Back On The Ocean !!

USA - Here We Come

Today (Monday Oct 18) around noon at high tide, we will take Remedios out through this gap, turn right (to starboard) and head southwest with Madeira as our first destination. Our plan is to make Madeira in about 4 days, stay there a few days, then head to the Canary Islands and make a couple stops there before the final leg from the Canaries to Florida. Here we are on the breakwall on Sunday.

We'll be sure our pants match next time

We had a great time with our spouses touring around Portugal. Here we are at dinner in Lisbon a couple weeks ago. It was great having Peggy and Michele visit us but the time went by way too fast!

Peggy and Michele got to fly home...

As we leave Oeiras, Portugal, Pat and Tom will be sailing and handling the boat, and our third crewmate, Rob, will be providing email weather advice and moral support from his home in St. Cloud, Minnesota. Rob also plans to meet us shortly after we land in Florida in mid December. We talked to Rob last night and ended our call with phone fist bumps and hugs. We will miss Rob but the fact is we have filled his cabin with other stuff; we are using his dog bowl to hold peanuts, and I’m glad I don’t have to sweep out his long gray hairs any more.

Last night at our farewell dinner we set a place for Rob and bought him a beer.

We have loved our time in Portugal and the marina here in Oeiras is a fun place and hard to leave. Here are the crowds that gathered yesterday, a pleasant sunny Sunday afternoon. I suspect they will all be gone tomorrow, but I am going to pretend they are here to see us off…

A beautiful day to be outside

Our latest friends from Norway (four young guys on one dad’s boat) left for Madeira this morning and we hope to meet up with them and other folks we have met along the way in either Madeira or the Canaries. If we get the right winds we might even catch the four Norwegians and then pass them since we have a spinnaker. Pat has promised if we both catch them and pass them that we can moon them as we go by. Please oh please…

We have a couple extra challenges on the return leg. One is that the night will be three hours longer and we will have to divide the night watches between two people instead of three. So, each of us will stand two three-hour night watches on the way back instead of one on the way over. Crossing the ocean with two crew members is often referred to as sailing short-handed. We plan to handle all the other chores and tasks with a mixture of grit and smarts (Pat) and perversity and stubbornness (Tom). And even though we both get along well, it won’t really matter because I think half the time one of us will be asleep. I bought a new pair of shorts in Lisbon and I’ll let you know how long it takes Pat to even notice…

We have lots of entertainment options for night watches. There really is too much going on to watch a DVD, but podcasts are a great option. We have the usual NPR downloads and interviews along with the New Yorker weekly commentary, Bob Edwards Weekend, and to balance all that out we have Savage Love, Dennis Miller, and Marc Maron with his weekly WTF web show.

We are done with our boat chores, fixes, and improvements – here are a couple we can show you.

Moving the antenna lead away from the backstay should improve radio performance

Two grab straps in the cabin for when we are bouncing around

A few straps on deck to tie off halyards and other lines

The blue thing is a bag to keep a smaller jib on deck for easy deployment

A pull-up bar because we plan to come back with muscles

The new splash cloth may keep some waves out of the cockpit

We’ll try to do some blogs from the ocean through our SailMail program and some help with postings from Peggy and the Courneyas.

Hey, what about the hurricane season? Good question. Here are two pictures that tell it all.

This picture shows all the hurricane tracks for the last 160 years. This graphic shows where they start and end. It also shows that when we leave the Canaries, that we have a couple extra weeks before we actually get into the hurricane belt. It also shows you why the people that build big expensive houses on the North Carolina coast have more money than sense.

This next graphic shows the monthly breakdown of hurricanes during the defined hurricane season. You can easily see that the historical chance of a late November hurricane where we will be is remote. And if you have a big screen TV, and have ever seen a man change channels, you know that remote is our favorite word.

So, off we go. We’re sure there will be drama and we promise to report and of course exploit it for our personal glory. We’ll let you folks vote on whether or not you want puke and weight loss stats or other fun facts.

And, if you were wondering when the heck we were going to get back on the ocean, the answer is now!!