Pictures from our presentation...

Thanks to Celeste Yost (again!) for providing pictures from our MTOA presentation about ActiveCaptain.

A copy of the slides used during the presentation can be seen here.

Where Did Everyone Go?

The Marine Trawler Owner Association (MTOA) northern rendezvous ended last night with an awards ceremony and party. Karen and I each received a highly coveted ruby pin. By this morning, most of the boats had disappeared.

Our presentation on ActiveCaptain went really well yesterday afternoon. There were some excellent questions and the response was wonderful. It's times like this when we realize that we're onto something important and believe even more strongly that we're headed in the right direction.

Going even further in the "we believe" direction, OceanLinez.biz released a feature article about ActiveCaptain on Wednesday called, "ActiveCaptain Could be the Wave of the Future." Quoting their first paragraph:

Telling you that ActiveCaptain “could” be the wave of the future is probably a little bit like saying the Internet will “probably be a big thing.”  The truth is, ActiveCaptain already is a fantastic resource for cruisers and passagemakers, but it might actually become something huge — a source of real-time, up-to-the-minute information that your navigation system can access while underway.  That’s saying something and the more ActiveCaptain develops, the less far-fetched it sounds.  But more on that later; let’s see why it’s already worth your time to “become” an ActiveCaptain.

The MTOA seminars that we attended were great. We met hundreds of people, ate exceptional food, exchanged sea stories, and made plans for future get togethers with new friends. All of this was exhausting! Today we lounged around, went grocery shopping, caught up on computer work, and arranged play times for Dyna and Dylan with other dogs.

The grocery store in Crisfied is pretty small with few selections. I was, however, able to prevail in getting Breyers ice cream. Karen was seriously considering a type called Turkey Hill and another called PET. I now have veto power over ice cream selection and I draw the line far before ever purchasing something with an animal name or any play-on-words cute names. PET ice cream? That's just asking for trouble!

There are a bunch of DeFever trawlers still here so we're all getting together for a group dinner tonight. It'll be a group of a dozen or so people. Dyna and Dylan were specifically invited and will tag along for the fun. You know, our song was right - it isn't about the boat, the places, or the sunsets. Cruising is about the people you meet.

Mail Day!

Jeff went off to some diesel engine seminar or some equally geeky thing while I stayed onboard to catch up with email, ActiveCaptain, etc. I heard a knock on the side of the boat and someone called, "aCappella, mail call!" Somehow, the dockhand was able to penetrate our cracker jack canine security crew - he was good!

I went to the stern to collect our large package. Our first batch of mail since leaving home. I've spent months moving as many bills as possible to electronic delivery. On top of that our friend Susie has a knack for filtering out the junk. Two bills (one already paid and the other on auto-pay), a couple of notices, several magazine (mostly boating), one piece of junk mail, a hose part that missed us when we left, and a surprise from our good friends and neighbors Dick and Helle.

Dick and Helle, we thank you, will wear them with pride, and heed your warning!

The Coffee House...

MTOA has been a lot of fun. We're deep in the middle of it right now. We've met a lot of really nice people and have had fun at the different seminars. There are many trawlers here and it's been fun to look at them and get ideas about things we'd like to add. We know we need some type of ramp system to work with fixed docks in a better way. It has been difficult for both man and dog here to get off the boat.

Tuesday night was a pot luck dinner.  With hundreds of people, this was a massive pot luck rivaling any New England dinner we've ever been too. The food was outstanding. After dinner, the dining area was re-decorated as a coffee house with candles, coffee beans, and a warm dark atmosphere. Peter Colket performed for a couple of hours with just one break when he gave the stage to Karen and me. We performed a couple of songs. Thanks to Celeste Yost for taking the video of one of them so we could share it!

Our second song was a re-make of the Marshall Tucker Band's song Can't You See.  Here are the words and music:

Can't You See What That Trawler's Been Doing To Me
(sung to the tune of Can't You See)
Chords: D, C, G, D (repeat)

Verse (Jeff):
    Used to have a day job,
    Workin that 9-to-5,
    Life went by so fast,
    Got me a trawler now,
    Life in the slow lane,
    I know I can't go back.

Chorus:

    Can't you see, oh can't you see,

    What that trawler's, been doing to me

    Can't you see, oh can't you see,

    What that trawler's, been doing to me

Verse (Karen):

    Used to wish for diamonds,

    Wear the latest fashions,

    Silk and satin was for me,

    Now I dress in T-shirts,

    Rarely put my shoes on,

    And only wish for calm seas.

