We were only in Newport for a very short time, just enough to wander around the town a bit and get some pizza, and dinghy around the crowded harbor and gawk at the gorgeous sailboats there. Newport is after all, the home of America’s Cup, and some mighty racing boats are based there. These shiny, sleek, sexy boats who live up to names like Glory and Gleam are something to behold! There were also some other fun and unusual boats, and here are a few of our favorites for you to see:

A small "cruise ship" charter sailboat with the wonderful name of Arabella

A most awesome pirate ship!

What is it about these ships that stirs the soul so?

Pam!

Gleam, a sleek racer

The winner of the most unusual boat....what is this? An oriental boat of some kind with marvelous dragon carvings

SloMo checked out the great boats with us, but wasn't as excited as we were

Quick entry. Went to Newport last night. Keeping true to its trend, the wind was dead against us again! So we beat to windward all day today and just anchored off the east shore of Block Island in the “old anchorage”.
Rolly, but nice moonlit night. Tired but alive. West winds all day tomorrow, so we’ll stay here and hang out until they turn north.

– Capt’n K & Lala

P.s. There is one REALLY annoying thing about our new boat.
There are cables inside the mast that bang around when the boat rolls from side to side, making tons of noise. In this rolly anchorage, the sound is enough to drive us totally crazy. I dont know how we are going to sleep tonight! Actually it has been bothering us for a few weeks now. We need to remedy this situation ASAP, but doing it without taking the mast down or climbing up the mast in the dark in a rolly anchorage is near impossible. Aaargh!!!!

Today was a disaster. (but we are alive and well to write to y’all about it, so I guess it wasn’t that bad)
It started out first thing in the morning with both of us having near heart-attacks when I almost crashed our boat into another boat in the mooring field while exiting Cuttyhunk harbor. It was a terrifyingly close call, and an epically stupid move on my part due to losing control of the steering because I thought the engine was in gear and it was actually in neutral. Some angels must have been helping us out on that one, I still am somewhat in shock over how close we came to hitting that boat.

Then we proceeded to leave the harbor and face 20 knot winds on the nose with turbulent waves coming across Buzzards Bay. We had to head straight into the wind for aways to get out of the harbor, and we bucked like a bronco making very slow headway. It was a wild, rough ride. Some people find sailing like that pure bliss and fun, but I found it pretty stressful. We were motor sailing into the wind until we reached open enough waters to alter our course for better sailing. And then our engine died. Just like that, the engine suddenly died. We had no idea why. It happened so suddenly and without warning….

Ok…..no problem….we’ll sail. There’s definitely enough wind for it! So we sailed across Buzzards Bay until we reached the mouth of the New Bedford harbor. We contemplated continuing on our planned route in the direction of Block Island/Long Island and figuring out the problem down there, but it seemed more prudent to find out what the problem was sooner rather than later. We couldn’t go all the way into the harbor under sail alone because it was straight into the wind and the entrance is very narrow. So we thanked God that we have a membership to TowBoat U.S. and called them for a tow.

That was a new experience, getting towed in a sailboat by a tiny little tow boat! The guy who helped us was wonderful. He towed us right into a narrow slip (that was impressive) in a marina that was right across the street from a West Marine and several other boat supply stores. Cap’t K. tried trouble shooting the problem and could only determine that it was a fuel supply problem. Luckily within a few hours we had a diesel mechanic on board who knew way more than us. We almost had another heart attack when he suggested that it looked like a problem with the fuel injector pump (the main reason we are so stressed out about money is because we just spent $2,000 on a fuel injector pump for Cap’t K’s car)
But on further investigation, he discovered that it was a clogged fuel pump. Apparently the wild ride we were on bucking the giant waves stirred up a bunch of sludge that had been resting at the bottom of our 40 year old fuel tank, and to make things even worse, some water seeped into the fuel tank somehow. Those two things combined clogged our filter in jiffy! With a new $30 fuel filter, he got it running again, and gave us a bunch of helpful tips on the care and feeding of our engine. Brian was another wonderful angel!We still have some trouble shooting to do on our water in the fuel tank problem, but that is another story. For now we are back in business.
So, here we are tucked into a marina slip, enjoying hot water and full electric hookup, feeling both grateful that things weren’t as bad as they could have been, and also feeling major regret for having missed the wind window we had been counting on to get us west. Tomorrow the wind is going to turn west AND die down to light and variable. So we will be waiting for better wind to make it to New Jersey.
Our plan right now is to try to make it to Block Island tomorrow, and enjoy ourselves there until Monday, when the wind is forecasted to be in our favor once more.
But who knows what will happen!!! Planning is starting to feel pointless….

