Another Update

Sorry there has been no wonderful food photos, but not for the lack of wonderful food!  We are now (finally) on a mooring in Stuart, Florida.  We spent quite some time at the marina in Indiantown and finally got her in the water, motor reluctantly started, and moved down the river to the St. Lucie Lock.  Spent some time there getting everything moved aboard and getting provisioned.  Now we are finally in Stuart and getting all the final piece in place to head out to the Bahamas.

I can't begin to explain how nice it is to be on a mooring, in open water, with the sounds and feel of the water moving around us.  This is what I remember of sailing!  Don't know where circumstances will lead us, but we will be here for a bit before we move on.

I feel like my knees are getting stronger and I can climb on and off the boat pretty well,   Getting in and out of the dinghy on shore is another matter, but I am managing!

I will post more as I can and I really appreciate you hanging in there with me as I begin another adventure on the water.

Thanks for visiting!

If you have any questions about the techniques or materials used in the work displayed on this blog, feel free to use the email link on the left and I will gladly answer your questions.

An Update

Well we made it to the boat and DH is working hard to get things in order to put her in the water.  We didn't have too much damage from the hurricanes, but our battery bank was completely dead and it is very slow to charge up again.  The surfaces, both interior and exterior are all covered with some degree of mold that will need to be cleaned up before we can get her in the water and begin moving all our belongings back on board.  Right now we are staying in our RV in the campground in the marina and hope to be able to get Belmira launched early next week.  I will post more (hopefully with some pictures) in the near future.

The weather is so far cooperating and we have not had rain since we made it to the marina.  We had quite a bit on the way down here though.  We had a wonderful visit with friends from the Carter Lake Sail Club on Dauphin Island and two of those friends are now camped across from us in the campground.

We have not made it into Stuart for dinner yet, but my FB friends can look forward to some yummy food pix very soon!

Thanks for visiting! 

If you have any questions about the techniques or materials used in the work displayed on this blog, feel free to use the email link on the left and I will gladly answer your questions.

Adventure Status Report

Hello everyone!  Greetings from cold, wet and windy northern Florida.  We are finally getting off the dock in Fernandina and heading south.  It will be such a welcome change to have warmer weather.  We have decided to move our base of operations from Tiger Point Marina in Fernandina to Indiantown Marina which is much further south.  We moved our truck down there and that is where we will return to when we come back.  It is a very rustic area on the Indian River - lots of trees and great amenities.  Again, it will be a learning experience for us as we explore this life of cruising that we have chosen.  I do have to admit though that I am really looking forward to being back in Colorado with grand babies nearby and craft room at hand.  You don't know how much you appreciate flush toilets, hot showers and a microwave until you don't have them!

We will be traveling down the coast of Florida on the ICW (Inter Coastal Waterway) for the next week or two.

Here's a look at Belmira sitting on the dock:

I hope to be able to post once a week or so, but we shall see what will be possible once we are down the line a bit.  I really appreciate all the wonderful encouragement and support that I have received from all of you!  Thanks so much.

Thanks for visiting! 

If you have any questions about the techniques or materials used in the work displayed on this blog, feel free to use the email link on the left and I will gladly answer your questions.

The Adventure Begins!

We are on our way to Florida to put Belmira into the water and hit the high seas heading for the Bahamas!  We will probably be at the marina until the beginning of February getting all of the new gear installed and getting all the provisions on board that we will need.  I will have internet access at least until then so I will be visiting blogs and checking email, etc.  I hope to be able to put up a few posts along the way with some pictures of our adventures.

Thanks for visiting! 

If you have any questions about the techniques or materials used in the work displayed on this blog, feel free to use the email link on the left and I will gladly answer your questions.

