Breeze On

I have been so worried about damaging Breeze On every time we dock that I am always convinced I have damaged her every time she touches something. Even when I gently nudge a padded piling. After we arrived here on Saturday I looked at her transom and saw what appeared to be a black mark and horizontal dent. If you look closely at the starboard side of the transom you can see the black smudge. The dent is not visible in this picture. I assumed the black mark came from bumping a piling and the dent came from hitting the end of the finger on the dock when I was backing in. I did hit the finger but everyone told me it was a very light bump. Also, the end of the finger is padded. I didn't think I had hit it very hard, but how else to explain the dent and black mark???   Then yesterday, when we were cleaning Breeze On, I noticed that there was on almost identical black mark on the other side of the transom. There were also streak marks leading from the deck. So, it was dirt that had wa...

We made it. We are safely berthed in our slip in Cambridge. We left the mooring in Annapolis this morning and went over to Back Creek to practice backing into a slip. Suky remembered some fairways in the area that would make good practice areas. After the practice we left Annapolis and followed a race that we believe was headed to Saint Michaels. What a treat it was to follow all of those beautiful spinnakers. We had a lovely day of sailing on the Chesapeake. There is something about being in these waters that feels so right. After we turned Into to the Choptank River the winds died so we had to motor sail and then just motor. I was trying not to think about docking in our slip. Suky was very attentive in studying the tricky depths of the Choptank and pointing out the various features we should watch. Approaching Cambridge Marina   I was at the helm as we entered the Cambridge Marina and docked to get fuel and pump out again (the holding tanks on the Hanse are small!)...

This has been the best day yet. Two Navy ships escorted us all the way through the remainder of the C&D Canal.   When we entered the Chesapeake we were able to raise both sails and sailed the entire way down the Chesapeake to Annapolis. The winds were 10-15 with gusts up to 20 and the sailing was just fantastic.   The water was quite muddy and had a lot of sticks and logs floating in it after yesterday's storms. It was so exciting to sail under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. We have driven over it many times and watched other boats sailing in the water below. I can't tell you how many bridges we have passed under this week but this was my favorite by far.   We picked up a mooring ball, our first on Breeze On. I was at the helm and George was handling the mooring.   We also arranged to have the pump out boat to come and pump out our holding tanks. We have two heads and two nine gallon holding tanks on Breeze On. George and I were using one head and found out that a nine ...

Day three was a day of showering, eating a brunch of sloppy joes and wine at 10 am (planned dinner from the night before), napping, talking to the broker about the broken boom vang and jib block, talking to Simrad about why the AIS system doesn't work and figuring out the radar. It was good to rest and the day seemed to pass quickly. Day four started with fog. By the time we were ready to leave and weigh the anchor, the sun was out and the fog was lifting. As we headed out of the Cape May channel the fog thickened considerably so we turned around to go back to the anchorage. As we slowly motored in the channel, Suky blew the air horn to signal our presence to any boats who couldn't see us. We dropped the anchor again and waited an hour for the fog to lift. We weighed the anchor again and headed out of the Cape May channel. The fog thickened as we entered the Delaware Bay and Suky continued to blow the air horn every few minutes. We closely monitored the radar for any ships or o...

Another eventful day. I could do with a little boredom right now. We weighed anchor in Atlantic Highlands at 9:45 am and headed over to the fuel dock to add water to our water tank and top off the fuel. We brought up the anchor without any trouble. I was at the helm and George was operating the winch. Suky was coaching us both. George thought the entire anchoring procedure (dropping it and bringing it up) was much easier than expected. He was able to rinse the anchor and the chain with our salt water deck wash. I was at the helm when we pulled into the fuel dock and was able to do it without crashing the boat. Hooray! The young men at the fuel dock were nice enough to let us fill up the 80 gallon water tank and wash the salt water off the boat without charge. Next, we left the harbor, raised the mainsail and practiced reefing the sail. As we began raising the sail Suki noticed that the halyard was not attached to the sail. The locking shackle did not appear to lock. George used a shor...

It has been quite an eventful day. We woke up to beautiful weather. The sun was shining and the winds were 10-15 out of the northwest. A great day to set sail. We left the dock at Mamaroneck at 11:00 am. We motored around outside the harbor, practicing maneuvers in prepartion for learning to dock the boat. Then we put up the sails and tacked back and forth, getting a better feel for how Breeze On handles under sail. We were also waiting to time our arrival at the Throgs Neck Bridge so the currents would be favorable as we passed through Hell Gate and the East River. We dropped the sails and motored under the Throgs Neck Bridge at 2:00 pm. Just after we passed through Hell Gate at 10.3 kn our captain, Suky Cannon, noticed that there was 3 inches of water on the floor of the forward head. She determined that it was fresh water, not salt water and that our 80 gallon water tank was empty. We were trying not to miss the beautiful sights of Manhattan as we investigated the source of the pro...

Our plan is to leave Mamaroneck tomorrow and begin our trip to the Chesapeake. We have been living on Breeze On for a week, learning about her, practicing cooking, refilling the water tanks, refueling, etc. We have learned a lot but we are both disappointed that we have taken her out sailing just once this week. The weather has been perfect for sailing the past two days but we don't feel competent enough to return her to the dock without assistance. Therefore, we don't leave the dock. Our captain arrives this evening and we know we will get plenty of practice this next week. We are hoping that we will feel competent by the time we arrive in Maryland. Even so, it is difficult to watch boats leave the harbor while we just sit here. Bye bye Breeze On is the last boat on the dock on the right. A few days ago these two docks were filled with 25 boats. I wish I had taken a photo of the boats rafted to each other 4 deep. In the meantime George has been busy installing the step I will...

On Friday we packed up the Prius before heading out to Syracuse, Albany, Lowell, MA and then Mamaroneck, NY where our boat is docked. Filled to the brim with boat stuff We first attended our daughter's graduation and then helped her move from Syracuse to Lowell, MA where she will soon start her new job. It was an exciting, but exhausting weekend. We so enjoyed spending time with our daughter. We arrived in Mamaroneck late Monday afternoon. After unpacking the car and loading it on the boat we were too exhausted to put much away. Yikes!   We spent half of the day on Tuesday putting things away and then making an inventory so we could find where we had hidden everything.   Thank goodness it looks better now. In the afternoon we went over the systems on the boat with our broker. I took lots of notes. We are beginning to feel as if we know her a little bit better. This morning we used our new label maker to label all of the through hulls and hoses. In the afternoon we were ab...

Menus we are using for provisioning We have just a few days before we leave home to spend a week on Breeze On, then sail her from New York to the Chesapeake. We are working hard on our plans for provisioning. In theory, it shouldn't be that much different from what we do every week before we do our grocery shopping. For years wehave made a list of menus for the week. Then we develop a grocery list from the planned menus. We now use an iPad app called Paprika to hold our recipes and menus. The photo above shows the planned menus for our first week on the boat. Even though it shouldn't be that different from what I already do I am finding the idea of provisioning very stressful. I believe the difference is that I will need to bring absolutely everything I need for all the meals we are going to eat. The only food or utensils I will have on hand are the ones I brought with me. I also don't know how it will be to cook and eat on the boat. I have been using The Boat Galley...