Chorus

Verse (together):

    So we're out there cruising,

    Life on the water, now,

    A life that's hard to beat,

    It isn't just the places,

    It isn't just the sunsets,

    It's the people that we meet.

Chorus (twice)

Vagabonds no more

At 5:30 am now, it's dark. Very dark. We know because that's what time we got up and started getting ready to leave Solomons. We'd done 3 loads of laundry, cleaned the hull water line, and taken the dogs for a romp in a field. It was time to leave.

The anchor started coming up around 6:15. We slowly pulled out past the other dark boats - everyone still asleep inside. Outside the harbor we turned to the east and watched a beautiful sunrise over the Chesapeake. Waking up early has some advantages.

While we only traveled 40 miles over water to Crisfield, it was a much longer journey in other ways. For three full weeks we've lived the life of vagabonds. Life on the hook. Spending the night wherever our anchor dropped - sometimes for almost a week at a time. The journey today would bring us to a marina. Don't get me wrong. Marinas are wonderful. We have all the power and water we want (long hot showers!). But there are rules, and neighbors, and the sunrises are hidden.

Pulling into Somers Cove Marina gave us an opportunity to purchase fuel.  We didn't really need it yet but their price was pretty good and they were hosting the MTOA rendezvous so it seems like a good thing to get out of the way.

We took 476.1 gallons. A little less than half of our 1,000 gallon capacity. We have enough fuel now to get to the Bahamas although we'll certainly get more in Georgia where it is very inexpensive. With 100.5 hours of engine time since leaving Castine and 56.1 hours of generator use, this puts our engine burn at 4.5 gallons per hour. This is very good for a large boat with twin engines. I'm very happy with the performance.

We pulled into our slip at the marina and got everything connected. We washed about 1/2 of the boat but then had to leave for an MTOA reception. There are more than 80 trawlers here and a couple of hundred people. We saw some friends that we've known for many years and some that we only met in the last year. We talked about Cuba, anchorages, Coast Guard boardings, and traded sea stories.

Because this part of the Chesapeake Bay has only 2 foot tides, the marinas here have fixed docks. This creates a challenge in getting the dogs on and off the boat. Dyna and Dylan met our "PetStep" for the first time. It took a lot of treats but we finally got them to walk up the ramp and onto the dock. Fearless Dyna didn't think twice about it. She just walked the plank. Dylan was another matter...but he finally got it and got off the boat.

So we're back in civilized life for a little while. The sounds of people are everywhere. Air conditioners are running on about half the boats. We have air conditioning on our boat too but I wouldn't think of running it with 70 degree outside temperatures. The seminars start tomorrow. We're playing and singing at the coffee house tomorrow night - we wrote a special "trawler" song when we were in Northport. We're speaking on Thursday - it should be a lot of fun.

And we'll be vagabonds again in another week...

Helm Philosophy

As I sat for hours piloting aCappella through the Chesapeake Bay, I considered the following question: Is it better to have bad ice cream or no ice cream?

On one hand, having no ice cream means that you have the promise of having good ice cream eventually. On the other hand, having bad ice cream is better than just wanting it, isn't it?

To the manufacturers of "Shur Fine" ice cream, please, pick some other name. I realize that Shur is not sure or surely but still. Bearly Edible would be a better name (note the bear instead of bare).

Although we left Rock Hall late to wait for an extra foot of tide, the current and wind pushed us strongly south on the Chesapeake. We planned on anchoring near Annapolis but found ourselves there at around noon. So we kept going and anchored in Solomons. That effort means we can stay here tomorrow since Crisfield is only about 35 miles away. Karen wants to do laundry and the 10 knot winds forecast tomorrow will be perfect for drying the clothes outside (we put up closelines).

Dinner tonight was grilled hamburgers with onion and fresh tomato. I also made grilled asparagus on the side along with a fresh plum.

Oh yeah, there was ice cream too.

Still In Rock Hall

We've just completed our fourth day tied to the Rock Hall town wall. Dyna and Dylan think the place is great! They can step off the boat and run to a grassy field. They even got to play with some new dog friends, Cassie and Godiva. We can walk to a grocery store and the Harbor Shack is right next door with a great happy hour. Internet connection speed is very, very fast. Why leave?