What a ride! 2 seconds after the last post we got hit by a storm and had to drop sail and don our foul weather gear. Spent the next half hour keeping the boat’s nose into the wind and getting doused with spray. Woo hoo! Our first storm!

The rest of the trip was nice on a broad reach flying just half of our jib under mostly clear skies with brisk winds gusting occasionally to 30 knots. Then we saw a lone race sailboat on the horizon. They were flying a spinnaker! Crazy, those racers, but we opened up our jib all the way after seeing how they were doing. Sure enough we sped up a full knot and the ride was no more or less comfortable

Lala brought us all the way into Cuttyhunk pond an hour before sunset, and then we failed to set anchor three times. Too much mud and grass here, so we tied up to a mooring. Now the wind is gusting to 35 or 40, and we are glad to be tied up for the night.

There is suppod to be a boat that goes around selling oysts from 5 to 7, but they arent answering on the radio. Probably too late in the season. Darn! Well at least we are off on our trip now! Hope to make it far to the west tomorrow. Probably not just jumping out to Atlantic city. We are pooped.

– Capt’n K & Lala

We have launched. We are out in Buzzards Bay, with 12 miles to go to Cuttyhunk harbor. Yay! We have a lovely and strong northwest wind and it is smoother sailing than we expected. So far so good on leg one of the shakedown cruise!

So we didn’t leave yesterday. Captain K was finishing up a project for one of his consulting clients that took a little longer than expected. So we sat in the harbor on wifi until that was completed at 5:00 pm. We just had to make a judgement call, and it simply was more important to finish up the project well than to leave on our initial schedule.

It’s the advice that we’ve heard most often on our journeys, “don’t travel on a schedule.” e.g. be flexible and don’t lock yourself into any specific travel dates. Let the weather and intuition guide you. That has served us well, but it is also maddening. We sat here all day yesterday with perfect ideal beautiful sailing weather. Lots of lovely vessels dropped their mooring lines and hoisted their sails to the masthead and flew away in to the glistening waters of Buzzards Bay. But not us. We sat here grinding our teeth and making much needed money.

C’est la vie, or “Sail a Vie” as some boat names punnily say.

So now we are going to amend our plan to simply this: go out there and then decide where to go. How’s that for a well laid plan!

No, seriously. That seems the best option. It’s powerful out there today. Lots of wind. Lots of gusts. Probably big waves, and the current in the bay will be against us. So maybe we’ll go to Cuttyhunk still as our first stop, but maybe we’ll take a right instead and hug the coast to keep in the less intense wind and then put into Newport, RI. We should be able to post our decision from our iPad 3G while we are out there, but who knows. We might not post again until we are anchored somewhere this evening.

Tomorrow looks like it will be a little bit less powerfully windy, so we’ll decide then if we are heading to New Jersey or going to cruise the Long Island Sound to stay in protected waters before heading to sea.

The Route from Massachusetts to Norfolk

It looks like we are going to get our chance to leave sooner than expected. That’s a nice surprise after these many weeks of waiting for all details to come together. The last thing holding us to land is the sale of my car, and that should be completed by this evening. Wow. So now that we know that this is going to happen, we’ve taken a good long look at the weather forecast and the charts.

Our new big table covered in charts

We have considered going straight from here to Norfolk Virginia. That would be a 72 hour straight line trip that would take us about 100 miles from land at the furthest point. While a great idea in theory, our reality is that we are not feeling up to the challenge right now. So we are going to trust our instincts and stay closer to land where we can find places to anchor at night and do a few shorter legs rather than one huge long one.

We haven’t been able to plan anything until this point because you never know what the weather will do. Now that we know the car is leaving tonight, we can look at the next week’s forecast and make a plan. You can see that plan in the picture. Click on it to see it bigger. Now the lines and points are approximate, but is shows the general course and itinerary.

We plan to take off tomorrow and go to Cutteyhunk Island at the end of the chain of islands in Cape Cod and anchor there for the night. Then the wind should shift to the north and we will shoot fifty miles to the west on Wednesday and anchor in Montauk for the night. Then on Thursday morning we plan to take off for a 155 nautical mile jump to Atlantic City New Jersey. We should arrive on Friday morning or afternoon, so it’s an all day and then all night trip. If we pull in early on Friday, then we can continue on south to Cape May at the southernmost tip of New Jersey to anchor there for the night instead. The last leg of the trip would start on Saturday morning when we plan to jump south for another 155nm trip to arrive at anchorage in Norfolk Virginia sometime on Sunday afternoon.

