April 20th 2015

Today has been a rough day, in more ways than one. The seas were around 8 feet and making us roll every which way. Last night was full of squalls and thunderstorms, everything go wet in our new enclosure but not from over head but from below. The water would move from one side of the boat to the other under our cockpit seas and soak into anything that had been left on the floor. I must say that the deck has had a thorough salt water wash and a rain rinse. As the winds died down (was 20-25) fog rolled in this afternoon. We have decided to pull in to Ocean City, Maryland for the night to catch up with some sleep. The plan is to go after breakfast in the morning hopefully pulling into New York on Wednesday. I've pretty much spent the day on the floor wishing to die so a night tied up to the dock makes me a happy gal. Capri wasn't seasick at all today, Cali and Crew are doing great. Making chicken vegetable casserole for dinner tonight. Yumm-o. Hopefully we'll all be able stomach it unlike the last two dinners.
4pm now, think we have just under 4 hours to Ocean City. If we can't make it before dark we'll have to skip it and continue on to New York. I think we'll just make it.

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19th April 2015

3:05am and still motoring, hopefully sometime tomorrow we can put the sails up. Kids are doing great, the girls are excited to get to grandmas house but first we're New York bound. It's a very dark night, I feel like we're the only ones out here in the middle of the ocean. The end of the earth could be just ahead an I wouldn't even know it. Trying out the seasick patch for the first time that we got in Canada, works great. I'm only wear 1/2 of patch so the side effects aren't too crazy. Feels so good not to be in the fetal position on the saloon floor. The girls saw Dolphins today while I was preparing dinner, brings such joy to hear their squealing voices.
Almost 1 down and about 3 days to go to New York.

April 17th 2015

We had planned on leaving out this evening at high tide but we just didn’t have enough time to get the boat back together. We only got put back in the water this morning and the place was a train wreck. The dodger wasn’t quite finished, we were having timber put up over the stove, all the floors were a terrible shade of bilge goop. This morning I had to race out and drop 2 big garbage bags of laundry off at the laundromat, go grocery shopping for the trip, come back clean up. Laundry had to be picked up, rental car dropped off. Kids were screaming, I was screaming, Carl ran from us all screaming. Let’s just say it was a hard day. It’s now 9:30pm and we’ve given up. Most everything has been put away but still need to stow the boat in the morning. Joe a friend at the yard is going to take Carl to Walmart in the morning to get some peanut butter – how did I forget the peanut butter, we live off of the stuff.

 

So we’ll push off at high tide which will be around 10am. It will take a few hours to get down the river and out. We should be getting some light headwinds for the first day or so before it clocks around to 35knots on the butt. We dealt with conditions like this last summer so we feel confident in Salty. We are planning on sticking close to shore in case it gets a bit iffy. We’re guessing it will take 4 days to get to New York. Here we’ll spend maybe 2 days before heading up to Massachusetts. The dodger looks great – thanks Sally and Joe – and we can’t wait to put it to use.

 

I’ll try and update this log every day that we’re out via either our SSB or iridium GO.

 

 

 

 

March 11th 2015

Day started out good. Sunny and crisp. Crisp for Florida standards. We lost the pin to the code zero sail and it was flapping in the wind. Had to rev the motors and pull it down on deck. We have light down winds so we are rolling around like a cork. I'm sure to lose my breakfast soon. We're out of the Gulf Stream so it's depressing to see only 7 knot progress instead of the 9-10 we've been getting. The boys got the code zero back up and we're finally able to sail again without the motors. Ahh the serenity. Highlights of the day: Cali fell down the companionway stairs, Crew peed on the wall (again), Capri picking her boogers and wiping them all over the couch, code zero braking, Alex cooked lunch AND dinner AND cleaned!! All in all a good day. Oh and we still have ice in the cooler, can't beat that. ETA mouth of the river 5 hours. Then we may have to hove to outside of the river waiting on high tide for a few hours.

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March 10th 2015

Made good time today with averaging 9 knots, love you Gulf Stream. The girls were good, played a lot. Alex our extra crew member on board made a rocking fried rice for dinner and baked chicken for the girls- not that they ate it. I felt queasy all day so wasn't much use. We can feel the temperature slowly dropping but it's not uncomfortable yet, I'm sure we'll feel more of a difference tomorrow. At this rate we should be at the mouth of the river sometime Wednesday night, can't wait. I've got some white chocolate calling my name in the freezer that I haven't had the stomach to eat yet.

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March 9th 2015

He had a late start out of Ft. Lauderdale. Left our after fueling at 3pm. We had fair sailing all night, once in the Gulf Stream we picked up speed to about 9 knots, the wind was coming out of the NE so we were slamming pretty hard at times into the swell. After the night went on the wind direction changed more out of the east and we had a more comfortable sail. A front is forecasted to come through Thursday so we'll have to keep up speed to get to the river mouth in time.

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March 8th 2015

Today we are prepping the boat to leave Ft. Lauderdale tomorrow. It’s going to be a 3 day run to Wilmington NC. I have to activate our phone, make sure our inReach tracker is worker, tidy the boat, put away laundry and pull out all our winter clothes. Between here and North Carolina the temperature is going to drop. Carl is cleaning up the deck from his grinding and painting. All the kids are grumpy with colds, our little man is popping some molars so he’s EXTRA grumpy. Should be a fun day.