One reason we've stayed was to be interviewed on Capt'n Pauley's Radio Nor'easter show on WCTR. We could have "phoned it in" but we wanted to meet Paul Esterle (aka Capt'n Pauley) and see what it was like to do a live show at the station. Paul picked us up at the boat at 8:30 am this morning to whisk us to the station. We had a great time with Paul and the other folks at WCTR and we're pretty sure we didn't embarrass ourselves. Dyna and Dylan even got prominent mention during the show. If you missed the live stream that Jeff referenced in an earlier blog, we should have a recording on our web site shortly.

At Rock Hall we have been meeting several of our online ActiveCaptain friends. First, Ralph and Celeste (aboard "Say Good-Bye") provided us with detailed instructions for navigating the shallow entrance into Rock Hall and helped us tie up last Monday. Ralph has added this helpful information to the Rock Hall Harbor Inlet marker on ActiveCaptain. Ralph and Celeste wrote the article All Ashore featured on our web site offering an innovative solution to getting their dog Striper into their dinghy.

We then caught up with Stephanie and Bob ("September Song"), and Tami and Doug ("Gypsies in the Palace") who were waiting for a part at a nearby marina. Stephanie and Bob are Cassie and Godiva's parents and brought them along for a major romp with our kids. These two couples have the same type of boat as us - it's always nice to meet kindred spirits. They introduced us to the Harbor Shack's happy hour where all of us, including the four-legged crew members, shared a drink and cruising stories on the outside deck.

Today Charles and Charles (yes, Charles squared) pulled onto the wall while we were doing the radio show. They are bringing Charles' boat ("CC Rider") down from the Hudson. Charles and his wife Pat are completing a four year cruise covering 9,000 nautical miles. Of course, that called for another trip to the Harbor Shack for happy hour.

We may leave tomorrow or we may not. The weather isn't going to be great so we're thinking we'll stay until Saturday. We need to be in Crisfield for MTOA by Monday where we look forward to meeting even more of our cruising and ActiveCaptain friends.

One Emergency Solved, A Second One Looms

Provisioning on a boat is tricky business. One is always making tradeoffs - how much space to allow for the staples vs how much for the "good stuff." Well, about five days ago we ran out of ice cream. Now if that is not an emergency at sea, then I don't know what one is. This is not only a catastrophe for Jeff and I, but also for Dyna and Dylan as they get to lick out the top and bottom of the ice cream container when it is finished.

After several days we considered calling the Coast Guard but then saw in ActiveCaptain that there is a small grocery store about a half mile from our spot here on the Rock Hall Town Dock. So off we went this morning with our insulated bag in hand. Jeff wanted to buy 3 cartons but fortunately I prevailed as we only have room in the freezers for two. Jeff suggested throwing some of the frozen vegetables overboard but I pointed out that we could go back just before we leave on Thursday or Friday. Being a single mom is sometimes difficult.

No sooner had we solved that impending disaster when the next one loomed. A couple of summers ago our friend Pat looked at us one beautiful day on the Castine Town Dock and said, "You've never heard of Damages?" She then loaned us her DVD's for season one of the show Damages with Glenn Close and we were hooked.

Several weeks ago we were on the town dock again with Pat and she said, "You've never seen Mad Men?" A couple days later she shows up with DVD's for season one of Mad Men. We started watching an episode each evening while we were in Northport. Well, last night we watched the last episode! Now we have to find season two. I'm not sure what sort of sick pusher our friend Pat is but next time I see her coming, I'm heading in the other direction.

Phase 1 complete...

The first phase of our cruising is complete. We've gotten from Maine to the Chesapeake Bay. We're on the town wall in Rock Hall, MD on the eastern shore. Bonus points if you can see Dylan's eyes looking at me while I took the picture.

We'd like to stay here for a couple of days if possible. Karen and I are being interviewed on the Radio Nor'easter show on Thursday (WCTR radio). If we can stay here until then, we can talk live in the studio instead of by phone. They'll be streaming the show live from 10:00 am to 11:00 am at:
http://www.mainstreamnetwork.com/listen/player.asp?station=wctr-am

Rock Hall is a real fishing village. It is dominated by a handful of marinas with many boats of all sizes. Entering the harbor was a bit tricky - we had to get used to 7 and 8 feet of water again, something that's always uncomfortable for our 6 foot draft vessel.

