It’s Friday morning and the temperature outside is an unseasonable low 30s.  When we got here on Wednesday afternoon it was a LOT warmer and then the cold front that has been blasting the US with cold air and snow pushed down, bringing strong COLD winds to coastal Georgia.  It was amazing to us to see how quickly the winds picked up and changed a sorta balmy boatyard into a grey cold and windy miserable place.  You know, the sort of weather that northern sailors deal with each fall and spring when they are working on their boats.

The view late in the afternoon Wednesday was very beautiful from our vantage perched up on Pandora’s bow overlooking the nearby marsh.   Views of palm trees aren’t something that I am used to seeing from a boatyard.  How about a panorama of the spot?  What perfect late afternoon lighting.  Yes, a beautiful view, but don’t look behind me as it’s just your typical yard jammed with yachts in various stages of seaworthiness.  Then, it got REALLY COLD. Believe me when I tell you that the next morning there was no way I would want to be out in the wind.  Happily, our brand new Espar diesel heater did it’s job and made Pandora all toasty inside.   Good thing, as there was no way that a little space heater could have kept up with the strong winds and cold.   

We made great progress down below getting things back in shape with Brenda’s help as a bit of mildew seems to pop up when a boat is stored for a few months. As my solar panels keep everything running, even when she’s on the hard, the freezer and fridge needed a bit of cleaning as well.  I found some things in the fridge that I had missed when I left her back in October that were, well, they were a bit scary.  All better now.

Speaking of cold, when we were in Portugal this fall, Brenda did a bit of knitting and had made good progress on a sweater but it still wasn’t finished.  On the way driving south she finished it just in time to enjoy the unseasonable cold weather here in GA.  It’s great that she has gotten to a point where she can knit while we are driving.  Back before she was such seasoned sailor, that would NEVER have been possible.  Can you say car sick?  Not now…   She was determined to finish the sweater, so she’d have something warm to wear, before we made it to sunny Florida, and she did.  Doesn’t she look like a happy knitter?  I guess it was finishing the piece up that brought on the cold weather.  

I’ll bet the other locals would not like to know that she really did “bring the cold weather with her”.    Good thing it wasn’t a raincoat that she was making.

Yes, it’s plenty cold but today things are supposed to warm up to a balmy mid 50s so I can work on the “outside” of Pandora to finish scrubbing off some of the dust that coated her decks while we were away.   Anyway, sitting here doing this post isn’t getting her any closer to launch.

Oh yeah, we are staying in hotel for a few days.  Not quite ready to move aboard till things are more settled.  Hopefully, we’ll shove off in a few days.

Wish us warm fair winds, and soon.  Yes, soon would be perfect.

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…

It’s Thursday morning, the first day of 2015.  It seems that last time I looked I was forced to read George Orwell’s 1984 and thought “wow, I wonder what things will look like so far in the future.  I wonder if we’ll have flying cars?”

Well, perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration as I wasn’t so naive to think that we’d have  flying cars.  EVERYONE certainly knew that we wouldn’t have them until at least the New Millennium.  Hmm…  No wait, we’re there now and I don’t see one of those on my radar.

Speaking of radar, (nice segue Bob) one thing that I never expected to have was just that, radar.  Yes, like everyone else, I too take technology for granted but WOW, radar.  The smallest boats of today have technology that the most powerful navy in the world could only dream of in WWII.  And, I won’t even talk about cell phones.  Maxwell Smart would have loved hiding behind a bush talking into an iPhone.  “Can you hear me now?” I have absolutely no idea where I was going with all that.  Never mind. 

Perhaps the most amazing thing to me is that I sit here on New Year’s Day, on our way south to spend the winter in Florida and the Bahamas.  Yes, I know that I have said that I don’t know if we will make it to the Bahamas this winter, but heck, spring is months away.  And, as Brenda has often said, “Bob and the dog, ever hopeful”.  “Can I have a cookie?”  “Sure Bob, here you go.”

Speaking of puppies, Brenda has recently been telling folks that she feels like she lives with a puppy.  Yes, that’s me.  Always jumping around with lots of smiles and drooling.  Well, that’s what I do most of the time anyway.   I do have “my moments” when I am less puppy-like.  Well, occasionally…

I guess it’s only natural to look back when you begin a new year.  Unfortunately, I’d have to dig pretty deep to come up with some photos from the “olden days”, but I do have a few that really bring back some memories.

