It’s Sunday afternoon and we are heading down I-95 toward South Beach Miami to be there for the survey of Ariel, the Aerodyne 47 we are hoping to purchase. I say “hope to” as you never know what you’re going to find in a survey of something as complex as a sailboat. However, Brenda and I are very optimistic that everything will check out OK as Miles and Loreen, the owners are just about as particular as we are and don’t hesitate to spend what it takes to keep Ariel in good shape. Picky and a willingness to spend $$$ is a good combination for boat ownership.
As I begin this post we are in South Carolina with about 300 miles to go to St Augustine, FL. I pick that particular city as it’s what is on the GPS telling us where our next road change will be and it’s where we hope to find a hotel to spend the night.
It’s interesting to drive distances outside of the Boston, New York, Washington corridor and see how many miles are between road changes and cities compared to the New York area, where making a ride of a few hundred miles usually involves dozens of road changes, not to mention terrible traffic.
Our ride today takes us from Baltimore MD where we visited with our son Rob and his new fiancé Kandice and our younger son Christopher for nearly a week. What a treat it was to spend so much time with them. However, after all the eating and drinking it will take some time for my stomach and liver to recover. As I said, great fun, perhaps too much fun. Last night, when we took Christopher to the bus for him to head back to NYC it was pretty emotional for me and Brenda, knowing that we won’t see him until May when we head back north. Hopefully, Rob and Kandice will meet up with us in FL or the Bahamas, between now and then. That will be great.
The next few days will be pretty interesting as we go over Ariel with a fine tooth comb. Yes, we’ve seen the boat many times but I can’t say that we have rifled through cabinets and drawers like we will on this trip.
After a day or so in South Beach, where Ariel is now, we’ll head north again to St Mary’s GA to spend a day or so getting Pandora back into the water. I am particularly excited about seeing her again as I had someone “detail” the hull while we were away to make the hull as shiny as possible. I had decided to do this prior to deciding to sell her but it will be good that she will show her best for anyone that looks at her this winter as word gets out that she’s available.
When we left CT last week, it was quite chilly, in the low 20s. Not my first choice of weather. After Christmas, we had to work double time to get everything down and put away from the holidays so we could get ready to close up the house for the winter. Putting everything in order to leave a house vacant for 4-5 months isn’t all that simple as you have to plan for the possible loss of power and really cold weather. With this in mind, when we moved in two and a half years ago, we decided to put in a new furnace and charge the system with antifreeze. That would assure us that the pipes wouldn’t freeze if we lost power. In addition, we also blow out all of the domestic waterlines with compressed air so that there is NOTHING in the water pipes that could freeze.
Let me assure you that all of this is simpler to describe than it is to accomplish as it takes about three hours to blow out every drop of water from the hundreds of feet of pipes. And, on top of this, we also have to put antifreeze in all of the toilets and run a rinse cycle on the washing machine and dish washer to be sure that the pumps are also protected.
And, as if that’s not enough of an explanation, well… let’s just say that there are a lot of details.
When we left Baltimore this morning, we drove away at the wee hour of 06:00 with the goal of driving 12-14 hours today and the balance to South Beach, on Monday morning as we’d like to be in town by mid- afternoon Monday. So far, so good.
It’s amazing how much the temperature has gone up since leaving CT last week. Even today, in the 8 hours we have been on the road, the temperature has gone from a rainy 40s to the , well rainy upper 70s. Actually, right now it’s raining really hard, torrent actually. Hopefully, this will let up soon.
After all these months of “thinking” about sailing, it’s hard to believe that the “doing” part is less than a week away.
We are looking forward to spending about a month heading down to Ft. Lauderdale so that we can enjoy the sights along the way. However, GA can be pretty cool this time of year so we will likely want to make as many miles as we can in the first few days so that we can be in warmer climes. Interestingly, there is generally a bump in the temperature when you get south of Cape Canaveral , for reasons that I don’t understand.
One way or the other, we’re in for some chilly weather for a few days as there is a huge cold front coming through that will chill much of the US and bring pretty cold weather to the South East US coast. Perhaps we’ll just “cool” our heels for a few days until more seasonable weather comes our way.
In the meantime, we can think about some of the fun places that we’ll be visiting soon.
Well, Brenda’s driving and probably won’t want to for much longer as she’s much more interested in knitting than driving so I’d better wrap this up.
How about a photo of the intersection heading to Charleston? Yes, I am sure that’s at the very top of your day for today. Well, it’s at least is evidence that we are heading in the right direction. And no, I didn’t take it last year…
However, I am much more interested in the memory of sunny Florida. Yes, that’s much better. Warm and sunshine, here we come, soon. Well, at least warm, even if there is rain in the forecast. Warm is better, for sure. 
Yes, warmer by the mile and I’m counting them down, one by one…