This route feels much more prudent to us than one straight trip from here to Norfolk. It really will be our shakedown cruise on this new (to us) boat, so it just feels better to stay closer to land and therefore to help if needed. It also gives us the chance to stop and explore an island on the Cape and Montauk before leaving New England for good. It would be tragic to spend all this time here in Massachusetts and not make it to one of the islands on the Cape in our new boat! Her old name is “Nobska Lady” which refers to Nobska Lighthouse on Cape Cod, after all.

We of course might change our plan at any moment based on updated weather information or our energy and endurance levels. Two 155nm legs back to back with one night on anchor in between may prove to be a bit more than we want to do right now. That would mean two 24 hour overnight sails separated by maybe 12 to 24 hours on anchor. Sounds reasonable, but we’ll find out when we get there. We’re hoping that the speed and comfort and easier motion of this boat will allow us to stand longer trips on the ocean. The more 24 hour jumps we can make doing 150 miles at a clip, the faster we’ll get south of the coming cold weather. Maybe we’ll even work our stamina up to doing 48 hour legs along the coast. We’re starting slow and reasonable though rather than biting off more than we may want to swallow. Maybe it would be different if we had a buddy boat, but that hasn’t lined up for us yet.

We have been spending the last week finally getting settled in our new beautiful boat. After being homeless for the last two months, I can not even tell you how good it has been to start to settle in and feel like we have our own space again! This summer has taken quite a toll on us, and even though we have tried to keep our focus on the positive, especially in our blog posts, the truth is the last few months have been incredibly stressful on many levels. Even though we have had the great fortune of staying with wonderful friends and visiting some of our favorite spots in New England, it has still been unbelievably difficult to work efficiently, stay on top of things, and feel stable with such unsettled conditions. Add on top of that the challenges of Cap’t K. getting sick with Lyme disease, the loss of a pivotal family relationship, an unbelievable number of very expensive and inconvenient car repairs, as well as a few other unexpected financial setbacks,…..in short, we’ve been dealing with a lot of stress. We have been experiencing the downside of our gypsy life.

I’ve even been questioning whether we are doing the right thing. Maybe we should just settle down and “be normal”. Get a life, as we’ve been told by some to do. When we were at the bank getting the money out to pay for our boat, we saw a sign in the bank that said “Nothing brings happiness and a sense of freedom like a great rate on a home mortgage.” We thought, “Wow, that’s quite a statement, equating unparalleled happiness and freedom with being in debt for 30+ years.” We were lucky enough to buy our boat without a loan, and so we are free from a mortgage, and that feels like a sense of freedom to me. However, we are seriously strapped for cash now, and that doesn’t feel so free, and that is definitely not making me happy….it’s a tradeoff either way, and some days I’m not sure which choice is best. Would we feel happier if we were settled with normal jobs and had a great rate on a huge mortgage? A few years ago, we almost went down that road. We were both working full time jobs, and we put in an offer on a house. We offered the guy the amount he was asking for. And he rejected it. So we didn’t get the house and eventually went down this gypsy boat path instead. Now the value of that house is a fraction of what he had been asking for, and we feel pretty lucky that we didn’t get it, because if we did we would owe way more on the mortgage than the house is now worth. Lots of people we know are in that situation, and they aren’t too happy about it, and they definitely aren’t experiencing “freedom”!

What is happiness anyway? It seems elusive sometimes. In the end, we are about as happy as we decide to be with the deck of cards we’ve drawn. Sometimes this whole sailboat adventure seems to be an experiment in exploring what happiness is made of. We have made our choices, taken our risks, picked our cards, and now we have to play them. Some days we feel pretty happy about it all and other days totally suck. Whether we like it or not, it comes down to the fact that for now we have chosen this road and we just need to keep going down it, even though it sometimes feels super scary and stressful. So our next move is to get ourselves south, park it somewhere, and get jobs for the winter. I’m sure you were all hoping for something more exciting than that, but hey, this is our reality right now.

We didn’t plan on getting on this boat and heading south with no money in our pockets, but that’s what is happening. The same car that conspired to keep us in the harbor back in our last post has also conspired to eat up every last cent we had been saving for our trip south. Now we just have to PRAY this boat will get us to where we need to go without expensive repairs as well!