Here’s me and Brenda leaving our wedding reception. Love the polyester sport coat.   1977 seems like a very long time ago. A few years later we bought our first boat, a little 20′ Cape Cod sailboat.  Then, a half dozen years later we acquired Sappho, a 22′ Marshall Catboat.  This boat, now some 40 years old, is owned by a good friend of mine, Eric, that keeps her in perfect shape in Wickford RI.  Brenda posed for a shot on board Sappho a few years ago.  It’s been a long time since those years cruising Long Island Sound on a 22′ boat with “sitting headroom”.  Years later we owed a Tartan 37, our first “modern” boat.  She was great looking but still a 70’s vintage design. Then we moved up to the “big times” and purchased Pandora.  Here she is in Wickford RI in Sappho’s neighborhood.  It’s hard to keep track of how quickly the years have gone by as it seems only yesterday that we were just kids in high school.   Well, this photo is of us a few years after graduation, but not that many. It’s hard to believe how much has happened in the last 40+ years that Brenda and I have been together.    From spying her in the high school library to spending the winters sailing in warm waters.

Perhaps if Brenda had known what the future was going to hold if she hung around with me she might have said, “It’s nice to meet you but I really have to study for tomorrows exam in Mrs. Hand’s English class and I can’t talk now. Bye!”  Glad she didn’t.  

Yup, I have been a lucky guy.  Very lucky indeed.

So far, so good.   That’s my story and I am sticking to it.

Here’s to a terrific 2015.  Yahoo! 

It seems like yesterday when Brenda and I first laid eyes on Pandora, then Spirit, in Annapolis back in 2006.  After years of sailing on our Tartan 37 Elektra, we were used to a 70s design and to step aboard on a SAGA 43 we felt like we had stepped onto a “real yacht”.  She was so bright down below with her varnished cherry woodwork, so different from the dark teak paneling so popular with earlier boats and she was SO BIG.

We knew right a way that a SAGA 43 was the boat for us.  Pandora wasn’t a particularly well equipped boat and it was clear that I had a long process to get her in shape for extended cruising.  However we needed a “proper yacht” to achieve our plans to begin in a few short years when I would retire.  While our initial “3 year plan” to “cast off the lines” was extended by a year or so, compliments of the “great recession”, we did eventually begin cruising three years ago and have sailed for months at a time together between New England and the Bahamas.

I have written extensively about the benifits of Bob Perry’s design of the SAGA 43 so I won’t repeat it here.  However, if you are interested in why we chose this particular design, follow this link to “Why a SAGA 43“.  We just love this boat and found her to be a huge upgrade in comfort and speed from our Tartan 37.

She’s really fast and I have made the run from the Bahamas back to Essex twice and have done so in less than a week each time.  The design is amazing in the speed department and I did a run from Marsh Harbor Bahamas to Sandy Hook in only 5 days.  That’s an average speed of over 7kts.

When we decided to upgrade to Pandora, it was a big leap for us financially and to have a boat that measured in at some 46′ overall was a lot bigger than we had every hoped to have.  There was lots to do to get her just the way we wanted and we had big plans that would require many upgrades to the boat.  So, over the next 5 or so years I upgraded the systems to include many extras that would make her more comfortable and even more seaworthy.

Folks that know us are aware that Brenda is a reluctant sailor and always says that her favorite part of sailing is “being anchored”.   As a result, we often joke that our life together has been “40 years of desperate moves by Bob to help Brenda enjoy her time on the boat”.   No, Brenda doesn’t count the days till we jump aboard again but she has been sailing with me for over 40 years so I guess I have done a pretty good job at helping her feel at home afloat.  After over 7 years it’s pretty clear that when we purchased Pandora it was perhaps the most important “upgrade” ever to our lives afloat.

So, where am I going with all this?  As I have been putting together the brokerage listing this morning to put Pandora on the market, I am finding myself more than a little bit nostalgic for the years we have owned her.   Until we learned that Ariel, the Aerodyne 47 that we are buying, was coming on the market, a boat that originally caught our eye some six years ago, we really expected to be sailing Pandora until we were too old to enjoy time on the water and sold her for a paddleboat or some other depressing vessel down the road.

However, circumstances have changed and I can’t believe that Pandora will be leaving us, perhaps soon.

Over the years I have poured myself, along with plenty of cash into Pandora, to make her as perfect as I could.  As recently as this year, I put in a new Espar heater, a new Autoprop (which I love, love, love) plus many other small improvements too numerous to mention here, with the certain knowledge that we’d be sailing Pandora for another decade.

