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 Screaming down the Chesapeake in 30 KN winds with too much sail.  An unknown passerby sent us this photo of Mandate in the valley of a wave, making it appear that we are underwater at her stern.

WINTER PASSAGES  2011

September 24, Saturday    Devils Tower Wyoming

About three weeks ago we purchased a Honda Odyssey mini van and outfitted it with a platform bed with bin storage on the bottom for camping on our 3 month odyssey to the National Parks and monuments.   What fun it is to see the natural beauty of our big country!!  I will tell our story with pictures. 

murder ?  able.  We have get everything out to cook and figure out how to wash dishes under a faucet 300 yards away and then repack before dark so the bears or mountain lions don’t come to the site, but it is all part of the fun.  Adian

We started out by visiting friends we met through sailing and since the majority of sailing friends we have are Canadian, we went up to Lake Ontario to see Pam and Yelda on Simcoe Island, and Kingston Ontario.  We saw Paul in Toronto, then Kathy and Darius in Whitby, Bruce and Esther in Georgian Bay, and Ken and Jean in Windsor.  Then my sister in Michigan once back in the states.  Not much sleeping in the van.  Till a week ago. 

September 25, 2011  Musing

I’m sitting with my second glass of wine in the shade of perhaps 80 degree temp at 5:30 in a spectacular setting:  Leigh Canyon, Wyoming with rock faces looming above me on both sides,  and a broad and exuberant stream to my left so much that Rob and I have to shout to hear one another.  This is semi-off season so part of the campgrounds are closed and there is no charge.   We have noticed  an abundance of single men camping out—hey no charge for 2 weeks max, but at this time, who’s keeping count?  I call them weird guys, Rob calls them “on the lam…” Remember Lucy and Ethel camping alone when they hear about the axe murder?  They had a cute little pod trailer they pulled behind them.  There are versions of pods now; we met a couple who restored a 67 Airstream trailer—very little  and cute.  But I refuse to get caught up in the  bigger and bigger syndrome…The van is just fine and better than a tent so you have some defense against the bears, I’m thinking…although our Devil’s  Tower climber neighbors slept under the stars, that fascinates me:  I’ve done it  a few times, the last when I wrapped myself in a plastic tarp to  keep out the morning dew, and it was the best, even though it was a protest against state budget cuts in homeless programs in downtown Albany.

 October 4 Tuesday

 I am surrounded by glacial snowfields 9,000 feet at the top of Reynolds, Oberlin, and Clements Mountains with views of the peaks of all of those just off Logan’s Pass in Glacier National Park.  After driving through countless acres of the dried timothy fields of Montana, the mountains appear green and full of August wildflowers, in spite of daytime temperatures of 35 Fahrenheit. 

Rob and I just finished a mile hike into the St. Mary Waterfall at the head of St Mary Lake among the striated layers of mountain shale and colors ranging from red to blue to green to gold sheets of flagstone.  Hiking in the Rockies has its drawbacks: Grizzly Bear signs are everywhere and put a little fear in each step:  as we are told to let the bears know we are coming; I guess that they really don’t want to encounter us so we give them fair warning.  Then there are the wolves, mountain lions, and coyotes.  Grizzlies get top billing; makes me wish I had the survival skills of Sarah Palin, yeah.  

We are at fireside in at the bottom of the mountains now,   It is dark and quiet, the campsite encircled by young and dense Aspen making it quite secluded.  The park camping ground is closed for the season, but because the weather has been unseasonably good there are about ten campsites occupied tonight centered around  the one operating vault toilet.  I love the quiet of the campground, everyone seems to turn in at dark and the stillness of the night is as loud as the distant highway and an occasional cough from a campsite far away.  I love this.  Orion show himself after midnight and Ursa Major is always there to guide us.      

October 5

Our first rainy and cold day today in the almost month that we have been on the road: we drove to the western part of the Park to the back side of the mountains; the only passage through having been closed since the snowstorm 2 weeks ago and subsequently the road restoration of Logan Pass.  Because of the weather and our  Coleman camping stove giving out on us and the broken piece was unobtainable --and the wusses we are, we checked in at a Holiday Inn Express tonight.  Feels like a cop-out, but a warm, comfortable one while we figure out where we go next.  With our overnight stays averaging $5 a night it was hard not to use every perk this place had for us at $195.  I was up all night, the bed was too comfortable. 

