It has taken us two days to strip down the boat and remove all the provisions and gear that we wish to take home. It is still hard to believe how much stuff had found its way onto the boat. The boat came up at least two or three inches in the water as we removed everything. Notes were made concerning projects that needed to be done both here at the marina and also at home. The remaining gear had to be shuffled around so that the marina crews could get their work done. As soon as we are gone the boat will be winterized, hauled, the bottom cleaned, and the boat stored ashore for the winter.
Our summer cruise to the north end of Maine and back covered 2,525.4 nautical miles. It was basically a shake down cruise. We wanted to get to know our new boat and find out what improvements needed to be made so that we will be able to confidently cruise further and to more remote areas in the future. All in all we had a good time but much to our surprise it was more difficult than we expected to make the transition from our Catalina 22 to our new Cape Dory 36. "Evergreen" proved that she was every bit as good as we had hoped. With the lessons that we learned this year we hope that next years cruise will be easier.
We came back with a few resolutions for next year:
Sail more and motor less.
Get off the boat more regularly and get more exercise.
Not to have any schedules or set deadlines other than when to be back.
Not to try to keep a Daily blog again. The days will be grouped in the future.
We found that the single most important improvement that we had done to the boat the year before was to install a salt water wash down system. The list of uses that we found for the system is endless.
One of the things that we enjoyed most about having a bigger boat was the ability to have guests along. It is a lot of fun treating interested family and friends to the cruising experience. In the future any family or friends who would like to cruise with us sometime are more than welcome. You just need to let us know.
I hope everyone who looked at all or part of this blog enjoyed it. Its primary purpose was to give family and friends back home an idea of what we were experiencing. That is why so many photos were included. For those of you who are not familiar with blogs: They are presented in reverse order (the latest entry is first). You can click on any photo to enlarge it to full screen --- then just go "back" to the blog.
Some of you are probably wondering why we keep our boat in Maryland when we live in Florida. There are several reasons:
Sailing on the east coast of Florida is limited to going up or down the intracoastal waterway depending on which way the wind is blowing.
The Chesapeake Bay is only a 15 hour drive from our house and is a superb place to do long weekend sails in the spring.
The Chesapeake Bay is also two weeks closer (sailing) to our primary cruising destinations (the Northeast and Canada).
So each year we plan to do several long weekends on the Chesapeake in the spring and then a long cruise north each summer and early fall.
I would like to thank the countless people who helped make this summers cruise a success. We could not have done it without their help and/or advice.
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