Checking In

Hello everyone!  Just wanted to check in and let you know what is happening.  Things got pretty crazy in April and May around our house, but hopefully it will all calm down in a month or so.  DH headed east to Massachusetts in early April to prepare the boat for our trip down the Atlantic coast to Florida.  All was going well so I headed out to join him early this month.  Preparations are nearly complete and we plan to head down the river this weekend hopefully arriving in Florida in 4 to 6 weeks.

We have managed to get our on board computer network up and running and whenever we have an internet connection available I will try to post our progress.  I am nervous, but excited about this upcoming journey.  I think that I will learn a great deal about sailing and probably learn a great deal about myself and the captain too!

We are going to try to post daily progress reports on our Facebook pages using our hot spot, but we won't get into tons of trip details or be posting lots of pictures until we have a regular connection and then will post to our blogs.  I have been trying to figure out how to add a button to this blog to make following me on Facebook easier, but alas - no luck.  I am including this link to MY FACEBOOK PAGE  so that you can click on it, go there and then just click on the "like" button and that should do it as well.  You can also find me on Facebook by searching my name or just searching for "mudmaven" and it will get you there.

Thanks for visiting! 

If you have any questions about the techniques or materials used in the work displayed on this blog, feel free to use the email link on the left and I will gladly answer your questions.

The Uncertain Sailor

I’ve decided that in this our fifth year of sailing the New England coast, I would finally dedicate a portion of my blog to our sailing adventures.

Five years ago my husband retired and before doing that decided that he wanted to sail from May through October.  Moving Belmira, our beautiful O’Day 290 from Colorado to Massachusetts was not feasible so he traveled east and bought our current vessel – a 36 foot Allied Princess ketch that we also named Belmira.  She needed a lot of work, but was the ocean going craft he felt we needed to be able to retire on.  He started a blog to track his adventures and you can read about these at Sailing Belmira (there's a link in the sidebar too).  Before I retired on April 1 of this year, I would join him for 3-4 weeks each summer and share in this adventure. 

Here's a picture of our home away from home:

I probably need to tell you a bit about my husband.  He turned 70 years old this year.  He does not do anything half way.  He is/has been a stained glass artist, a watercolor artist, a woodworker, a gardener and he gave each endeavor his all while he was doing it.  He is and has always been a musician (plays guitar, mandolin and is currently learning the fiddle).  He also likes to go fast – cars, boats, bicycles, and running.  He really enjoys doing yoga too (the extreme high temperature kind of course).

Now that I have retired, I can be with him more during the summer months while he’s living aboard our sailboat.  He has very grand plans for our times on the high seas and I have to be honest here, I’m not sure that I am cut out for this.  Unlike him, I do not like adrenaline rushes, I do not like going fast – I think my body is allergic to G-forces.  This makes me what I am calling an “uncertain sailor” – at best.

I do love certain things about living aboard a sailboat.  Most of the time I sleep much better and it is really good to just disconnect from everything for a while.  I’ve been here for nearly a week and we have been preparing to head downriver from the boat yard and hit the real water.  The boat has been undergoing major upgrades this year and was pretty much a workshop for the first two months he has been out here.  It looks great and has some new and wonderful improvements (with more to come before the season is over).  The entire deck was repainted and re-finished, the new bimini and dodger that were delivered at the close of last season are installed and gorgeous.  The radar mount that he built over the winter has been installed and works like a charm (now I just have to learn how to interpret what I see on it).  The refrigerator that he installed last season is working great as is the new deck hardware that brings all the lines back to the cockpit for easy access while sailing.  He’s working hard at setting up some of the new (to us) sails that will hopefully make moving across the water more efficient and easier.

I have decided to track my progress as I try to learn how to love this aspect of our life.  There will be a label here for these posts and I will tag each post accordingly so that you can skip these if you are only here for reports and pix of my other adventures.  You can click on the Uncertain Sailor label in the labels list to read just the posts that pertain to this.

Thanks for visiting! 

If you have any questions about the techniques or materials used in the work displayed on this blog, feel free to use the email link on the left and I will gladly answer your questions.