Kept hearing from people that a blizzard could hit today, so we got a second space heater and planned to hunker down for the duration. Instead, we went sailing. Not in a blizzard – I’m not that hardcore – but on a sunny, clear, cold day on Willoughby Bay. I wonder if that’s redundant. Doesn’t Willoughby sound like a contraction of Willow Bay? Willow Bay Bay. It would make sense. The British make fun of Americans for butchering the language, but they are worse than anyone about dropping letters, and I don’t just mean aitches. Worstestershire sauce, anyone? How about Norfolk? We tore the boat up some more, put things in new places that made sense to us, undid an “improvement” of the last owner, and got upset with the mess of line meant for going aloft. James suggested that we cut the line up and use it for new jib sheets. Once we had it cut and whipped the ends, we just had to break them in, right? It was our first sail since becoming owners several days ago. At first, we were too buried in our stuff and the stuff left on the boat by owners of yore. We just got ourselves more or less figured out today and, sure enough, she took us sailing! We went out into the little bay here, not out into the shipping channels or the main body of the Chesapeake Bay. Sailing up toward, well, land, we started getting shallow soundings, but I can’t figure out for the life of me why. Something on the keel? We cycled through points of sail and ended up sailing slowly, wing on sagging wing, back to the marina breakwater. It was a nice easy sail, and the perfect kind for getting to know a new[…]
Read moreMonth: February 2009
Where We Are
We are here: N 38° 57.865′, W 076° 17.765′ And google thinks it looks like this: <br /><small><a style=”color: #0000ff; text-align: left” mce_href=”http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ei=5zOaSeq8JY-ctwea7r27Cw&q=N36+57.865+W+076+17.765&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=14&ll=36.972798,-76.291895&source=embed” xhref=”http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ei=5zOaSeq8JY-ctwea7r27Cw&q=N36+57.865+W+076+17.765&ie=UTF8&t=h&z=14&ll=36.972798,-76.291895&source=embed”>View Larger Map</a></small> Which is pretty darn close!
Read moreThis IS the next chapter!
On Friday the 13th in 2009 we signed the paperwork and bought a beautiful new (to us) sailboat henceforth to be called, S/V ITINERANT! …Once again, at sea at last! S/V Itinerant is a (we think) 1961 Philip Rhodes designed “Chesapeake” sloop rigged sailboat. She came equipped with 180 watts on 3 solar panels and a Rutland 913 wind power generator, we are now officially OFF-THE(Mythical)-Grid!!! Fair Winds And Following Seas, Sucka’s!!! Saturday the 14th- V-Day! Our first night aboard S/V Itinerant and all is well! Our new marina, the “Rebel Marina” on the Willoughby Spit in Norfolk, VA. is a real gem in the sea of iffy Chesapeake marinas! It’s not only beautiful it’s friendly and has incredible access. For cruising sailors they offer free wi/fi, a loaner car and a very intensely hot, hot-tub!
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Go-a to Goa
The Rajdhani Express is the nice train. You get fed; you get tea; you get lots of nice things. But it’s still a train. And not really that nice. When we arrived in Margao (or Madgaon), I was exhausted by doing nothing. The bumps and wiggles of the train car had pulled my stitched-up belly this way and that all night, and I was tired. We shared the compartment (we were in AC2, meaning there are 4 bunks in the compartment) with a nice couple who were heading home. I wasn’t feeling like chatting, though, and James was reeeeeally not feeling like chatting. We made our beds in the top bunks and stayed up there for almost the whole ride. Anyway, once we arrived, we picked a taxi by following the first person who offered us a ride. It’s about 9km to Colva Beach, and that’s where we wanted to spend our last few days in India. I’d looked on the internet and discovered that there were some nice resorts that weren’t too expensive. We were thinking we’d spend 1000 rupees or more in order to have a real good vacation between our work/recuperating time at the house and the travel into the unknown. We’d just gotten the payoff from selling all of our furniture, kichenwares, etc, and we knew we’d be spending that cash until we got to the airport and converted it to dollars. At a serious loss, since the dollar had strengthened a great deal since we’d started spending. There we were, in Goa, approaching the beach, tired, sad, excited, pained, with a big chunk of cash in our pockets. Oh boy, did we ever overspend on the room! The taxi pulled off the main road – the one that dead-ended on the beach – and headed[…]
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