So…we are preparing to head south. Destination, south of the frost line. Florida will enter the picture at some point. Money making opportunities will be a deciding factor. As soon as the car sells, we’re outta here. It’s getting cold! The forecast for the next week is rain, rain, and more rain. Good thing we just got our foul weather gear mailed to us from Florida! We also got all our charts, and we are starting to study them to plan our route south. We REALLY, REALLY don’t want to be stuck on the ICW again all the way down the coast. We feel more confident in our sailing skills now than we did last year, so we are planning as many legs as possible on the ocean to avoid both the cost (of fuel) and the extra time it would take to stay on the ICW. In fact, we are looking for crew…anyone out there interested in sailing part way down the coast with us? We have room now for another person!

Meanwhile, our cats are also getting settled on the new boat, and they seem pretty content about it. Here are a few pics:

Slomo in the cockpit

Standing Headroom!

the new galley!

We’ve dropped hints, and for some the word is out, and here we are to declare the news:

We got a bigger boat.

What?  The proponents of all things Wee got a bigger boat?!

Yes.  We did.  We can barely believe it ourselves.  It’s all happened quite fast, and in many ways Divine Providence seems to have stepped in and placed this boat in our path.  Even though we’ve been fantasizing about a bigger boat for awhile now, we weren’t seriously shopping for one.  But a friend’s father was selling his boat and suggested we come look at it.  It was way out of our price range, but at his urging, we went out to the Cape to take a look.  The boat in question is 37′ Islander, a fiberglass sloop of about the same vintage as Wee Happy.

When we arrived at the yacht club, our car “conveniently”  broke down, forcing us to seek a place to spend the night until we could have it looked at by a mechanic the next day.  Well, how about staying on the boat?  It would be nice to try out the bed in the big v-berth….and it was our wedding anniversary the day we went to look at it.  As it turns out, it was also the wedding anniversary of Mark, the owner of boat.  (he’s been married about 45 years longer than we have)

Anyway, we looked at the boat with Mark.  The boat is classy, with gorgeous, well maintained wood everywhere.  Mark, a well seasoned sailor, has owned the boat for over 30 years and has taken meticulous care of it. It’s got all the wonderful conveniences that were missing on Wee Happy.  In addition to the things one would expect on a sailboat, like good sails, intact rigging, a solid hull, gps, etc, this boat (called the Nobska Lady) also has amazing luxuries like running hot water, a stove, a real bathroom, and a table.  And STANDING HEADROOM.  For Cap’t K, that was a major selling point.  Because, as much as we love Wee Happy and think the Albin Vega is a great boat, it was becoming literally painful for Cap’t K. to inhabit.  And I had reached my absolute limit in living without a fully functioning bathroom.  So those things combined have led us to the conclusion that we can not continue to be long term liveaboard cruisers on Wee Happy.  At least not happily……

So anyway, we looked at the boat, and then we spent the night on the boat.  We were basically impressed with the boat when we got the tour with Mark, but it wasn’t until we woke up on the boat the next day that we realized we were in love.  We simply fell in love with it.  The warm beautiful wood covering the interior, the space, the actual kitchen, the wonderful cockpit……we could get used to this…..

Our car continued to conspire against our departure from the harbor and was not able to be fixed the next day.  So Mark took us out for a sail.  She sails beautifully.  Does 6 knots no problem.  We fell in love some more.  We spent another night on the boat.  We fell in love some more.  And then we made an offer, and now the boat is ours.  We ended up getting it for the exact amount we sold our yurt for, which felt perfect.  It’s like we traded one home for another home, an equal trade.  (except that now we have waterfront property!)

Getting her bottom wet after Irene

Right around this time, Hurricane Irene came blasting through.  At first we were worried about Wee Happy, and then we realized the storm was actually headed pretty much straight for our new boat near Cape Cod.  We hadn’t yet paid for and taken posession of the Nobska Lady yet, and happened to be way up on Lake Chaplain taking care of some other business when the hurricane approached.  So as it turned out Mark did the responsible thing and had it hauled out of the water for the storm, and she weathered it just fine, to everyone’s relief.  The following week we went and helped put the rigging and sails back up and got to inspect Nobska Lady’s bottom.

Since the purchase we have been stuck on land dealing with the last of our car nightmares, work, and wrapping things up for our departure south.  In a few days we will be finally ready to move onto the boat for good.

