Breeze On

  We love dolphins. These dolphins followed us for quite a while on our passage home, 4/16/17 Another video of the same pod of dolphins, 4/16/17.  Navy hovercraft, 11/2/17. We had just left Little Creek, VA on our way to Bald Head Island, NC when we encountered these hovercraft. They were noisy! Sailing in the North Atlantic Ocean, 11/16/17.  Thompson Bay, Long Island, Bahamas, 1/27/18. 

  Watching boat leave the harbor, 1/15/17. This is the first boat to leave after a cold front with northeast winds. The harbor faces northeast so getting out in those conditions can be difficult. Several other people came out to watch this boat leave.  New outboard, 1/19/17. Our first year in the Bahamas we had an inflatable-with a high pressure inflatable bottom-dinghy and a 2.5 hp outboard. It was slow! George called it the chuggernaut. While in GeorgeTown we bought an 8 hp two-stroke outboard which was much faster.  Iguanas, 2/7/17. These iguanas are native to the Exumas. I had intended to feed them some bread but changed my mind when I saw how aggressive they are.  On our way to snorkel, 2/13/17. We were using our new, faster outboard to dinghy over to a favorite snorkel spot in Little Bay.  Exploring a cave at Rudder Cut Cay, 2/17/17.  Sandbar at Hawksbill Cay, 2/27/17

  Glass Window, Eleuthera, 11/26/16. The island of Eleuthera is only as wide at the road at this point. There is an opening under the bridge that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the shallow, calmer water of the Great Bahama Banks. It is really something to see. Pig Beach, 12/7/16. This is one of my favorite videos. We had just arrived at the beach in our inflatable dinghy. George had jumped out to pull the dinghy to shore. Some of the pigs started making a beeline for us and George flew back into the dinghy and started the engine to take off. You can hear me and our friend, Jean, laughing in the background. The pigs have been known to try to jump into dinghies. If they tried that with ours they would have most likely poked a hole in the bottom.  Bumpy ride in the dinghy, 12/30/16 Pam and Brad, 1/8/17. Our daughter, Pam, and our now son-in-law, Brad visited from Boston. The weather was cold (by Bahamas standards) and windy so we spent the entire week in the Emerald Bay Marina....

 From time to time I record a short video that I would like to include in a blog post. Unfortunately, I could never figure out how to insert one into a post. While spending our winter at home we have worked on several projects—cleaning cupboards, closets, and drawers, as well as digitizing photographs. I recently added figuring out how to upload videos to the blog to our project list. I knew that I could attach YouTube videos to the blog. I didn’t know how to set up a YouTube channel. It turns out to be quite easy. George did the research and uploaded the first video, I uploaded the rest of the videos. I will post the videos in a series here. I will then go back and insert them into the appropriate posts in the archive. As a bonus, it gives George and I a chance to do some virtual sailing while we are stuck at home anxiously awaiting our Covid vaccines. Sailing on the Choptank 9/16/14. This was our first season with Breeze On. Heading South, 10/28/16. We had just left home, on our ...

Breeze On is on the hard and almost completely winterized. We chose a calm day last week to take her up the creek to the Generation III boatyard. Since it was calmest in the morning, we bundled up—the temperature was in the upper 30’s—and went down first thing to move her. When we were ready to go I pushed the start button. The engine turned over then quit. I tried a few more times with the same result. The starter battery seemed to be working but the engine just didn’t want to run. Apparently Breeze On doesn’t like the cold weather any more than we do! Our best guess was that there was an ice crystal in the fuel line. George fired up the Little Buddy propane heater, placed it near the engine compartment and sat on board reading while I went for a walk. We tried again after I returned and—although I had to hold the start button down for a few seconds—she did start. We motored down to Generation III, tied up at the end of a dock, and walked home.  This past week we were expecting a ...

Yesterday we went for our last sail of the season. The temperatures were cool—mid 50’s—but the wind was ideal. We stayed nice and warm inside the enclosure as long as the sun was shining. The only other boat out sailing on the river was Spontaneity, soon to be renamed Azzurra II, owned by our friends Dawn and Ray. When we left the slip the tide was extremely low. The TideSlide cleats were at the bottom of the the poles and we had the step way down to the onto the boat. Fortunately, Cambridge Creek is deep so Breeze On had plenty of water under the keel.  After we returned to shore we washed each enclosure panel with soap and water and hung them back up to dry. This morning we rolled each panel and put them away in the storage bags. We took the bimini and dodger off of the boat. We made several trips from the boat to the condo bringing the enclosure panels, bimini, dodger, mattresses, cockpit cushions, bedding, and portable generator into the condo. Next George will winterize the ou...

We have started unloading a few things from the boat in preparation for winter; including food and anything liquid. We will soon take the mattresses off. In the meantime we have been day sailing two or three times a week as the weather allows. The nighttime temperatures have been too low for anchoring overnight so we are most likely done with that until next spring. Breeze On will come out of the water and be winterized within the next few weeks. We are more practiced at furling our new mainsail and have been increasingly enjoying it. So far, George has been doing the furling while I stand at the mast and make sure it doesn’t end up hitting any fittings. George spoke with Steve, who installed the boom and mast and explained the trouble we were having with furling. The only way we could keep the sail from hitting against the fittings on the mast was to put a tremendous amount of pressure on the halyard. Steve suggested removing a ratchet that stuck out toward the sail. It was there to a...