show. They are getting better weather for this leg, 2-4' seas.
I am able to keep track of them using AIS shore stations and a SPOT transiever. It is interesting to see their progress. See the screen shots.
After the Annapolis Boat Show, Alexei and Natasha took off immediately for Beaufort. They are real troopers and Anjumal is a great boat. They had 5' seas in the Chesapeake and 8-10' seas going around Hatteras. They were glad to be getting to Beaufort for some rest.
We acquired the new Anjumal in July after she was shipped to Miami from China. Since then she has travelled to Beaufort, NC, Annapolis, NYC, Boston, Portsmouth, Portland ME, and back to Annapolis. Right now she is in the Annapolis Powerboat Show for the builder, Bering Yachts. Stop by and take a look if you are in Annapolis. She will also be in the Ft. Lauderdale show later this month, for those of you that will be there.
Our final weekend on the boat. Like I said, it is a short summer this year. Fortunately Heidi agreed to share her birthday weekend with us and the family joined us for a celebration weekend. We have known Mike and Heidi for a long, long time, and have had many great times with them on the first Anjumal. We were glad they were able to spend a weekend with us to initiate the new Anjumal.
We had planned to make the trip to Snow Island, but the time was short and the forecast was for 6' seas. No fun. It was suggested that just being at the mooring was enough fun, but, I wanted to go somewhere. I figured we could stay mostly inside and still get to Long Cove. We had a good time there several weeks ago, and could give it another go.
As we entered Harpswell Sound form Potts Harbor, we were exposed to the rollers from the south. Based on the rolling there until we could get a bit more protected, we were glad we had forgone the Snow Island cruise.
Once in Long Cove, I had arranged for a diver to check out the bottom, in preparation for the trip to Florida. We picked him up in the dinghy and let him do his thing. I new I had some lobster pot rode on the shaft and he confirmed there was a lot of it and removed it. The rest of the bottom, he reported was clean as new. If you remember the entry from three weeks ago, we had wondered about the depth. The diver confirmed he was standing on the bottom to work on the prop.
We normally celebrate anchoring after a day's cruise with a bottle of champagne. We had stocked up in February for this, before selling the first Anjumal. Fortunately we had the right crew aboard to deal with the stockpile and the birthday celebration to use for the excuse. We had a great party!
The weather is a bit snotty. It is the weekend pattern. We have a very short time in Casco Bay this summer, so we can't bear the idea of just sitting on the mooring for the weekend.
We took a short cruise up to the Goslings. A protected cove next to Goose Island. We re supposed to have 40-50 knot winds overnight, but instead it rained like crazy until about 2am then got very calm.
I enjoy every day out on the water. Even if it's raining. We have not had much time on our new Anjumal. Today, I brought a pile of storage bins and drawer organizers and set out to bring some organization to all the spares, tools, and miscellaneous stuff that is piled randomly into drawers. I even brought an HDMI cable to hook the 42" plasma to the DVD player properly, although I cannot figure out how to get better than 480i (very low resolution) sent from the player to the TV. After working on this most of the day, I am feeling much better about the condition of the boat and all of our stuff on it. The rain made for a great work inside day.
Sunday, after all the organizing we get off a little later than we wanted and get back to the mooring with only a little margin to catch the launch.
We spent our first weekend with guest aboard with Melodye and Earl. We went to Long Cove. In the past we would anchor at the entrance, but with the slightly more compact new Anjumal, we decided to go further into the cove. I'm not completely confident in the new electronics and didn't know the contour of the bottom, so Earl rigged a sounding line and we took soundings around the boat. Our conclusion was we would have a couple of feet at low tide.
Sherry accidentally dropped a can overboard. What a litterbug. As we wanted it float away, I decided it would be a good time to play with the crane. The first launch of the dinghy was a success! Since we were out and about, I thought it would be a good time to snap some pictures. You can see Melodye and Sherry on the bow and a nice picture of Anjumal in the cove. Turns out the west side of the cove is only a foot or so deep at low tide, based on the sounding we did with the dinghy outboard. Fortunately it is soft mud and sand instead of the usual Maine rock. We kept close to the east side of the cove on the way out.
I work with Melodye and Earl just retired from being the captain of a super tanker on the Alaska to Long Beach run. He likes being at the helm. You can see him taking charge of the dinghy. I forgot this on the way to long cove and did all the piloting myself. On the way back he subtly mentioned that if I wanted a break... I didn't have to let him finish to turn over the con. All the lobster pots are a pain to steer around, so it was a welcome offer.
We were anxious to get to Falmouth, so we did a nightime trip from Portsmouth to Falmouth. We arrived about 2:00 and were asleep on the mooring at 2:10. It is always comfortable to be back on our mooring. It sat idle all summer. I even called Handy to make sure they had not pulled it for the year. The boats are already starting to thin out, but the launch driver, who hadn't seen us all summer wanted to know how our winter in Boston had been.
The delivery is essentially over. We pulled into our home port and were greated by friends with a champagne toast.
From Boston, we stopped in Gloucester for the night to be ready for the trip to Portsmouth in the morning. We like how we can get in and out of Gloucester easily day or night regardless of the weather. Today it was a bit snotty out. But that didn't deter the schooner races. See the picture for two of them returning to port. There were 8-10 of them that we saw outside the harbor for the race.
We stopped into Boston for a couple of nights on the way to Maine. Tonight we have Julia and a bunch of her friends aboard to party in Boston and greet the new boat. It is too cold and late to take a cruise and do the usual swimming thing, but lobsters and artichokes are still on the menu.
We thought we'd like to stop by Provincetown on the way back to Maine. Sherry has a favorite jewelry shop, and it is fun to eat out on the open deck and people watch for a bit. We also picked up a copy of a great new game, The Settlers of Catan - very fun for evenings aboard with friends.
Got this first picture of our own from the launch on the way to shore.
A long trip across the Hudson, later, and we are in NJ. We walked to Andy's apartment and spent the day shopping and the evening partying with his friends.
After taking delivery in Annapolis, our first stop was Chelsea Piers in NYC. We bought enough dinnerware in Annapolis for what turned out to be a party for 14. Andy was there with his friend Mike. We got to see a lot of our NY friends and had a great evening on the boat.
It was my first back-in docking job and the first time in a marina. We practiced backing and filling out in the Hudson for a bit before going in. The docking job was perfect. Now I have to keep it up.
We arrived in the morning, but had to do a lot of shopping. West Marine for an EPIRB, Bed Bath & Beyond for dishware and linens, grocery store for food, etc. The rental Explorer needed two trips. At the end of all this we sent Alexei off to drive the rental back to Raleigh and we spent the night resting for an early departure the next day.
We weren't too tired for the water taxi to take us to Pusser's for a dinner on the water and a couple of painkillers. Tomorrow we head out through the C&D canal, Delaware Bay and up to NYC. It will take about 36 hours, non-stop.
Three and a half days non-stop from Miami to Beaufort, NC. Since everything was not yet commissioned, we did this hand steering and using the laptop with a GPS dongle for navigation. It was good that there were four of us to share the steering load. I think the autopilot is the first redundant electronics I will add. The boat did very well in a variety of seas. Good to be docked. Much wine was consumed after we were safely tied up.
Now we go back to NH and Alexei will finish the commissioning work. We'll see Anjumal again in Annapolis in a few weeks.
The container ship is in Miami, and so are we. In a half hour, they will use the container gantry to lift Anjumal out of the ship’s hold and onto shore. When there, we will remove the shrink wrap, then they will lift us back up and into the water for us to leave. First stop is a marina in Miami to step the mast and do a little more work, before heading to Beaufort, NC for the remaining commissioning.