While we have been landlocked we have continued to have the pleasure of spending time with good friends. Many thanks and hugs go out to our friends Erin, Josh, and their daughter Sasha for opening their home to us, making yummy food for us, and even cooking homemade chicken soup when Cap’t K. was sick! We are eternally grateful! And a special mention also to Cap’t K’s sister Sas, who has been lovingly babysitting our cats for 3 months now while we have been in transition.
And we would also like to thank our sailing friends Mimi and Rich who hosted us in their wonderful Adirondack camp during the hurricane. (we weren’t really camping….a “camp” is a term commonly used in the Adirondacks for a big family lodge or house on the lake. We were cozy by a stone fireplace while it rained buckets outside!)

This weekend we had a marvelous reunion with our sailing buddies Roark and Sherry, along with Roark’s daughter Aisling and friend Morgan from s/v Good Goose.  Some of you may remember them from our journey down the ICW last year.  They were some of our best friends we met while sailing on Wee Happy and we were relieved to discover we could be friends with them even on land — we spent the weekend at Roark’s family cabin in the deep woods of the Adirondacks and didn’t even see water the whole time we were together but loved each other’s company just the same!

Reunited and it feels so good!

Roark gets a ride in Vanny!

I know some of you out there (like Wes!) are going to give us crap for ever for getting a bigger boat. You are all invited onto our new boat for a big dance party and sleep over!

But to put the “bigger” concept in perspective, we are currently using the boat as our home. On Wee Happy we were living in a space about the same size as some people’s walk in closet, now we are in the space about the size of a small living room….it’s still Wee! Not to mention that both Wee Happy and Nobska Lady combined cost less than an average new car!

For those of you wondering about what we are going to do with Wee Happy, we are still in a decision making process about it, however she is being taken care of by some friends for now.

We are also in the process of coming up with a new name for Nobska Lady, as her name had special meaning for the previous owners but not so much for us. Maybe “Way Happy”??

More details to follow, stay tuned!

It has been awhile since our last post…what in the world have we been up to? Well, we’ve been busy! Here is a bit of what’s been going on….
Since our yurt moved to it’s new home at Earthlands, we’ve been temporarily homeless. While this has caused some inconvenience and stress, the upside is that we have gotten to spend some wonderful time with dear friends here in New England who have graciously hosted us in their homes. And, thank goodness we also have Vannie, our trustworthy VW camper van, which has been our gypsy home on wheels. Welcome to our gypsy life.

Our remaining possessions crammed into a 10 x 15 foot storage unit, we have found homes for everything that wouldn’t fit or that no longer served us via many hours on Craigslist, Ebay, and Freecycle. Stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff! We have less than most Americans we know and it still took so long to downsize our stuff!

We also attended a wonderful festival we go to every year called SpiritFire, where we enjoyed 5 hot days of connections with good friends, along with a healthy dose one of our favorite activities: live drumming and dancing. This was sorely lacking on our sailing trip and we felt recharged by our connections with the land and people at Spiritfire.
I also spent a few weeks in my original homeland of South Dakota and Minnesota visiting my family and some old friends. It was a packed time of reconnecting with blasts from the past, and I also got to visit one of my very favorite places on Earth, the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is one of the farthest places in North America from the ocean, but it has a similar vast quality of peace and spaciousness found at sea. And it has more spectacular thunderstorms! I got to witness quite a few of them moving across the wide open prairie, including one storm that featured a brief tornado that touched down a bit too close for comfort! (this hurricane is getting a bit too close for comfort too!)
While I was away Captain K got some quality time with his sister, and spent a lot of frustrating hours working on his car. We have had endless hassles with cars ever since we got back to land. Even more than boats, cars seem to be black holes that suck up money!

In the midst of all this, I have been working as much as possible in multiple states doing performances, gardening, and painting. No noteworthy photos of the gardening and painting, but here is a fun one of one of my recent performances as a “Silver Swimmer“.

And, if all that weren’t enough, we have had the great fortune to spend time with our friends Rich and Mimi from s/v Maffick, who we sailed with back in the Bahamas. They are spending some time on Lake Champlain and we got to go sailing with them on a sweet little 24′ Cape Dory named Snow Goose. We ventured out in 25 knot winds and got to experience big waves on Lake Champlain that soaked us all.

And last but not least, the next exciting sailing chapter is about to begin in…….a bigger boat?!? Stay tuned!

p.s. The Silver Swimmers photo is courtesy of the Berkshire Eagle Newspaper. (photo credit)