{"id":3941,"date":"2015-01-04T21:04:47","date_gmt":"2015-01-04T21:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=3941"},"modified":"2015-01-04T21:05:51","modified_gmt":"2015-01-04T21:05:51","slug":"headed-toward-pandora-warmer-by-the-mile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=3941","title":{"rendered":"Headed toward Pandora, warmer by the mile."},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 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.\u00a0\u00a0 I say \u201chope to\u201d as you never know what you\u2019re going to find in a survey of something as complex as a sailboat.\u00a0 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\u2019t hesitate to spend what it takes to keep Ariel in good shape.\u00a0 \u00a0Picky and a willingness to spend $$$ is a good combination for boat ownership.<\/span><\/p>\n

As I begin this post we are in South Carolina with about 300 miles to go to St Augustine, FL.\u00a0 I pick that particular city as it\u2019s what is on the GPS telling us where our next road change will be and it\u2019s where we hope to find a hotel to spend the night.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Our ride today takes us from Baltimore MD where we visited with our son Rob and his new fianc\u00e9 Kandice and our younger son Christopher for nearly a week.\u00a0 What a treat it was to spend so much time with them.\u00a0 However, after all the eating and drinking it will take some time for my stomach and liver to recover.\u00a0 As I said, great fun, perhaps too much fun.\u00a0 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\u2019t see him until May when we head back north.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Hopefully, Rob and Kandice will meet up with us in FL or the Bahamas, between now and then.\u00a0\u00a0 That will be great.<\/p>\n

The next few days will be pretty interesting as we go over Ariel with a fine tooth comb.\u00a0 Yes, we\u2019ve seen the boat many times but I can\u2019t say that we have rifled through cabinets and drawers like we will on this trip.<\/p>\n

After a day or so in South Beach, where Ariel is now, we\u2019ll head north again to St Mary\u2019s GA to spend a day or so getting Pandora back into the water.\u00a0 I am particularly excited about seeing her again as I had someone \u201cdetail\u201d the hull while we were away to make the hull as shiny as possible.\u00a0 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\u2019s available.<\/p>\n

When we left CT last week, it was quite chilly, in the low 20s.\u00a0 Not my first choice of weather.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Putting everything in order to leave a house vacant for 4-5 months isn\u2019t all that simple as you have to plan for the possible loss of power and really cold weather.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 That would assure us that the pipes wouldn\u2019t freeze if we lost power.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

And, as if that\u2019s not enough of an explanation, well\u2026 let\u2019s just say that there are a lot of details.<\/p>\n

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\u2019d like to be in town by mid- afternoon Monday.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So far, so good.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s amazing how much the temperature has gone up since leaving CT last week.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Actually, right now it\u2019s raining really hard, torrent actually.\u00a0 Hopefully, this will let up soon.<\/p>\n

After all these months of \u201cthinking\u201d about sailing, it\u2019s hard to believe that the \u201cdoing\u201d part is less than a week away.<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Interestingly, there is generally a bump in the temperature when you get south of Cape Canaveral , for reasons that I don\u2019t\u00a0 understand.<\/p>\n

One way or the other, we\u2019re 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.\u00a0 Perhaps we\u2019ll just \u201ccool\u201d our heels \u00a0for a few days until more seasonable weather comes our way.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we can think about some of the fun places that we\u2019ll be visiting soon.<\/p>\n

Well, Brenda\u2019s driving and probably won\u2019t want to for much longer as she\u2019s much more interested in knitting than driving so I\u2019d better wrap this up.<\/p>\n

How about a photo of the intersection heading to Charleston?\u00a0 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. \u00a0And no, I didn\u2019t take it last year\u2026\"\"<\/a>However,\u00a0 I am much more interested in the memory of sunny Florida.\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s much better.\u00a0\u00a0 Warm and sunshine, here we come, soon. \u00a0 Well, at least warm, even if there is rain in the forecast. \u00a0 Warm is better, for sure. \u00a0\"\"<\/a>Yes, warmer by the mile and I’m counting them down, one by one…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 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.\u00a0\u00a0 I say \u201chope to\u201d as you never know what you\u2019re going to find in a survey of something as complex as a sailboat.\u00a0 However, Brenda and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3941"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3941\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3945,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3941\/revisions\/3945"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}