After two weeks of cruising, this is the first night that we're tied up to a dock. We've only been on the anchor since we left. It was nice to turn off all of the electronics and sleep without wondering if there would be a problem with shifting currents or wind.

We've been carefully watching our water use since we left. Obtaining water in the lower Bahamas and Cuba will be difficult. It was the reason behind the 2 week project of putting in the salt water washdown into the bow of the boat for cleaning the anchor and chain. Our results have been spectacular. As of this morning we still have between 1/2 and 3/4 of our tank filled with water. This means we can probably go about a month without finding a water source. Water in the Bahamas costs about $0.40/gallon and we have no idea if water is even available in Cuba. What this really means is that we don't need a watermaker for now.

Sometimes the Stars Align

Since our fateful overnight, we have fared most nicely. Luck has been with us, each day working out as it should. Even the five days we were "stuck" in Northport were pleasant. There was a nice little town and the beach for the dogs. They loved that - they also love their supper which they had to get while underway because of the long day today.

It turned out that by taking that overnight hop from Castine to Cuttyhunk, we easily dodged any possible problems from Hurricane Bill, ran through Hell Gate on the East River with favorable current, and today were able to position ourselves behind Reedy Island which is near the C&D Canal allowing us to get to the Chesapeake Bay tomorrow. By moving today we escaped days of rough seas, beginning tonight, that would probably have stranded us in Atlantic City for some time.

So I'm wondering, were the 10 hours of feeling seasick that night worth the "luck" we're experiencing now? It's easy to downplay that experience when the sun is shining and the seas are calm. It's also the sort of lapse of memory that can lead us to poor decisions. For now, I'll enjoy our luck and remind Dylan, the Celtic god of the waves, that we did name our puppy after him. Oh, and I'll keep my seasick medicine close.

The Lights...

Atlantic City is about lights. And sirens. And the sound of coins dropping. Even from the anchorage, you can see and hear it all. There's almost a full moon tonight - but it's just one of many lights here.

The passage today was pretty good. The waves were bigger than normal but they were spread far apart causing us to drift up and down thousands of times as the fluid passed underneath us. Our stabilizers kept the boat perfectly level making the whole thing quite nice.

We traveled in the company of two other trawlers - Cloverleaf and Steadfast. It's nice to see trawlers as we approach the Chesapeake.

The weather for tomorrow is falling apart towards the afternoon. We have a 30 mile offshore jump to Cape May to transit the Cape May Canal to the Delaware Bay. We'd like to then head north up the bay and anchor just before the C&D Canal. The trip is 6 miles further than today's but we'll have some unfavorable current in the canal and on the bay. It will surely be a long day and we'll be leaving early again to beat the bad offshore weather (we think).

Our hope would be to pass through the C&D Canal on Monday ending up in the northern part of the Chesapeake Bay.

But that's next week. Tonight is all about the lights...

The reason we're at the beach...

Today was a good day. As we figured, the forecast was too rough for us to transit down the New Jersey coast. It's looking pretty good for tomorrow so we're planning to pull up the anchor at 6:00 am and start heading toward Atlantic City. Taking some advice from people who grew up along the NJ coast, we'll stay a little closer to the shoreline than usual. The new NW winds developing today will keep the seas down there and it should be a pleasant 80 mile ride.

We have exceptional internet and phone connectivity here at Sandy Hook. Karen and I are using a Verizon MiFi which is giving us high speed access to both laptops at the same time. It's just like we're connected to a real DSL line.  Absolutely incredible.

So the weather is wonderful. It's 80 degrees and the sea temperature is in the low 70's. I was interviewed by phone for an upcoming article in PassageMaker magazine about mobile phones on boats, internet connectivity, and ActiveCaptain. All I did was talk about the things that we're actually using on our own boat. It was a fun interview.

Karen was just asked by Nor'easter Magazine to write a monthly column about coastal cruising from a woman's perspective. She wrote most of the first article - an introduction to our boat, crew, and about being lucky...

Sandy Hook is a 7 mile stretch of beach coming off the ocean side of New Jersey. It is kept pretty wild on the Atlantic side and is dominated by a Coast Guard station on the protected, western side. Tomorrow we hope to get to Atlantic City. Sunday looks possible to go through the Cape May canal and continue up the Delaware Bay to anchor behind Reedy Island. That would put us one short hop across the C&D Canal before entering the Chesapeake Bay.