October 9 Sunday

We are out in the wild again, maybe our last for a while in the National Forest system; we are about to hit Seattle or maybe Vancouver next and it sounds urban, we haven’t made up our minds.  We are camped on a majestic lake, or pond just shy of Baker Dam at the foot of Mt, Baker in Washington.  It is perfectly still, just the sounds of our crackling fire and an overhead Raven.  We finished a fish dinner with fried potatoes and salad.  We are lakeside and there are no other people in the entire campsite.  This is the first forest site that does not warn us of bears, so our guard is down, probably when they will strike!  I just heard a fish jump.  I love it here.   Today we drove over the Cascade Mountains and sow the most snow covered chain of mountain peaks yet.  



October 2010

Mandate in the Hudson River

  We are in Castleton NY getting ready to depart in the lovely hot weather we have had here in the Hudson River.  Last April we sailed from Coconut Grove FL to Chesapeake Bay in  record time of less than 2 weeks sailing up the coast to put Mandate up for the next 2 months in Stoney Creek, just south of Baltimore MD. 

The plan was to deliver Dream Catcher, a Jeanneau 42 sailboat from British Tortola to Washington NC for an uncle (Ed!) who had bought the boat 10 years ago through a bare boat charter business.  What a hoot the trip was!!  We went from Tortola, through the Virgins to St John to Culebra, past Vieques to Boqueron, Puerto Rico through the night in the Mona Passage past Dominican Republic and up thorough all of the Bahamian islands, from the tiny remote southernmost French Cay to the northwestern-most Sail Cay in the Abaco Islands.

 Weather for this trip was sensational; we went snorkeling almost every day and saw lots of beautiful coral and fishes.  Laura, the mighty fisher-woman caught   2 Mahi, 1 Benito, and a scary looking Barracuda that went right back in to the water; we ate the de-licious others.  The account of this experience is on this site on page 6. 

 We made our June  1 expected due date for arrival in North Carolina, drove home via rental car and packed to drive to Baltimore to fetch Mandate out of Stoney Creek.  We took our good friend Steve as crew to deliver Mandate up the Chesapeake, through Delaware Bay and the C+D Canal, out Cape May and up to NY Harbor. 

 Approaching the hustle bustle of NY with ferries, ships and barges going in a million directions, we lost our engine right in front of a barge!!  Panic, panic, we hoisted the sails and eeked our way past  the bohemith.  Unable to rectify Mandate's engine fuel starvation issue en route we tacked up the harbor for the next three hours to the 79th Street Boat Basin and grabbed a mooring for the night.  whew!!

 What a difference from the remote islands of the Carribean to dinner in the heart of NYC within a matter of weeks!!

 The rest of the trip was a lovely early summer ride enjoying the upper Hudson as she gets narrower and more rural.  Steve writes a beer column and he is always engaging us in beer tasting.  I am a challenge because I am more of a wine drinker, so Steve brought along a variety of beers to convince me that some beers are as flavorful as wine.  Each meal on board was matched with a beer to complement the dish. 

Mandate pulled into her summer mooring across the river from the Castleton Boat Club.  We entertained the youngest five of our seven our grandchildren motoring and then sailing down the river.  I reserved the whole month of September for the making  of the vinyl enclosure--it took the entire amount of that time.  Mind you, if you had this done  by a professional, it would take them maybe 2 weeks.  It was the challenge and the fact that I had spent a lot on a special canvas and sail sewing machine, meant that I had no excuse not to do it myself.  

we left Castleton around the 11th of October and made a quick motor sail to anchor across from Bannerman Castle



Cruising friends Bob and Carol visit me while I work at our Hudson River summer mooring on a vinyl enclosure for Mandate.  A tedious job, but it turned out to be wonderful as temps plummeted below 40 degrees on our southward travels along the ICW

Robs daughter Sarah and kids gave us a farewell from the dock at Castleton- on-the-Hudson.  Notice the completed vinyl enclosure, done. Whew!