Well, all of that changed when….  Well, I guess that’s what life is about.  Change.

So, here I am, and it’s December 28th and two days from now we will get a rental car to begin our trek down to join Pandora in GA.   Along the way we’ll spend some time with our two boys, Rob and Christopher along with Rob’s new fiance Kandice.    After we enjoy the New Year’s celebration with them in MD, we’ll head to Miami when Ariel is surveyed in anticipation of our purchase in April.

After that, it’s back to Pandora, in the water and sailing for the winter.

If you’d told me a month ago that I’d be preparing a brokerage listing for Pandora now, I’d say you were nuts.  However, here I sit doing just that. It just shows that you just never know what’s waiting around the corner.  I guess that makes the point of why it’s a good idea to wear a seat belt.   Perhaps I should have held off on some of those recent upgrades.  Oh well. Who knew?

The broker asked me yesterday what I would do if he got an offer on Pandora in February, given all of our cruising plans.  Well, that’s a good question.  I guess we’ll have to cut things short.  That would be just about a perfect example of “I have good new and I have bad news”.

It has indeed been a saga owning Pandora and what a great ride it’s been.   But wait, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.  It’s not over yet with an entire winter of sailing ahead of us in warm tropical waters.  I hope.

It’s grey outside here but this awaits us soon, very soon.

Dolphins playing at our bow.Perfect white sandy beaches. Dramatic cloud displays.Magnificent tropical flowers.
Tan piggies on Brenda.  Love the toe ring. Amazing sunsets that go on and on…And give way to serene moon rises.Yes, Brenda and I are blessed to be “living the dream”, in more ways than one.  I guess it’s time to start dreaming about the good times to come on our new boat as our SAGA saga draws to a close.

Sounds like fun.

It’s Saturday morning and two weeks since my last post.   The problem is that there’s just not that much to write about when Pandora’s in storage and I am home in CT “on the hard”.

It’s a busy time with the holidays upon us and Christmas just around the corner. One thing for sure is that it’s a fun time of year and we are certainly busy. Yesterday was a particularly big day for Brenda as she had her gall bladder out after several months of discomfort.  The surgeon felt that with our time aboard and the fact that we are often a long way from emergency help, that it was a good idea for her to just have it out and not risk infection or worse.   The procedure went well and I am sure that she will be back on her feet very soon.   It’s amazing that such an invasive procedure, even though they call it “minimally invasive surgery” can be done on an outpatient basis and in and out in the same day.

Yes, I can’t believe that Christmas is only five days away.  Where did the year go?   A few days after Christmas, when we will head to Baltimore to visit our son Rob in Baltimore with his fiance Kandice, we’ll be heading down to South Beach Miami for a survey on Ariel, soon to be our new boat.  I wrote about this in my last post.  

Even though we won’t be actually buying the boat until April, we are having her checked out now and will recheck things in April prior to final taking delivery. Unfortunately, I’ll own two boats for a while, hopefully not too long, as I won’t really be putting Pandora on the market till we end our winter cruising in late April.   As much as I don’t want to own two boats, the idea of not sailing this winter is even less appealing to me.  The logistics for the delivery of our new boat and getting Pandora where she will listed for sale are still being worked out but I am sure that we will find a way to get it all done.

For next summer, I have arranged for a mooring in Wickford RI, in the inner harbor for a few months which will give us a terrific spot to sail our new boat from to enjoy Narraganset Bay and Newport.  

It also looks like we will be taking our new boat, name to be determined, south to the Caribbean next fall which will be a big step for us.  I will likely do the Salty Dawg rally which leaves from Hampton VA around November 1st .  However, the older, and more established, rally is the Caribbean 1500 is an option and the two events leave at about the same time from the same harbor.   Actually, I am not totally clear on the differences between these two rallies but will learn more soon.  

One way or the other, it looks like we’ll be spending time in the Caribbean the winter of 15/16.  More to come.  I am very much looking forward to that. 

With regards to this winter, our plans are coming together with the twist of having the new boat surveyed prior to relaunching Pandora in GA.  Wherever we end up, the Keys or the Bahamas, it will certainly be nice to leave this cold weather for the warmth of the tropics.

We are pretty excited about the new boat and are thinking hard about a proper name.  Yes, I know that it’s bad luck to rename a boat but then it is said that it’s good luck to pick a name with seven letters too.  I wonder if they cancel each other out?