By the afternoon, the beach was calling to us. Well, more the dogs than us but it was calling. As soon as we finished lunch, both dogs looked like they expected to play. Who were we to deny this? Down came the dinghy to a couple of fiercely wagging tails.



There are a bunch of other boats anchoring in the immediate area tonight. As the sun is getting lower, more and more boats are here for the night. Everyone who's been waiting to head south along New Jersey knows that tomorrow is the day we've been waiting for.

I think Karen is right.  We are pretty lucky.

The East River - Pictures & Videos

AroundMe

First, a word about our Live Tracking. Thank you to those who have written to us asking why we haven't moved from our initial anchorage in Northport last Friday. We are OK. We've gotten a good 25 emails asking about our condition. Everything is fine - it's just that the weather off the New Jersey coast has been terrible and we didn't see the need to move away from a nice harbor with many services and a great dog swimming beach. I now issue an "OK" message on the tracking device every afternoon that we don't move to show that we're fine. If we needed something, you can bet that we'd be making a blog entry about it. It's nice to know that there are so many people watching our movements. Really though, it's been very, very nice here.

That brings me to our need for fruits and vegetables. Fresh fruits and vegetables don't last longer than a week. Sure, we've got some frozen and canned items, but those are last resort types of things. We've been on the boat longer than a week already so needless to say, our fresh supplies are running quite low.

Finding a real grocery store within walking distance from a harbor is rare. As you can imagine, property close to the waterfront is expensive - usually not the place where a large store would be built. We asked some locals and everyone told us that a grocery store was miles away from the harbor. But then I checked AroundMe...

AroundMe is a free iPhone app. It looks at your current location (from the built-in GPS) and gives you a list of items to select from like Hospitals, Hotels, Movie Theaters, Restaurants, and, you guessed it, Supermarkets. Here's what it looks like when you start it:

It thinks I'm in Asharoken which is the closest beach to where we're anchored. Touching the Supermarkets item displays the following:

That's a list of supermarkets in order of approximate distance from where I am (I'm not sure why Thebarn is in the middle). We looked at this list and decided that 2 miles was too far to walk so it looked like nothing fresh was in our immediate future.

But wait a minute. That's 2 miles from our current location - out on the boat in the anchorage. It's a 1.5 mile dinghy ride to get into town. So here's the cool thing - touch on a supermarket in the list and it'll show you where it is on a map. It turns out that King Kullen is only a half mile away. The blue dot is our boat. The town landing and dinghy dock is all the way in the inner harbor on the east (right) side. The red pin is King Kullen:

So off to town we went. We had some ActiveCaptain hats to mail at the Post Office and some items to buy at the hardware store. A few side streets and some traffic lights to cross and voila, a huge King Kullen grocery store:

AroundMe hit a home run on aCappella today. I'm thinking of it as technology you can taste!

I Miss Val....

Soon after Jeff and I were married I went back to night school to get an MBA while I continued to work full-time. Something had to give so I hired a cleaning women to come once a week - a luxury my mother never had. This “habit” stayed even after I finished school and we've had some great people over the years. For the past 5 or 6, we've had Val.

Val's job is to come once a week to keep the dog hair to a gentle roar, make sure my bathrooms are not conducting any science experiments, and administer the required amount of belly rubs to Dylan (who complains that she loafs on the job). I love Val because she helps keep my life in order and she's a wonderful person.

Almost two weeks ago we said goodbye to Val. She's filled our spot with other clients with a promise to fit us in if she can when we return - I'm trying hard not to wish any of them harm.

So as we spend day two comfortably anchored in Northport, I decide it's time to thoroughly clean the cabin. How can two dogs generate so much hair?! Fortunately I have discovered a magical dog hair tool. Actually, it's been on the boat for years but I was never sure why I had it...

I moved this funny looking rubber brush-like thing around the “dog bin” for the past couple of cruises. Finally, the other day I tried brushing it across a cushion and was stunned at how the dog hair came up. It's called a Sweepa and even has a sharp edger for pulling the hair out of cracks. I'm adding it to "Products and Tips We Love." I honestly don't know where I got it but they do have a web site (http://www.sweepa.com/).

Don't worry Val, you're still irreplaceable. The Sweepa can't do belly rubs.

