Another Chesapeake Photo

We took this at Rock Hall Landing during our September shakedown. I'm posting it lest anyone think we haven't loved being here (complaints about the weather notwithstanding). Just don't want the blog to be all words.

The joys of Chesapeake weather forecasting

Okay, so I left to get a haircut at 4. Before I left, I checked the a.m. NOAA forecast and it said that we would see 10-15kts of wind from the east or northeast on Sunday and Monday. I come back, and the afternoon forecase says 5-10 on Sunday and Monday, maybe 10 on Tuesday. We should be used to it by now, after three summers here.
Susan is in NH today with her folks, returning tomorrow morning. We are trying to wrap things up at the office so we can head out late afternoon tomorrow, to Solomons. We'll do fresh provisions on Saturday, and then Susan's sister Judy and her friend Tom will meet us for dinner at the CD Cafe (which we just FINALLY tried this year, after hearing about it since we got here) and they will stay over and see us off and take the car home to Judy's on Sunday. Our friend Melinda is unavoidably detained in NYC (see you in December!).
Plan is to make it to the south side of the Potomac on Sunday night, then onto another anchorage Monday night, and perhaps to a marina on Tuesday so I get my full and final election fix. It's looking very, very good but I can hardly wait for the real returns.
I had another one of those wrinkle-in-time moments this morning, thinking we were leaving a week from Saturday...
A shout-out to Steve - sorry we couldn't manage dinner the other night - and believe me, if anyone can make us want to come back and work next summer, it's you!

One Week from Tomorrow

It still seems a little unreal, at least to me and to Susan - perhaps to JP too - and we're only going for a month this time. When we started planning, we thought we would shove off and be gone for a year. Even so, actually starting the journey that we've talked about since before my friend Joan gave us the Ann VanderHoof book "An Embarrassment of Mangoes" several years ago seems pretty momentous.
In the funny moments category...JP and Susan had ordered "some" dried mushrooms. They came a couple of days ago (I'll post a photo next week, perhaps with our provisioning inventory, for those of you who are so bored by current events you want to see what we deem necessary to our travels!). JP said to me - "Do you want to divide them into smaller packs?" I said, let's wait until we're on board and I'll use our cute little Seal-A-Meal. He said "Okay...but do you want to take any to Florida?" Pause. I said "Well, sweetie, they ARE going to Florida!" Oh, yeah...
Meanwhile, I've contacted "Gulfstream Jennifer" and we'll probably arrange to have her help with weather windows that would allow us to take some of the journey outside. We're a little nervous (well, at least Susan and I are) at the prospect, but some parts of the ICW are a bit dodgy with our 5 and a half foot draft, so we'd like to try to take advantage of a few inlet-to-inlet runs, at least.
Off to Florida (by air, this time) for a three day weekend. Greetings to our farthest-flung "followers' - JP's parents in Monaco, and our friend Jacques in Zurich.

Here's a picture of Raconteur

So here's a picture of Raconteur, taken at Lake Ogleton near Annapolis, on the first day of our 10 day northern Chesapeake sojourn in September. We had stopped for the night to see Susan's sister Judy. Her friend lives on Ogleton, and so they came and picked us up and I was able to take this shot from his boat. That's Scheherazade, our Walker Bay sailing/rowing/power dinghy, up on davits.

Getting Ready to Go

We're here on Raconteur for the weekend, doing some pre-provisioning and accustoming ourselves to the cold. It was nearly 80 in DC during the week, and tonight it will be around 46 in Solomons.
Despite the cold and wind, I am already nostalgic for Zahnisher's. It has been Raconteur's happy home and our much loved weekend getaway since June of 2006, and we couldn't have picked a better place. We may be back next summer and fall, but who knows?
So, the first leg of the journey south begins in two weeks. Our friend Melinda will bring us down to the boat on Halloween Friday, and, the sailing gods permitting, we will take a few day to sail from here to the mouth of the Chesapeake, and then into the Intracoastal. We have to return to the client in DC on 1 December for a bit more work, so we are hoping to be at our home port, just south of the Sunrise Bridge in Ft Lauderdale, by JP's birthday for a late Thanksgiving.
After we finish with the client, the first week of March or so, we will take four months to sail the Bahamas. If the client wants us back, as they now say they do, we'll come back north in mid/late July, and perhaps (continue to) live aboard while we work in DC. If in the end we don't come back to work here, then we will probably continue our sabbatical, sailing south to the Caribbean, dodging hurricanes.
I'm trying to post a photo of Raconteur, but not succeeding so far...on a cell tower based connection, so we'll see if I can figure it out.