Taking the Plunge

I have bought another  boat, after thirty years of sailboats I decided to buy a power boat, we looked around at what is a huge selection of used boats (the economy here is not what it was) and found a friend of a friend who has a 44 foot trawler in fine condition and closed on it last month (Valentine’s Day).

Our next adventure will be to bring the boat up to Maryland from Florida (it’s only 900 miles).  Right now we are scheduled to start the trip March 15 and should be back home by the first week of April.  The plan (that word again) is to drive down to St. Augustine starting March 9 (likely today as you read this) in a rented minivan loaded with food, wine, clothes and tools and set out via the Intracoastal Waterway (Google ICW) to the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a six state trip, Florida, Georgia, South and North Carolina, Virginia, and home to Maryland. By that time spring should surely be here, it has been a long and unseasonably cold winter here as it has been in the UK. The ice has just gone from the creek in the last few days and the ducks and geese look like they are about to follow. In several weeks of intense preparation for the trip I have completed my taxes and purchased some charts and distress flares, the unimportant details (clothing, provisions etc.) I am leaving to others.

I have been a  little preoccupied working on a scheme to allow me to stay in internet contact whilst traveling, (cell phones are wonderful things) and should be able to provide some indication of progress made (if any) on a fairly regular basis. Several nautical wags here have assured me the trip will be routine, to my mind moving a small boatnine hundred miles is better described as somewhere between an adventure and a disaster, depending on circumstances largely beyond human control, but we shall see.

Fortunately the route is nowhere near Somalia so piracy should not be a hazard.

More news when it happens