Dog Day Morning

ActiveCaptain warned us that the beach at Northport (Asharoken Beach) didn't allow dogs. The town of Northport just didn't understand though - these dogs have been on the boat for a solid 4 days. There wasn't an option of "No Dogs" at this point. By 7:00 am we were all in the dinghy headed out for a stealth beach landing. By 7:15, everyone within a 2 mile radius knew that Dylan was retrieving items from the water. He needs some stealth training.


The sky is nasty looking and there is rain spitting from the skies. The water temperature is a nice 70 degrees, very different from Maine ocean temperatures. To be honest, the dogs showed no preference. They loved the swimming.

The storm is projected to have 20 kt winds here - almost nothing. There isn't even a small craft warning for the area - it was called off last night. There's just a lot of rain coming.


Karen walked Dylan down the beach which gave me a rare moment to allow Dyna to retrieve her bumper from the water by herself. Dyna is an excellent swimmer but at 11 years old, she can't compete with 2 year old Dylan. I know she loves swimming with Dylan but I think she felt a little more joy by being able to get the bumper first and bring it all the way back. She deserved that moment.

By lunchtime back on the boat, the canine crew was exhausted and sleeping. We'll try another swim tomorrow and go into town to explore and search for bread and vegetables.

Walking from Danny

We awoke again at 5:00 am with plans of heading out to Sandy Hook. The latest forecast showed that Danny was going to be much less of a threat to western Long Island - there was almost no chance of 50 MPH winds. We now had a lot more options.

Going to Sandy Hook would mean we'd be stuck on the boat with almost nothing around for a few days. It had already been more than 3 days since we'd been off the boat and the team was in need of exercise, especially Dylan. Northport, NY has a wonderfully protected bay area. ActiveCaptain had a couple of anchorage areas for it. We've anchored ourselves in one of them before. Northport also has a town dock, a beach, restaurants - it would give us much more to do. We figured we'd be stuck because of the storm and rain for a few days. Everyone voted to change plans and go there instead.

The route to Northport is only 35 nm away. Leaving by 7:00 got us anchored in the harbor by noon. We have almost a quarter mile between us and the closest other boat anchored here. With 250 feet of chain out in 11 feet of water, this would be an excellent place to hunker down and ride out any storm. It's times like this that I'm happy we installed that new monster Rocna anchor.

It was a cloudy day with no waves and no wind. The perfect type of day to move the boat from one place to another. Once again our crew was ready at a moment's notice for anything. Well, as long as you had enough time to wake them up or allowed them to finish playing their cell phone game.

Running from Danny

We spent most of Wednesday night planning our options for tropical storm/hurricane Danny. The current path shows it headed directly for Long Island, perhaps a little east. These things have a way of moving out to sea further to the east so we decided that the best plan would be to move west. And move west as fast as possible.

The weather outlook is pretty good for the next 2 days. That gives us a nice set of options - but we have to move now. We have to get as far west into the Long Island Sound as possible today. That would allow us to get to Sandy Hook, NJ on Friday or head up the Hudson River to Yonkers if the storm moved west toward New York City. Once in Yonkers, we'd have another day to get deep into the Hudson River with little chance of great storm damage because of the land barriers. Either way, today was the day to move west.

We awoke at 5:00 am (yikes!) and were pulling up the anchor at 5:45. By 6:00 we were heading out of Cuttyhunk's protected harbor. It had been a dead calm night - it would have been nice to stay here another day. Our destination was 85 nm to the west to Joshua Cove off Sachem Head, CT. All projected winds were from the north there for today so anchoring off Connecticut would give us the best protection.

It was a beautiful day with no waves beyond the slightest ripple. There was a lot of sleeping going on especially by our canine crew. We picked up some wonderful current around "The Race" at Fishers Island which sped us to our destination. By 4:00 pm we were anchored and enjoying the stillness and incredible homes lining the cove.

All eyes are glued to NOAA forecasts and the National Hurricane Center right now.

The "Good" versus the "Not So Good"...

We arrived at the town dock at 7:30 am to find Larry waiting to take us to our boat. That was good. While loading the boat, Dylan decided to jump into the water soaking all of our clothes - this while still tied to the dock. Definitely not so good.

Upon dropping us off at the boat, Larry had one final set of instructions - "Keep her off the rocks" - definitely good.

We unhooked the mooring lines at 8:30 am - right on schedule. It was a beautiful morning and a bunch of friends waved goodbye at the town dock - all very good.