Brenda was a classics major in college so all of our boats, pets and almost our children have had names from the classics.   Our oldest Rob would have been horrified if Brenda had had her way and we had named him Paris.   That’s almost as good as some of the kids of Hollywood Stars.  I recall Sonny and Cher named their son Chastity.  For inquiring minds… He’s now transgender and changed his name to Chas.  To be clear, it’s not clear if he changed to a she, or he to she.  Anyway, we decided that Rob was a safer name for our first born.   It was a good fight but I prevailed after all.  You’re welcome Rob.

Back to boat names.   So, if you accept the idea of a name with classical roots as a good idea that’s what we plan.  With the exception of our first which we didn’t change, our boats have been Sappho, Artemis, Electra and most recently Pandora.  Brenda’s favorite from this list for our new boat is Sappho. 

Sappho was a Greek poet who lived on the island of Lesbos and wrote love poems about women and girls in particular.   I won’t go into a lot of detail, but given the view that boats are considered feminine, there is a certain symmetry to this name.   There’s one vote for Brenda. Oh yeah, it only has six letters.  Oops, not good luck, I guess.

My favorite is Artemis.  First off, it’s seven letters and she was a Greek goddess, born a twin, and was so ready to go that when she she was born she helped deliver her twin brother Apollo.  Now that’s a pretty self sufficient girl. She’s also associated with hunting, the wilderness and the natural world and especially the moon.   So, there, tides, the natural world and child birth.  I did publish an Ob/Gyn physician journal for years.  She’s also known for chastity (there’s that name again), and never married.  However, I’m not a fan on that particular point so let’s not dwell any more on chastity for the moment.

Anyway, there’s a vote for Artemis from Moi.  So, the debate goes on.  I expect that we will work through this by April and pick a name before we take delivery. More to come on that. 

With regards to whether it’s Sappho or Artemis, one unique feature of the boat is that she’s composite construction, made of some pretty high-tech space-age materials, something normally associated with custom made one of a kind yachts,  and I have been reading up on some of those construction techniques.

It’s worth noting that the three Aerodyne 47s made (I was wrong as I thought that there were four) are just about the only “production” cruising boats that I have been able to find that are composite construction.  This method of manufacturing is known for very high strength as well as producing a very light structure.  The main reason that this form of construction is so unusual for cruising boats, is that it costs a great deal more than regular fiberglass building. I won’t go into much detail here but if you are interested, you can follow this link for some narrative on how it’s done.

Compared to Pandora a SAGA 43 and actually a very light boat by normal standards, the Aerodyne 47 only weighs 24,000lbs verses Pandora’s 22,000. That’s pretty amazing as the Aerodyne is 4′ longer and nearly 2 1/2′ wider at 14.5′.    I have friends with boats that are of a similar size to the Aerodyne that weigh in at over 40,000 pounds. As a result, the relative lightness of the Aerodyne makes her a pretty fast boat.

The current owner, Miles, sent me a photo the other day of his speedo showing a speed of over 14kts.  That’s pretty fast and he claims he’s done better.  We’ll see but I am encouraged.  Having sailed in company with him many times, I am painfully aware that’s she’s faster than Pandora.  And that’s saying something as Pandora can generally outrun most anything in her size range and some much larger, pretty easily.

Here’s the shot Miles sent me. Speaking of composite boats, the Volvo Ocean Race, billed as the toughest yacht race in the world, just arrived in Abu Dhabi after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, at southern Africa.   The boats in this race are all composite construction, similar, if a bit more extreme than the Aerodyne, and are very fast and certainly much faster than 14 plus knots.   The designer of the Aerodyne line is Roger Martin who is more known for high-tech race boats.

The Volvo race boats are pretty amazing stripped out racing machines. They are quite a sight at speed.  However, this boat in particular made a navigation error and ended up on a reef in the Indian Ocean a few weeks ago.  Oops.  Happily, everyone is OK, even if the boat is trashed.  Kevlar, composite construction is pretty strong but no match for a coral reef.This video offers some amazing footage of the yacht at the point of impact as well as some commentary about what happened.Well, composite or not, it’s best to stay away from the hard stuff.   Yes, that’s a good idea.  Happily, events like these are quite rare as most boat accidents involve smaller boats being operated by folks that don’t know what they are doing.

Well, back to reality and it’s almost Christmas with just five days to go.  And, while Pandora’s way down there in sunny GA, we’ll soon be aboard for a nice and toasty winter in warmer climes.

Hmm… Looking forward to warm.  Yes, indeed.