Rob snaps himself with the wind generator on his new iPhone while sailing the Hudson River.  New York Harbor was a blur as we blew by in 9KN of current and wind.



Typical anchorage off the ICW; you just pull off where the depth reads fair and drop anchor outside of the channel.  No boats travel at night on the ICW.  The challenge is to shoot a horizontal horizon.

We called to make reservations at Bucksport Marina because we thought it looked interesting when we passed by on other trips.  Whoever answered told us that they were closed for renovations but  we could stay at the docks for free and that included electricity.  Fortunate for us as we broke out the electric space heaters for 4 rainy,cold days.   As boats passed through we hailed them to come in.  That's where we met Joe, Debby (s/v Kajun), Mary and Dave.  This is an impromptu potluck we put together.

 

Bucksport:  We met Ken and Jean (s/vSail Away)from Ontario Canada.  They became our boat buddies that traveled with us from  Savannah to Florida sharing many dinners, hikes and good times.

A walk in Beaufort SC.  We spent more time than usual in ICW harbors and stopped to smell the roses instead of rushing down toward warm weather by sailing outside down the coast. 



 View of the ICW from a street in Beaufort across from a cafe where we ate lunch.

Cockpit party on Island Packet Short Walk ,we literally took a short walk with the captain and crew, and they invited us over while we invited the rest of the party.  That's how it goes!  This was in Cumberland Island Georgia.

Georgia, South Carolina and Florida are heavily Spanish-mossed.   The barrier islands of Georgia , we visited St. Simons, little St. Simons, Jeckyll, and Cumberland; have a lot of colonial history: settlements were established and territorial disputes waged with the Spanish who held Florida.  Barons of the early 20th century. Rockefeller, Carnegie,  Mellon,  had summer mansions on the islands.

Armadillo, wild boars and deer inhabit the island which is held as a national preserve.   Armadillos roam the pathways in the heat of the day blindly scraping for insects in the dirt, seemingly unaware of our presence.

Little St. Simon Island: We dinghyed in to  an abandoned colonial era town that was in existence for less than ten years when it was decided the environment was too harsh for survival. 

Pina Colada party on the dock:  you bring the booze and they provide the mix.

We dawdled the ICW long enough to make the famous Thanksgiving celebration at st. Mary's GA where the town cooks turkey, ham, beef and the price for cruisers is to bring a dish for the feast.  The celebration lasts 5 days and brought 100 boats in the harbor at anchor. Pictured here are Meg, husband Charlie's shoulder, Ken and Jean, and Shannon and Kris.  We will be sailing Shannon and Kris' boat to Belize in January 2012.

A number of families boat-school the kids and cruise for a year.  These kids met at St. Marys Thanksgiving.  Mary, 15,  in blue on the right has a very interesting blog on her experiences entitled marysyearofsailing@blogspot.com.   Meg and Charlie above,  are her parents

Our friends Rick and Carla join the St. Mary's gang by way of driving up from Vero Beach FL where they have their boat and are visiting her dad and aunt. On the porch of Seigels. the event's sponsoring pub,

Florida

Friend David who lives in Melborne FL and his date, Lynn join the gang of us to listen to a riverside band consisting of some cruisers from Vero Beach

After 31/2 months Dec-March at home in upstate NY, we return to Mandate and travel from Titusville to Stuart FL.  Rob flies to London to see his daughter graduate from U of London with a Masters degree.  I stayed with the boat and became the mistress of Mandate and her dinghy.  

We are suddenly called back home to arrange a funeral for our dear friend Beverly.  We rush back to Titusville and put Mandate away after one month of spring cruising.  At the boat yard we helped Scott, above, launch his sailing dink, made from found objects in the yard.  





  Bucksport SC pot luck.  Days were getting cold.  Bill wanted to stay at an interesting marina on the ICW.  He called ahead and they told him it was closed, but that it was being reconstructed and that we could stay at the dock for free, AND there was electricity-meaning we can run the portable heater.  We stayed for four days and gathered more boats as we hailed them in.  Joe and Debby on Kajun, a sweet old ketch and their friend Dave. Mary is in pink and has done extensive traveling all over the world on her boat.