One planned stop in Rockland to top off our fuel at Journey's End Marina. We also picked up a SPOT Messenger and configured it over a cellular internet connection after leaving Rockland. The SPOT device sends our position to satellites every 10 minutes. The track that those positions create can be viewed by anyone so everyone can watch our progress or see exactly where we are. Our public tracking page is located here:

http://tinyurl.com/ActiveCaptainSPOT

All good.

Leaving Rockland we experienced 2-4 foot rolling waves - we call them rollers. They rise slowly and fall slowly. It's a nice gently motion. More good. How much good do we deserve in a single day?

Two hours before sunset we arrived outside Monhegan Island. This is our final go/no-go position before heading overnight across the Gulf of Maine to Cape Cod. There was no change in the weather prediction and the 4 foot rollers continued. Even more good!

It turns out, we used up our allocation of good. About 2 hours after sunset, the period of the waves shortened from 8 seconds to 4 seconds (and less). This turns those nice gentle rollers into choppy, nasty, up-and-down motion. The waves were all coming on our nose too. Straight-at-you waves are the safest bad weather condition but they are mighty uncomfortable. We had 12 more hours of this type of weather to face. This was certainly in the not so good category. In fact, it was worth 10 not-so-goods.

Within 2 hours, Karen was sick. I felt queasy but was OK. The dogs had never been in bad weather and took it wonderfully. We gave them some preventative sea-sickness medication that would make them a little drowsy. They didn't like the motion but they were really great. Karen couldn't do her watches and I had to pilot all night in the dark against those waves with no sleep. Make that 50 not-so-goods. 10 isn't enough.

By 9:30 the next morning, we were in the protection of Cape Cod and the weather was light. I gave the helm to Karen so I could sleep for a couple of hours before piloting through the Cape Cod Canal with close maneuvers and other boats all around.

We eventually found our way to a calm cove off Cuttyhunk where we dropped the anchor, ate one of the three meals we missed, and tried to brush ourselves off. The anchorage was beautiful, the sunset was golden, and all was happy again inside aCappella. Very, very good.

That lasted all of 10 minutes - Hurricane Danny is aiming right at Long Island and set to hit in 3 days.

The not-so-goods won today but we've only just begun this joust.

We're all ready...

The boat is ready. The house is ready. We've gotten everything we're going to get for departing. We just have to do a final loading of perishable foods this afternoon, top off our water tank, and disconnect the mooring pennant. The dogs know that something is up.

We plan to leave tomorrow at 8:30 am headed for Rockland, Maine to quickly top off our fuel tanks. By loading up with fuel now, we won't need fuel again until we're on the Chesapeake unless we come across a good price somewhere. We need to leave Rockland by 1:00 pm to get long past Mongehan Island by sunset. Then we'll be making a straight line from Monhegan to the Cape Cod Canal approaching Cape Cod at sunrise and entering the canal around 9:30 am. Our departure delay of a couple of days will cause us to now be against the current on the canal slowing us down significantly for those 10 miles. Once in Buzzards Bay we plan on heading to Third Beach (ActiveCaptain reference here) off the Sakonnet River to anchor for the night. We've never been on the Sakonnet River or near that anchorage before. But is has a 4 star rating by 3 captains. We especially like the comment someone made about there being a "pet friendly beach".

It's both sad and exciting to leave. We'll miss our friends, Castine, our house, long hot showers, high-speed internet, DVR, and our general routine. The dogs have a huge surprise coming when they take that dinghy ride to the boat expecting a fun day trip only to find that they're not getting off - and not even stopping for the night. It'll certainly be a change. But we'll all be together. We'll face the challenges and share the joys of whatever comes our way.

Fair winds and following seas for all...

Downtime

We're still waiting for Bill to make his way up the east coast. The predictions here in Maine are for rains and winds to start tonight through Sunday. He's moved further east and slowed down so we're hoping the seas will settle down Monday allowing us to leave first thing Tuesday morning.

In the meantime, we're taking the final preparations a bit slower and taking some downtime with our friends. We've had some parties, big and small, and went to see the new Meryl Streep movie, Julie & Julia - Karen loved it (Jeff says "chick flick"). This afternoon we found time to give the dogs a final bath. Can anyone explain why dogs who absolutely love being in the water hate being bathed? But they smell awful sweet right now.

We were left a comment asking advice about the "poop deck" for the dogs. We have an article describing all about the technique we used. Check out Canine Crew on the web site. If you'd like a reply to your comment, please make sure you leave us your email address!

A Wiki for Mariners...

MadMariner and Navagear did a review comparing ActiveCaptain to 3 other similar sites. Tim did a good review and we'll take the A-. Tim would have liked to see a "Hazard" type of marker added to our site. We know it's needed too. In fact, it's already in the X Preview tab which is the next version of our Interactive Cruising Guidebook.

As cruisers ourselves we know that up-to-date information is critical to safe passages. The reality is that the official nautical charts don't get updated often enough with the data we need. It's up to all of us to help each other. That's the whole idea behind ActiveCaptain.

In fact, Tim's "Old pier eliminated" hazard is already in X Preview along with many others through the Atlantic ICW. This new yellow/orange hazard marker will become live for everyone when we make X live. We're getting closer to having that complete. Note also how X Preview shows the new hazard marker on top of real NOAA nautical charts. We think this will be one of the most important additions to ActiveCaptain ever made.

We also think that our pre-loaded, already available markers for every marina and thousands of anchorages is a huge benefit to any cruiser planning their adventures and cruises. Added with that are all of the reviews, thousands of them, giving personal experiences and impressions. As we are planning our day-to-day movements now, those are the things that we find most important.

It's nice to see our web site in print! And the suggestions in reviews like Tim's make us work harder to produce a better product.

Curses to Bill!

Hurricane Bill is churning up the waters off the east coast so we have postponed our Friday departure. There's even a possibility it could hit here in Castine. We're considering putting aCappella on our storm mooring tomorrow or Friday. Our next possible departure date looks like Tuesday the 25th. So we wait, visit some more with friends, and hope he hurries his way north.

Cruising With Our Friends

We're in what we thought would be our final week - Friday, August 21st being our take off day. So we planned some day cruises with friends to say good-bye. While we're looking forward to the trip, we're also going to miss those back home. We had two beautiful days cruising around the Penobscot Bay. Our friend, Marion, took this picture after we pulled into the dock one day. I think it's a pretty good looking crew!

While we're almost ready to go, it seems that Mother Nature has some other plans for us. The weather is deteriorating as the week goes on so Friday is looking like a "no go." We're actively watching the building disturbances in the Caribbean with Hurricane Bill too. We're still moving ahead as planned. That way if the weather clears we can go and if it doesn't, we'll have some down time before we leave. No more projects are left - we're simply loading clothes, books, last minute supplies, readying the house, etc.

Anchor Testing

On Tuesday we left for Carver Cove to do some testing with our new anchor. We wanted to really understand how it worked and how working with it might differ from our other anchors. Carver Cove is a good spot for this as it's a large cove with good water. Tuesday night we were the only boat anchored there - even better. We pulled in around 5:00 PM and set the anchor at a variety of scopes, at first trying to make it not set and skip along the bottom so Jeff could know what that felt like. Whenever we anchor Jeff does the bow work while I handle the helm. When we finally let her set, she really did set. Putting the engines in reverse didn't cause us to move an inch.

The night was calm but we still wondered how hard it would be to haul anchor in the morning. Rocna's have a reputation for being a bear to free - the reason we got it actually. We were up early Wednesday morning and found the process went very smoothly. Using the engines, we were able to free the anchor fairly quickly. It also gave the prefect chance to use our new saltwater wash down. Jeff says he's in love. It's a good thing I'm not the jealous type. There is still an issue with positioning the anchor and chain as she moves in and out to ensure the chain stays on the winch. Jeff and Larry are working on that one so I'm sure a solution is coming.

The kids did great. They're settling in and finding the spots they like - the bow is a favorite for sniffing those good sea smells. We tried feeding them while underway (something our last crew mate, Tucker, never liked doing) and they finished in their usual rush. They both seem to understand the "poop deck," although Dylan still waits for Dyna to go first. He seems a bit unsure whether or not it's OK. We stuff our pockets with treats so I'm sure he'll feel more confident soon.

When we returned home, the dogs were loaded into the car for a ride to Bangor. We had a promise to fulfill for JoDee -- a four generation picture of Dyan, daughter Katie, granddaughter Daisy, and great-grandson Sarge. Of course, we also took the opportunity to get Dylan with his grandma Dyna, and mom Katie. Dyna has certainly created quite a "Dynasty"!